All Categories - Jay Peterson

Monday morning thoughts

2/28/2022

There is a huge difference between
telling a kid "I'm not gonna tell your parents (XYZ)"
and
telling a kid "Don't tell your parents (XYZ)"
The former, while potentially objectionable, is also useful in being a trustworthy adult who is NOT a parent. Something that's badly needed, especially in the lives of older kids.
The latter is a huge red flag chock full of grooming 101. Using it is an indication that one should neither be around children nor wield any manner of civic power whatsoever.

Amir Locke

2/5/2022

I haven't said anything controversial in a while. Might as well start now.
Now that there's precedent that the second amendment includes when lawfully facing cops, no-knocks are for war zones. If you aren't living under declared martial law, then a given officer either has the skills, training, and confidence to safely execute a knock-and-announce, or they have no business being in the stack when the door gets kicked in.
While I'm at it, felony murder is a chickenshit charge used by weakling prosecutors who know they don't otherwise have a case. It shouldn't exist.

The leftist games

2/3/2022

At first, I thought it was the typical Ctrl-leftist revolution cycle of taking down every oppressor you can reach; then when the oppressor herd thins out, take out every moderate who didn't cheer for you loud enough until it was convenient, then start going after any heretics you can find in the ranks.

But now I'm convinced it's a game.

Every foaming at the mouth batshit asshole leftist I've ever seen has at least one of four demographic markers:

1, cis. 2, hetero. 3, white. 4, male.

Some have two or more.

And in the Leftist Games, the game is to find someone else with one or more of these markers, and browbeat them into submission and/or silence with how much better you are than them.

I don't know if it's some sort of fucked up Highlander scenario, where in the end there can be only one.

I don't know if its more like pokemon, where you gotta collect 'em all.

I just know this is the way the Ctrl-left eats their own now.

Occasionally they try going after me in the center.

These days, I just shut that crap down.

That's why I stop paying attention when leftist white people start babbling about racism. Sorry. I don't trust you and I'm not gonna listen. You're not spreading the good word. You're looking for someone to be better than. Fuck off and do it elsewhere.

It's even worse when it's lefty dudes babbling about misogyny. These fuckers I not only stop listening to on principle, I gotta keep an eye out on them. Because the odds are good that one of 'em is going to wind up being an abuser, an assailant, or a misogynist in their own right.

I wish I was kidding. Two of the dudes who crowed loudest about treating women in Atlanta's performing arts scene better in recent years turned out to be exactly what they were crowing against.

I can think of guys in four different states right now where I don't have any proof but wouldn't be surprised one bit if I woke up and found out they were in the exact same boat.

Seriously, if you want to be treated like a grown ass adult again?
Stop playing the game.
The odds are not in your favor.
And fucking check yourself before taking on the arrogance to say that nobody else should be allowed to read or see what you don't like either.
That's not a road you want to go down.
Because it only takes one to decide that what you have to say shouldn't be heard or seen by anyone else either.

Censorship

2/2/2022

For much of my life, I've thought it wasn't censorship if a government wasn't doing it.

A big part of that is because I was born, raised, and continue to be an American. And we decided first and foremost on the bill of rights was about keeping the government from censoring its own people.
Combined with that is a deeply ingrained cultural respect for property rights, in that whoever's owning and operating a given area or establishment has very broad powers of determining what is said in their own domain.

To make it simple, American property rights run on, "Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole."

But you don't need a government to be a censor. You just need a government to run afoul of the first amendment.

Websters calls censoring "suppression or deleting of anything found objectionable"

But running my mind through a Pratchett filter, to put censorship on the same level as "sin is where you treat people as things?"

In that case, censorship is when not watching or reading it yourself isn't enough anymore. It's when you take up the arrogance to decide nobody else should see it either.

Less a single sin and more of a spectrum. On the heavy end is causing a government to ban works by force of law. On the light end is penny-ante shit like hiding an objectionable book in another part of the library to make it harder for someone else to find it.

Being a snotty little bitch about death of the author is somewhere in the middle.

None of this is new. The ratings systems we've had for movies for decades now is the result of the movie industry deciding to censor themselves before the government stepped in and did it for them.

If you were a teenage horror movie fan in the 90's, you got to see all the arbitrary bullshit that entailed. Say "fuck" more than once and it's an automatic "R." Only so many thrusts in a sex scene. Gay sex was more objectionable than straight. Women receiving pleasure was more objectionable than men doing the same. Cutting a female breast off was less objectionable than kissing one. The list goes on.

