Category Archives: Culture

Culture for the cultured and uncultured alike.

Rule Five Outcomes Of Barbarity Friday

I’ve held off on coverage here of the October 7th attacks on Israel and the aftermath, partly because the issue hits close to some experiences I’ve had in the Middle East myself, partly because I’ve done all the reporting and punditizing I can deal with on this over at RedState.  But this looked like something I wanted to discuss here, so I’m free of editorial restraint when describing fucking savages.

Now, a couple of months after the attack, the fucking savages in Hamas are returning some of their hostages, and now doctors treating those hostages are finding they have to invent entirely new categories of trauma to describe what these poor people suffered at the hands of, yes, fucking savages.

A doctor treating freed Hamas hostages in Israel says survivors are suffering from an unprecedented level of “extremely severe psychological abuse” endured during captivity. 

“I can tell you that on behalf of all the medical and psychological teams treating those who return, the mental states we encountered have no precedent in medical literature. We feel that we have to rewrite the textbooks of post-trauma,” Dr. Renana Eitan told “Sunday Night in America.”

Eitan revealed the Tel Aviv Medical Center is actively treating more than 15 former hostages and described their “severe physical and mental abuse.”

My RedState colleague Bob Hoge had this to say in his analysis:

As my colleague Bonchie reported earlier Monday, the reason Hamas didn’t free more women in the hostage swap is because the terror outfit/government authority doesn’t want them to tell the world what actually happened to them down in the tunnels.

That implies that there are some captives who have been treated much worse than the ones Dr. Eitan has been treating, which is a horrific thought.

Yes, that is a horrific thought.

The fucking savages in Hamas who attacked Israel on October 7th committed acts of utter barbarity that the planet hasn’t seen since… well, acts of utter barbarity committed by ISIS, which group is also made up of fucking savages.  And, while I’m normally loathe to suggest outright war, in this case, it’s plainly justified. Israel is perfectly justified in hunting down every one of these fucking savages and un-aliveing them. These are people who committed rape on a massive scale; they murdered whole families, including children and infants; they tortured and burned.  The only proper reply is to wipe Hamas off the face of the planet.

Did I mention that Hamas are fucking savages?

The cease-fire now appears to be behind us. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are moving into southern Gaza now, and the hunt is once more on.  And for once, it doesn’t look like the U.S. needs to place any soldiers on the ground, and that’s good; the IDF is perfectly capable of handling this on its own. And to members of the IDF,  I can only say this:

Good hunting.  Show these scum what badassery really is.

And if any of the fucking savages from Hamas happen to see this page, and take offense at the display of the Feminine Aesthetic therein, I can only ask that they go fuck themselves.

Did I mention that Hamas are fucking savages?

Animal’s Hump Day News

Happy Hump Day!

Housekeeping notes: A week from today we’ll be flying to Iowa, leaving our house-sitters in place here, where we will spend a week with the entire Animal family at our annual Thanksgiving/Christmas family reunion.  Posts will be scheduled for the balance of next week, and the week of the 27th will be taken up with some placeholder totty.  Regular posts will resume Monday, Dec 4th.

Now then…

Continue reading Animal’s Hump Day News

Rule Five Code Duello Friday

I’m going to expand on some deep thoughts I presented a few years back, thoughts that I just had occasion to recall during a discussion with a buddy the other day.  To put it simply: Should dueling be legal?

I’m not talking about sparring on Twitter or in the comments section of some news story.  I’m talking honest to gosh, 18th century-style, pistols at ten paces dueling.

Dueling has been illegal everywhere in the United States, indeed in most of the Western world since the early 19th century at least.  But let’s set aside our ingrained prejudices for a moment and ask ourselves, in a society that honestly and completely exists under the concept of liberty – should it be?

Let’s say two men (or women, or one of each, whatever) have a serious disagreement, one which cannot be reconciled by any normal means.  Courts have been unable to arrive at a settlement acceptable to both.  Counsel has failed.  They are well and truly at loggerheads.

So, both of them, as capable, competent, consenting adults, in full possession of their faculties, agree to pistols at sunrise to settle the dispute.  They meet in a field with their seconds, who oversee the loading of the pistols; they take their places, step away from each other on the count and, when indicated, turn and fire.  One is killed, the other emerges the victor.

I’d use these, just for the sake of tradition.

Now – answer me this – what crime has been committed?

