Instead I will do as I usually of, commenting on things happening locally, one of those things being how people – particularly an increasing number of summerfolk – are “driving stupid”. Just in this past week I have seen more examples of people driving stupid – something I define as some folks driving distracted or assuming traffic laws don’t apply to them – with an increasing number of drivers doing stupid stuff which endangers everyone. One of the more egregious instances that I witnessed (and caught on dash cam) on Friday afternoon was someone in a white Escalade with NY plates figuring they didn’t have to wait for the traffic light at a local intersection and went down the Left Turn Only lane and then ran the red light to get in front of the six or seven vehicles waiting for the light to turn green. This was a deliberate and incredibly stupid act.
There have also been two fatal accidents, one early Friday evening and one early yesterday evening, both caused when one vehicle crossed the double yellow line and hit another vehicle head on. Knowing where both of the accidents took place, my first thought was that it was highly likely both were caused by distracted driving.
Distracted driving has become a bigger problem than drunk driving and I expect it will only get worse. I don’t know how many times in just the past couple weeks I have seen people driving while paying more attention to their smart phone in their hand or fiddling with the touch screen in the center console of their vehicles rather than paying attention to the road and the traffic surrounding them.
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To put it as some other folks have, I wondered how long it would be before the numb-nuts and nitwits would say the assassination attempt on Trump was staged by his campaign. It didn’t take long at all.
Now, even the Bought-And-Paid-For Progressive media are piling on, blaming Trump for the assassination attempt.
What a bunch of scumbags.
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I’ve heard of all kinds of “privilege” – Male Privilege, White Privilege, Wealth Privilege, Beltway Privilege, Ivy League Privilege, and so on. But I have never heard of Angry Privilege. However, it does make sense that it exists.
Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.The first means of justifying horrific actions like gulags, extermination camps, or at the worst, genocide, is to dehumanize the targets of your anger. Then it makes it easy to eliminate them because they aren’t real people in the eyes of their executioners. Their ‘righteous’ anger, their privileged anger makes all of their horrific actions justifiable even though they are the ‘monsters’ despite their claims that it is their victims who are the monsters.
Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn’t described as anger at all. Instead it’s whitewashed as “passionate” or “courageous”. Bad anger however is “worrying” or “dangerous”. Angry left-wing protesters “call out”, angry right-wing protesters “threaten”. Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.
Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.
Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.
It’s not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.
And that is why the left so easily slips into violence. All its ideological ends are good. Therefore its means, from mass starvation to gulags to riots and tyranny, must be good. If I slash your tires because of your Biden bumper sticker”, I’m a monster. But if you key my car because of my Trump bumper sticker, you’re fighting racism and fascism. Your tactics might be in error, but your viewpoint isn’t.
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Considering the media and blogs have been covering nothing but the assassination attempt on Trump ad nausem, I figure this might be a good time to bring this week’s TOAS to a close. Maybe I’ll even make it out on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout later today. So with that, that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where we’ve been seeing a lot of days in the 90’s, thunderstorms in the afternoons, and a lot of people driving ‘stupid’ on the highways and byways.