Was this censorship? Yes.

Studio contracts by that point obligated directors to deliver a finished cut of a given film with a certain rating.

Even worse, the ratings board wouldn't spit out what they found objectionable. They'd just say "Here's the rating. Want a lower one? Fix it. No, we won't tell you specifics. Figure it out."

Not a government official to be seen. And a couple steps removed "We didn't tell them what to cut. We're not censors!"

But censorship all the same.

Now we've just got a lot more people saying. And the platforms have stepped up.

And a whole lot of people deciding they don't like something, so nobody else can see it too.

And every now and then, someone in power agrees.

I don't listen to Joe Rogan, but I can see why he's pissing people off. He's letting people you disagree with talk. And it's been three years of fuckery and we're all looking for someone to blame for why it's not back to normal again and here he is, letting people proven wrong in your own heads have their say.

Meanwhile Joe's eating CNN's lunch money. Lemme emphasize that. CNN. THE face of TV news, is getting their ass handed to them in the ratings by a podcaster.

CNN would shed no tears if Joe's show went away.

Did I mention government? The white house press secretary said "Something should be done" in regards to Rogan yesterday.

Pratchett never went head-on against censorship, but his book The Truth addressed both deplatforming (The Engraver's and Printer's Guild) and misinformation (Dibbler, of course). His go-to Tyrant, Lord Vetinari, seemed to regard censorship as a waste of time. Something to do when you either know your own position is a lie to begin with, or fear your opposition is a good enough argument to win.

I objected to the ban on Maus because it's the deep end of censorship, using the clumsy and heavy hand of the government. But in the end, the minds behind it are a mirror of those screaming about taking Rogan down. Because he's letting misinformation be heard.

Parents who have already been accused of being terrorists for having the audacity to want a say in how their children are educated might have an interest in disinformation being heard as well. Whether I agree with them on what counts as disinformation or not.

(Side note: I stopped giving a shit about Whoopi's opinions back when she claimed Polanski's actions weren't "rape-rape," whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. But you'd think someone who's taken a Jewish stage name for a decades-long career would fucking know better. Oh well.)

Take care of yourselves out there,
-J.