Oh, yes, I know there is a statutory crime committed.  But has there been a moral crime?  Both parties went into the affair knowing that death was a likely outcome.  I’ve read that back when the code duello was more commonly practiced, it was considered the gentlemanly thing to do to just pink your opponent in the arm or leg and claim victory without fatality, but fatal injuries were a normal outcome; it even happened to one of the more famous of our Founding Fathers.

But even in the event of a fatality – what qualifies this as a crime?  Both parties agreed to the duel.  Both parties know the likely outcome.  Both parties are, presumably, competent to make the decision.  If we are truly to be a society that values personal liberty, we must also be a society that allows people to face the likely consequences of that liberty.  Dueling may be an extreme example of that, but it’s no less a valid one.

So.  Should dueling be legalized?  If, in a society based first and foremost on the principle of individual liberty, two parties agree to settle their differences in one-on-one mortal combat, knowing the outcome is likely to be at least one of them shuffling off the mortal coil, then what role does government play in preventing them from so doing?

Obviously there would have to be some limits.  You could scarcely allow a duel between two people using nuclear weapons as the weapon of choice, for example.  I’d be willing to consider the following restrictions:

  • Weaponry limited to personal, individual weapons only. Pistols, swords, or even a sniper duel with rifles, but no explosives, machine guns or flamethrowers, entertaining as that last one would be.  Why?  Because of the possibility of the battle spilling over onto observers or bystanders.  That would be… bad.
  • Both parties obviously to be competent, consenting adults, willing to sign legal documents waiving any damages or legal penalty from any death or disability resulting from the duel.
  • I suppose I’d entertain the idea of a cooling-down period between filing of the legal paperwork and the event itself, since death is a likely (and final) outcome.
  • It seems to me that seconds would be a reasonable requirement. The seconds’ role is to act as a dispassionate advocate for the duelist.  The seconds act in concert, presumably without the inflamed passions that led to the duel, to ensure that the duel is fair, that neither duelist takes an unfair advantage.
  • Some kind of time limit to the combat itself seems like a good idea. Say the parties agree to a duel by sword; if they hack away for, say, two hours, until both are on the brink of collapse, there ought to be a way for the seconds to call a draw.

The trouble here is as with so many things; the limits here would have to be legislated, and as it is the nature of government to grow ever larger and more intrusive, eventually the code duello would be so full of requirements and conditions as to be useless, kind of like the tax code.  Really, it would be better to have the government as completely divorced as possible from the process.  The only law that applies would be contract law.

“But Animal,” some might ask, “wouldn’t a duel have the possibility of setting off a vendetta, say between two families?”

“Sure,” I’d reply, “…and as long as all parties agree to the code duello and the likely consequences, and follow the guidelines and rules applying, then, fine.  I really have very little problem with families who are so prickly that they can’t settle their differences by non-legal means thinning themselves out thusly, and besides, you can only have the duel if both parties agree; this makes it pretty easy to break the chain.”

“Even so,” the questioners go on, “wouldn’t you have the possibility of a revenge killing outside the code duello system?”

“Again, sure,” I’d reply, “…and that would be a crime, to be dealt with by the legal system just like any other premeditated murder.”

“But… wouldn’t this disproportionately affect (insert name of particular aggrieved community/ethnicity/religion/whatever here)?”

“Probably.  So what?”

“What about the families they leave behind?  Their children!  Think of their children!”

“It’s not my place to think about their children; it’s their damn place to think of their children.  So, they leave behind some orphans?  Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

“But wait,” comes one final question, “…what about the Non-Aggression Principle?”

“That’s an interesting one.  It seems to me that both parties are initiating aggression in unison, by prior agreement under conditions also agreed to.  So, yes, both parties are violating the NAP – and neither are.  As the initiation is simultaneous – say, five paces, turn and fire – then both are initiating, and both are responding.  You can make an argument here that the NAP doesn’t apply.”

It’s a pretty problem.

Of course, this is just an intellectual exercise, and it’s unlikely in the extreme that dueling will ever be legalized, anywhere, in our modern era and, honestly, one would hope that civilized people have better ways to resolve their differences.

But the veneer of civilization is pretty damn thin.  If things ever got to the point where trial by arms was again an acceptable way to settle differences, it would be best to have some kind of guidelines around how to conduct those trials.

More to the point, I find the moral question interesting.  It seems to me that a duel is morally acceptable if both parties are competent adults, fully informed, and willing to sign on to a legally binding agreement to enter into mortal combat.

So.  Thoughts?

Animal’s Daily Death of Delusions News

Let’s hope this statement of a liberal being mugged by reality proves true and is regularly repeated.