So, I sat down and watched Baldwin's interview

12/3/2021

In the first few minutes, he points out that investigations take time but the news cycle waits for no one.
I think this is the first time he's realized that with himself front and center.
People who legitimately shoot people in self-defense almost never talk to the press for exactly this reason. Making any sort of public statement before a decision to press charges one way or another can mean the difference between exoneration and decades in prison. And that's just the legal ramifications. Let alone emotional effects most people are ridiculously unprepared for, especially in the public eye.
I think Baldwin is confident of two things:
One, criminal charges most likely will not be pressed against him.
Two, he's a talented enough performer and accustomed enough to talking to the press to control his own narrative to an extent.
Five minutes in, he stops in the middle of describing Hutchins and it takes him a moment to continue.
For what it's worth, I think his emotions in that moment were genuine. I was disappointed by the reaction of many when the "men should be allowed to cry in public" crowd threw that idea to the fucking winds when Rittenhouse cried on the stand. I'd be a bit of an asshole if I joined that bunch now.
That said, his emotions being genuine and his actions being acceptable are two different things.
Seven minutes in, the armorer (Reed) is mentioned. The fact that Rust was her second job was brought up, and audio from a podcast doing publicity for her first gig as an armorer was played.
First thing out of Stephanopolos' mouth: "Do you think she was up for the job?"
Baldwin claimed he assumed her up for it because she'd been hired.
Some bits and pieces, pretty much what I'd expect an actor to remember from an hour's course.
Then Baldwin claims Reed told him to only give a gun back to her or the first AD.
Supposedly, filming in tight quarters may necessitate such a thing.
Not any protocol that I've ever heard of.
Nor is it a covid-related change that I've ever heard of.
He described how Hutchins told him how to draw while she looked in the monitor, and claimed she directed him to aim at her armpit. While testing how cocking the weapon looked in the camera, he pulled the hammer back slightly. His thumb let go of the hammer and the weapon fired. No pulling the trigger.
As I've said before, plausible with the old single-action revolvers.
He kept emphasizing what he was told.
"I was told I was handed an empty gun."
"Never point a gun at someone" "Unless you're told it's empty."
"We both thought it was empty."
"That's not my responsibility."
He mentions billions of rounds fired on sets over the decades and a small handful of deaths.
George Clooney, who's enough of a gun-grabbing stooge off set in his own right, he of all people pointed out that everyone checks a weapon.
Baldwin's response?
"There were a lot of people who felt it necessary to contribute"
"If your protocol is to check the gun every time, good for you."
"I had a protocol. And it never let me down."
Until it did.
Baldwin claims that when he was young, he was taught to do nothing with a gun except what the armorer told him. The armorer said, "We don't want the actor to be the last line of defense against a catastrophic breach of safety with a gun."
Well...
One, that's because of moron actors who want to look all cool and tactical but don't want to actually be as competent as some teenagers I've seen with these weapons.
Two, it's been a long time since he was told that early in his career. Things change.
At a half-hour just before commercial break, he asks a relevant question:
"Where did the live round come from?"
There's some claims of sabotage. Which, plausible. Back in the day, gun-grabbers used to sneak loose ammo into gun shows, pretend to be checking out a weapon, load it while nobody was looking, and walk away hoping for an accidental discharge later.
But that raises the second question of why?
Negligence is much more likely.
The question is who is legally negligent?
1st AD Hall's attorney claims it wasn't Hall's responsibility to check.
In which case, WTF was he doing handing it to Baldwin and claiming it was cold?
Here's a little quote from my old handguns on film class:
"Rule two: Never point a weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot. The active word in that sentence is 'you.' You, you, you. Not your armorer, not your director, not the PA's, you."
I think Baldwin is someone who's world has just shattered, and is using his skills and resources to influence the official record to the extent that he can.
I agree with him that nothing would have happened if a live round hadn't been brought onto that set.
But in believing what he was told instead of checking for himself, he contributed directly to Hutchins' death.
If you can't be bothered to learn how to load, unload, and check a single-action, you're too incompetent to appear in a Western as a shooter.
He either didn't know how to check, in which case he was incompetent.
Or he couldn't be bothered to check, in which case he was reckless, lazy, irresponsible, and stupid.
Either way, he's now a killer of someone he cared about by dint of his own negligence, and he'll carry that around for the rest of his life.
Take care of yourselves out there.

Arbery case vs Rittenhouse case

11/24/2021

I'm gonna do a quick compare/contrast of the case of Arbery's killers vs. Rittenhouse, just because I don't think I'm going to see a better example of a bullshit self-defense claim vs. a legit self-defense claim in my lifetime. So here we go.

Down in a chunk of bumblefuck Georgia, three guys, a father-son pair named Travis and Gregory McMichael and a neighbor named Roddie Bryan, found Ahmaud Arbery running in their neighborhood. The McMichaels, both armed, got in one truck while Bryan got in another and chased down Arbery. They cornered Arbery. In the confrontation, Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery. Bryan filmed most of the chase and fight on his phone.

The three men claimed to police on scene that they were attempting to make a citizen's arrest of Arbery, who they thought had burglarized homes and cars in the area. When Arbery refused to stop, the three claimed Arbery tried to take the shotgun from Travis, who killed Arbery in self defense.

If that sounds fucked up now, wait, it gets worse.

The older McMichael, Gregory, was a retired cop in the area.

The Brunswick judicial circuit DA, Jackie Johnson, ordered the local PD not to make arrests at the time. A few days later, she recused herself from the case.

The case was transferred to a neighboring district, where Arbery's autopsy had taken place. But the DA there, George Barnhill, had already written a memorandum claiming there was no cause to arrest the three. Neither DA mentioned this, and it took over a month for the case to be transferred to yet another district.

How much of this is thin blue corruption cover and how much is typical paper-pushing stupid, nobody knows.

At the beginning of May, a lawyer consulted but not retained by the three released Bryan's video to a radio station. The video went viral, and Gov. Kemp stepped in, offering the GBI to take over the investigation. The GBI found cause to charge all three with murder within 36hrs.

This is where most of us, including us in the self-defense community, noticed the case.

While not set in stone (and varying between jurisdictions), self defense is usually considered legit if the person one is defending from and their actions pass the Ability, opportunity, Jeopardy claim.
Ability: are they physically able to cause death and/or grievous bodily harm(GBH), whether by themselves or with a weapon?
Opportunity: Are they close enough for their weapons to have you in range?
Jeopardy: Would a reasonable person assume they are trying to kill/harm you? I.e. are they screaming "I'm gonna kill you!" or are they screwing around on their phone?

Added into that is a somewhat more vague concept: are you minding your own business or are you willingly engaging in conflict?

This is where it gets fuzzy and where a lot of people lose their shit in a haze of "I have a right to do what I want!"

But on the whole, your behavior has to deescalate or at least stay neutral in order to be actually defending yourself.

For a good example of willingly engaging in a conflict then "defending" oneself, see Samuel L Jackson's story about the confederate's son in the Hateful 8.

The three claimed they were minding their own business while making a citizen's arrest.

The claim was based on a civil war era citizen's arrest law (which has since been rescinded). That law claimed that a crime must be committed within the citizen's "immediate knowledge" or there must be "reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion" for a felony crime.

It smelled funny to most of us to begin with and fell apart as the trial went on and the three admitted that they'd only seen videos of Arbery wandering through a construction site and not taking anything, then took the chance to catch him when they saw him jogging.

Dude, if three assholes came chasing after me in trucks with shotguns, I'd run and fight back too.

Anyways, today all three were found guilty. Former DA Johnson lost reelection and has been indicted for obstruction of justice and violation of oath of office. Dunno if anyone's charged Barnhill with anything.

So, if those guys' claims are bullshit, what makes Rittenhouse and his claim legit?
Ability: all three of those he shot were capable of killing him.
Opportunity: all three got close enough to kill and/or harm him.
Jeopardy: All three acted in ways consistent with trying to kill him. Two tried to take Rittenhouse's weapon. One openly threatened to kill him. One drew a pistol on him.

And did Rittenhouse escalate?

The Jury didn't believe so. Despite being armed, he was retreating in every single case, only raising his muzzle when attacked and only firing when it was reasonable to believe he was facing deadly force himself.

Some have argued that he was escalating merely by being there, or by being visibly armed. These arguments are uncomfortably close to "just look at what she was wearing" arguments.

They're also hypocritical, given that Rosenbaum was openly threatening to kill him and several members of his group. Also in that Grossenkrutz had presumably carried concealed at several protests, despite having an expired carry permit and an arrest for carrying while intoxicated on his record.

In either case, neither held any sway with the jury.

That said, as I've pointed out more than once, there's a difference between a legal act and a good idea.

The three in Georgia decided that thefts in their neighborhood not only warranted a citizen's arrest, but an armed vehicular chase. At no point did the idea of getting a positive ID or even calling the police occur to them. Instead, they chased an innocent man down and shot him dead when they fought back.

The jury echoed pretty much the entire self defense community in calling their SD claim bullshit.

Rittenhouse, on the other hand, made the choice to go off on his own to douse a fire and found himself ambushed. Once there, he defended himself as best he could and surrendered to the first cop that would actually book him.

As a side note, one thing I do think would have changed his life for the better was the leader of his group insisting that nobody be alone that night for any reason. Particularly since one of Rosenbaum's more direct threats was to kill anyone he caught alone that night. A threat he tried and failed to make good against Rittenhouse.

Anyways, hope that made sense. I've been a little ragged the last week or so. But the holiday kicked off with some justice, and I'm grateful for it.

Take care of yourselves out there.

Might as well get this in while people are in a fighting mood.

11/19/2021

Either self-defense is a right everyone has, or it's a privilege for the few.

Personally, I refuse to believe the latter.

Anything that moves it towards becoming the latter, however well intentioned, is not a good idea.
While better than any other country I can think of, America's self defense law is still unfortunately predicated around a moneyed landowning white dude with no criminal record defending themselves against an attack from a stranger.

If we want the law to effectively provide justice, we need to be able to swap out every single distinguishing trait off that list and still have it apply.

Make no mistake, that's a hard fucking road to travel even if we're all on the same page as a country, which we're not.

The easy way, on the other hand, is to try and restrict everyone, which will only fuck the disadvantaged harder.

There's two big forces that make the road we want to take harder.

One is the state. Like any state, it wishes it had a monopoly on violence and jealously guards what exceptions it will allow. There are prosecutors around the country who think legal self-defense doesn't exist.

This is exacerbated by the fact that self-defense is claimed a lot when it doesn't exist. When SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) isn't a viable defense for murder, self-defense is the next best thing. This contributes to selection bias when legitimate self-defense cases crop up.

The second is our own biases in search of the perfect defender. We can articulate what is justified legally in various ways. But those don't match up with what we consider just because the law and justice are two different things, and the law is always playing catch up.