When Hamas terrorists crossed over the border with Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also shattered long-held delusions in the West.

A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7 as a liberal and went to bed that evening as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn’t really a joke and she wasn’t the only one. What changed?

What changed?  A brutal dose of brutal reality from brutal people.

The best way to answer that question is with the help of Thomas Sowell, one of the most brilliant public intellectuals alive today. In 1987, Sowell published A Conflict of Visions. In this now-classic, he offers a simple and powerful explanation of why people disagree about politics. We disagree about politics, Sowell argues, because we disagree about human nature. We see the world through one of two competing visions, each of which tells a radically different story about human nature.

But I’m skeptical about this awakening by one person, who was apparently red-pilled by the Hamas atrocities, has any staying power.  Why?  Because the power of The Side is just too strong.

We woke up on October 8 to the clamor of street protests in cities across the West condemning Israel even before any major Israeli response to the attacks. We watched celebratory crowds brandish swastikas and chant “gas the Jews” at events purporting to be about the loss of Palestinian lives. We saw Black Lives Matter chapters lionize terrorists

In London, where I live, we watched the mayor deliver glib assurances that “London’s diversity is our greatest strength” in the midst of a wave of antisemitic attacks, and as Jewish schools were forced to close because of safety concerns. 

Yeah, it won’t last.  Post-9/11, American seemed to really be pulling together; within weeks, maybe days, the Left (by my own observation) was deriding President George W. Bush as “Chimpy” and “George W. Hitler.”  It was lunacy on a national scale, and make no mistake, we’ll continue to see lunacy on a national scale for a few more years yet.

The Hamas attacks, I think, are the beginnings of something larger.  Something that will come from an unexpected direction. The world is entering into a time of crisis, very much like it was in 1939, and it’s anyone’s guess where it will all end up.

Animal’s Hump Day News

Happy Hump Day!

This mess in the Middle East has now officially gotten out of hand.  More on that in the links.

When you’re a nation the size of Delaware, surrounded by people who want to kill you, it’s in your best interest to keep your military and your intelligence services dialed in, but in this case Israel obviously missed something.

Now then…

Continue reading Animal’s Hump Day News

Animal’s Daily Legacy Media News

Before we get into it, check out the final chapter of License to Kill over at Glibertarians!

Now then; as if most of us didn’t already know that our legacy media was effectively a leftist fifth column, the last few days would have proved it.

When you listen to the Ivy League-educated, woke-as-an-Apple Watch, wine-and-slippers crowd on the Sunday morning news circuit, you have to come to one of two conclusions:

Either they are malignant manipulators who willingly lie about their political enemies (known politely as conservatives, and to Joe Biden as “MAGA Republican extremists”), or they are just plain stupid.

OK, maybe not stupid, but incapable of discernment – unable to understand subtlety or recognize sarcasm, for instance. Certainly unable to credit their opponents with the ability to think artfully, and therefore taking everything at face value when there might actually be levels of sophistication hidden in plain sight.

In the case of their endless savaging of Donald Trump, you have to say that after eight years of evidence to the contrary, the mainstream media is completely unable to recognize that Trump has an unparalleled ability to frame an argument to make his opponents look foolish, weak, or unpatriotic. Of course, since his opponents include the mainstream media itself, it’s no surprise that they prefer to call him names rather than to honestly evaluate his criticism.

No matter what you think of Donald Trump – and my feelings on him are distinctly mixed – you’d have to be as brain-damaged as, oh, Joe Biden to fail to see how horribly the media has treated him.  And it’s not just Donald Trump, but pretty much any public figure to the right of Leon Trotsky.

But when it comes to solutions, well, there’s just one thing to consider.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment applies to the legacy media, like anyone else. But  you don’t fight bad information by clamping down on speech; you fight bad information with good information, and that’s largely what has been driving the rise of the alternative media; like my and my RedState colleagues’ work, and like these virtual pages I’ve been producing through the various iterations of Animal Magnetism for over twenty years now.

We’ll keep cranking.  You keep reading!

Animal’s Daily Near Future News

National Treasure Dr. Victor Davis Hanson is back, this time weighing in on the state of affairs in the United States in an interview with Tucker Carlson.  Here, watch:

Here’s the bit (transcribed at the link above) that I found interesting; Dr. Hanson speaks:

Every time people say they wouldn’t dare do this, “Fanni Willis wouldn’t dare,” “Letitia James is an absurd prosecutor, she wouldn’t dare,” “Alvin Bragg is a buffoon, he wouldn’t dare,” “Jack Smith is a partisan.” Every time people say that they do! And so I don’t know if there i a strategy to keep Donald Trump either out of a gag order, or out of confinement at Mar-a-Lago, or out of jail.