In this case, it's compounded by our current societal divisions and media outlets exacerbating that.

This has been happening since Zimmerman at least. Take the Alexander case. Alexander keeps being held up as an example of a black woman defending herself against an abuser and doing 20 years anyway.

What doesn't get mentioned is that she'd already escaped and came back for a fight (which negates self defense) fired a warning shot (tactically a bad idea) and got hit with a 3 strikes law (which is irrelevant).
But the drum that keeps getting beaten is that a black woman defended herself from her abuser and got 20 years anyway. In the same state where Zimmerman was acquitted.

To a lot of people on the left, Rittenhouse became of symbol of the right's resistance to what they saw as justified protests which had become lethal live in a stream. To the movers and shakers on the left, he was a nightmare: a good man with a gun and every reason to fight back against the riots.

In their eyes, such a thing could not stand.

A lot of disinformation was thrown around the trial. I found it interesting that NBC, the same network that was caught doctoring the Zimmerman 911 call, was caught sending a freelancer to follow jurors home.

Make no mistake, the right had it's share of unfounded rumors and accusations. Binger may have shitty weapons handling, but he wasn't aiming at the jury. Two of the jurors might have confessed to a marshal about worry of retribution, but it's never been confirmed that I've seen.

Nonetheless, a huge disinformation campaign and a laundry list of prosecutorial misconduct was used here.

Had it prevailed, it would have been worse for everyone in the future. The next POC DV victim who killed her abuser would have suffered as a result of Rittenhouse being railroaded.

If the system is willing to be this blatantly unconstitutional to a white dude with the whole world watching, what the fuck do you think it's capable of doing to a POC when the cameras are off?

I said a while back I understood why a lot of people wanted to see Rittenhouse nailed to a wall. But if we want to stay civilized, let alone just, we need to make sure that judgement and possible punishments happen for the right reasons. Instead of the perverse notion that if we commit enough injustices against oppressors that the scales somehow balance.

Posted elsewhere, expanded here re: Rust

11/9/2021

Even now I'm withholding my own judgement. All I know is what the press has given, and I normally trust journalists about as far as I can throw them. Even less so when firearms are involved. It doesn't help that we're well into the blame game on all sides.
That said, I'm a former armorer for reasons. And because I've had three years now to think about the conditions this set was on, my own thoughts are coloring distinctly.
Ordinarily, I would agree that the buck stops with the armorer. That's how I did the job.
That said, I've also taught my acting students that there are several people on set who are supposed to be responsible for safety in one capacity or another. But the grim reality of the industry is that their real job is to get their next job. That nobody cares more about their own safety than they do.
I've also been a hungry armorer. An armorer with no idea where their next gig was coming from.
An armorer who had to get in a 1st AD's face over a safety issue.
I still did it. Because that's the way I did the job.
But I was hungry when I did it.
I was scared when I did it.
And more and more, I'm thinking I shouldn't have had to be in that position in the first place.
At the end of the day, the armorer had the responsibility.
But the producer and the AD had the power.
That's fucked up.
It's a recipe for disaster.
She had the responsibility but they had the power.
(It's also why the side-eye slut shaming of the armorer at the hands of guntry club fudds, tactibros, and Joe Rogan wannabes is particularly pissing me off.)
And what's even more fucked up is that it took Hutchins' death to hammer that home to me of all fucking people.
One of the articles going around that points out that armorers are almost entirely unregulated.
They're that way because Hollywood doesn't want to think about them.
No more than they want to think about the multitude of A-listers with felony records flouting federal law by handling firearms on screen without so much as a raised eyebrow.
Because those laws are for little people.
(Remember a few years ago, when NY rammed yet another stupid gun law through so fast they didn't put in exceptions for cops, let alone anyone else? Chunks of the theater and film communities were screaming bloody murder that they'd be as badly restricted as the hoi polloi.)
Armory procedures are a pain in the ass all around the world; ask any grunt that's ever had to be up at o-dark-ridiculous to do a weapons draw in the cold. Makes it easy to forget that following them is what puts much less blood on the walls.
Hollywood wants armorers to do their jobs and then scuttle back into the darkness like the filthy peasants they think they are when they're not waiting for the cameras to roll.
That's why they have no power but all the responsibility.
They're highly skilled, heavily disrespected, and ultimately expendable.
And that's what makes Baldwin's statements and the asinine no-more-guns-on-set crowd as insulting as they are pathetic.
Because God forbid the filthy serf showing you how to hold a disgusting gun have any sort of power over the artists.
That's the core problem.
And it's going to remain a problem as long as it goes unaddressed.