You can see where we’re headed where Joe Biden isn’t really a viable president anymore. He’s a construct, he’s being used by the hard left, by the Obamas and the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders “Squad” wing of the Democratic Party. And it is getting to the point of caricature. You put all of those things together and add in a Kamala Harris that frightens everybody because we’ve never had such an incompetent vice president, I think, and so unfit to be president.

All bets are off! It’s like putting all sorts of ingredients of explosives into a kind of device and it is going to blow up I think, somehow. But I don’t think we can predict what is going to happen, it is just too volatile. I think the left feels that they want to push the envelope, they want to take the leading Republican candidate and create charges against him, which they know they wouldn’t ever lodge if he hadn’t run for president. They would have left him alone.

In other words, we’re in uncharted territory here.

I first started paying attention to politics in the Carter years, and was indirectly involved for the first time in 1980 when I put in some hours as a local volunteer for the Reagan campaign.  It seems like in every election since 1980, some talking head or another has bleated about the next election being “the most important since 1860” or even “the most important in the history of the republic.”  And, there are people saying that today.  But right now, damn me if I’m not beginning to think that they are right.  We have one party that will cross any line, break any rule, cheat any cheat to seize and keep power (look at California if you want to see their model) and another that is just not very good at standing up for themselves, much less us.

This isn’t the recipe for long-term stability.

A big part of the problem is the political system itself.  Our Brobdingnagian Imperial government is so massive, and spends so much money, and is so intrusive and has so, so many opportunities for graft and corruption, that it has given way to a kakistocracy.  We are being governed by the very worst among us, and they have clearly indicated that they intend to stay where they are, in control of the levers of power.

As time goes on I’m more and more uncertain that this is something we can fix with elections.  Is it too late for the ballot box?

That’s a question I’d like to see posed to someone as educated, knowledgeable and brilliant as Dr. Hanson.

Animal’s Daily Stupid Idea News

Before I get into today’s topic, check out the first episode of my new series, License to Kill, over at Glibertarians.  And if you like my fiction work, you can find a whole bunch of it here (publisher) or here (Amazon).

I have discussed, from time to time, how stupid the whole idea of “muh reparations” is.  It’s pleasing to see that California voters agree, returning some stunning poll results in reply to the once and former-Golden State’s  idiotic California Reparations Task Force Report.

The majority of California voters oppose offering cash reparations to the descendants of African American slaves, a new poll has found.

Fifty-nine percent of California voters oppose cash payments, while 29% of voters support the idea, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll that was cosponsored by the Los Angeles Times. A total of four-in-ten respondents reported they “strongly” oppose cash reparations.

The poll comes after Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2020 that established the California Reparations Task Force, which was launched to explore how the state could lead the nation on a potential reparations program.

Do I really need to point out that slavery was never legal in California?  Not to worry; America’s own walking “hair products for men” spokesman, Gavin Newsom, has an explanation:

“As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive. Our painful history of slavery has evolved into structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions,” Newsom said at the time. “California’s rich diversity is our greatest asset, and we won’t turn away from this moment to make right the discrimination and disadvantages that Black Californians and people of color still face.”

What an utter and steaming load of absolute codswallop, balderdash, flapdoodle and poppycock.

There is no justification – none – for paying reparations for slavery to people who have never been slaves, after taking the money away from people who have never owned slaves.

Have there been injustices in the past?  Yes.  If not, there’s a good chance I’d be living now in the Scottish Highlands, given that several of my Jacobite ancestors wouldn’t have found it necessary to flee to the New World to keep the English from removing their heads.  Examples abound, but for some reason no one talks seriously about reparations for the Irish for all the years that the English literally treated them as second- or third-class citizens.

Let’s be honest:  California Democrats are, as politicians in general always do, pandering to a certain demographic (which one is left as an exercise to the reader) to implement one of the most transparent and egregious vote-buying schemes in modern history.  Rightly, it seems, California voters are seeing through the scam.

Whether this overstep will result in California voters spewing the Democrat Party out of their mouths is another issue; frankly I’m not too sanguine about that prospect.

Animal’s Daily National Treasure News

Before we get into today’s post, check out the final chapter of Blood and Gold over at Glibertarians!

Now then: National Treasure Dr. Victor Davis Hanson has brought us another essay on what the political Left has wrought on our nation.  Read the whole thing; Dr. Hanson always brings us the straight goods.

In the last 20 years, the Left has boasted that it has gained control of most of America institutions of power and influence—the corporate boardroom, media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the administrative state, academia, foundations, social media, entertainment, professional sports, and Hollywood.

With such support, between 2009-17, Barack Obama was empowered to transform the Democratic Party from its middle-class roots and class concerns into the party of the bicoastal rich and subsidized poor—obsessions with big money, race, a new intolerant green religion, and dividing the country into a binary of oppressors and oppressed.

The Obamas entered the presidency spouting the usual leftwing boilerplate (“spread the wealth,” “just downright mean country,” “get in their face,” “first time I’ve been proud of my country”) as upper-middle-class, former community activists, hurt that their genius and talents had not yet been sufficiently monetized.

After getting elected through temporarily pivoting to racial ecumenicalism and pseudo-calls for unity, they reverted to form and governed by dividing the country. And then the two left the White House as soon-to-be mansion living, mega-rich elites, cashing in on the fears they had inculcated over the prior eight years.

This is always the pattern.  Hold office for a few years, meet a few far-Left expectations, espouse the horrors of socialism, then retire to one (or several) waterfront mansions.  The Obamas have been particularly egregious, still hectoring us over ‘climate change’ while residing much of the year in Cape Cod and Hawaiian homes seemingly inches above the supposedly-rising waterline.

But it’s important to point out that it’s not just the Left that does this.

This, True Believers, is why as much of the power these people wield must be stripped from them, for the survival of the Republic may well depend on it.  Through their power and influence they grow monstrously rich without producing anything of value in return; while the Biden Crime Family’s shenanigans are in the forefront of public notice at the moment, they are as much symptom as cause.

Devolve government.  Return the Imperial City to its Constitutionally mandated structure.  Return most political functions to local structures.  Then, and only then, will the influence these people – Left and Right – and the power they wield over us be reduced.

Animal’s Hump Day News

Happy Hump Day!

We have family visiting from the Lower 48, so the weekly links may be a bit on the thin side.  But we’ll try to make sure that, even if the quantity drops off a little, the quality remains the same!

Now then…

On To the Links!

Trump Indictments: The Charge Is the Fraud

Hawaiian business owners slam Biden(‘s handlers) non-response to Maui fires. Never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck things up.

Related:  This should come as a surprise to no one.

President Biden’s Haplessness Isn’t Funny Anymore

If this isn’t the understatement of the week, it will do until a better one comes along.

Hint:  They are leaving blue states and going to red states.

New York City Rat Problem so Bad Now They’re a Tourist Attraction

This guy is a frickin’ hero by any standard.

No shit, Karl.

China’s growth may be over.

Of course Joe the Plumber was right about Obama.

My RedState Stuff:

The State of America – Are We Too Late?

Raccoons in Germany Have Started to Steal Beer

The Legacy Media and the Coup Du Publique

Americans Could Be Limited to Two Beers a Week

Trump Appears in a Swedish Steak

Defanging the Three-Headed Monster Wrecking Our Economy

Sunday Gun Day V – Five Shotguns You Should Shoot Before You Die

Rock Legend Alice Cooper Angers Trans Activists, Gets Canceled by Makeup Company

America Has a Critical Shortage of Skilled Workers

The Pipsqueak 5.56mm, the AR-15, and Relative Power Levels

We May Hold Him Deer, but He’s a Thief All the Same

Vox Reporter Calls for Government-Subsidized Fake Meat Research

This Week’s Idiots:

MSNBC’s Michael Cohen (Repeat Offender Alert) is an idiot.

The Nation’s Joan Walsh is an idiot.

Maureen Dowd beclowns herself.

If President Biden(‘s handlers) listen to the daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont, he’s dumber than we thought.

The Hill’s Glenn Altschuler is an idiot.

Paul Krugman (Repeat Offender Alert) remains a cheap partisan hack, and an idiot.

Vox’s Julieta Cardenas is an idiot.

This Week’s Cultural Edification:

I’ve been a fan of Bob Dylan since the mid-Seventies, when my hippie brother first got me listening to his older acoustic work. What a lot of people don’t realize about America’s Songwriter is that he’s still working, still touring, and still turning out some pretty great music.  In 2012, he released the album Tempest, which included the fun, rollicking tune Duquesne Whistle.  The video is pretty fun to watch, too.  Here it is; enjoy.