That time of year again

11/8/2021

Thursday is Veteran's day. Since WWI, it's been a holiday about those who served and came back.
The big difference between this and Memorial day is that Veteran's day focuses on the living, while Memorial day focuses on the dead, both in combat and in the years since.
There's nothing in particular you have to do on Veteran's Day, so don't worry overmuch.
Since 2007, the VA has been encouraging veterans to wear their awards on military holidays, including Veteran's Day. So don't be surprised if you see people wearing ribbons or medals on ordinary clothes.
(I've seen everything from mini medals on tuxedos to a biker who arrived at a friend's memorial ceremony at the last minute with a ribbon stack on his kutte.)
Several businesses offer discounts and freebies to Veterans on November 11th.
Feel free to do so as well if you wish.
If you want to extend that to active duty, military families, first responders, whatever. It's your business.
The only people who complain about the scope of thanks are the kinds of fuckknuckles who spend the day bouncing from free pancakes to free entree while leaving lousy tips. Fuck those clowns.
Don't worry about stolen valor. Just use your everyday discretion before offering thanks, discounts, alcohol, sexual favors, or related actions.
Bonus round:
The day before Veteran's Day is the Marine Corps Birthday.
You may encounter formal events featuring mobs of energetic drunks in their finest dress blues.
Or you may encounter random gagglefucks grunting unintelligibly while performing a strange ritual involving a cake and a sword in the middle of a bar.
Do not panic. Simply avoid sudden movements, refrain from taking the seats with their backs to a wall, and give an occasional "Happy Birthday" in the direction of the scariest-looking ones.
Take care of yourselves out there.

The Braves surprised everyone who knew sports history.

11/3/2021

Virginia surprised anyone who wasn't paying attention.
By and large, the Dems responded to their victories in last year with the arrogance of, "well, now that the grownups are back in charge, hopefully for all time hereafter, you can get a good start on doing as you're told."
Then their brains divided by zero when they started being told to go fuck themselves. Sometimes with illustrated directions.
In a normal year, having a progressive wing champing at the bit to start making these peasants do what's good for them fighting a moderate wing that points out there might in fact be a baby somewhere in all this bathwater would be a less than efficient setup.
In a pandemic, it's only showing up worse.
Blaming Trump, which occasionally is even correct, becomes less effective with every day he's been muzzled by both traditional and social media outlets.
But the real screwup of the pandemic has been the effect on schools. All schools everywhere, not just Virginia. Gaining no additional funding (and when they did, it was months late and thousands short) but plenty of new rules to follow, administrators gave the marching orders of the day no matter how nonsensical while teachers overclocked themselves, all too often out of the profession.
On top of that, lockdowns meant that parents were there and actively watching, seeing the system bungling and their kids being left with the short end of the stick.
Doubling down, parents were just as divided as the rest of the country. So no matter what a given school did, at least a third of the parents were going to be pissed off about it.
About the only winner in the entire mess was homeschooling, which had a spike in popularity for predictable reasons.
And it's in this mess that the Virginia elections kicked in.
Younkin being helped by the fact that he was the only one willing to talk to Trumpers without having to actually interact with Trump himself.
Meanwhile, the progressives doubled down on their patronizing dismissal of anyone who didn't follow their party line. Not the brightest move to make in a state where over a third of voters are still independent.
But more than anything else, it was the Loudoun county incident that cinched it.
Every single revelation just looked worse.
The district tried to cover up a sexual assault in their school.
Then tried to spin it as a transgender bathroom issue.
Then in June, the angry father of the victim confronted a school board meeting only to be beaten bloody, cuffed, and charged with obstruction of justice.
Then Garland decides to call the father a domestic terrorist.
It put the complete authoritarian attitude of the progressives in sharp focus:
Dare defy us, and we will make your life a hell, declare you the aggressor; all of our violence against you justified and all of your violence against us condemned, and walk away from your misery with a clean conscience.
Ever since June, the Dems made it abundantly clear what the future with them in power looked like.
And they thought the one in three Virginia voters who consider themselves independents was cool with that.
And that is why the election played out the way it did.
Today the progressives are STILL not getting the point.
If they keep going like that, watch 2022 double down on this across the country.
Take care of yourselves out there.