Grrl Power #996 – Dat ass…assin
Other methods to detect succubi – Submerge them in baby oil… then have them wrestle home team slave girls Or (sexy young) nuns. Do demons melt when they get wet? Liberally spraying all suspected succubi while they wear thin white T-shirts will reveal the truth and possibly other things. There’s always the chrome trailer hitch test.
Succubus glamors quickly went from being a fun party trick/a way to get more mileage out of your artisanal sex slave/replacing whole wardrobes full of naughty costumes with whatever the pre-medieval Slave Leia and sexy nurse equivalents were… which I guess was actual slave costumes and sexy… witchdoctor? Anyway, it went from that stuff to having to slip past royal bodyguards, the skills of other arch-mages, even stuff like Faye court mages and demons and everything. That’s why Dabbler was so impressed with Sydney’s True Sight. Once you have a legit resource for spying and assasination like that, you’re not going to limit to just snuffing out the occasional viceroy or even king. That’s how you start toppling empires and ruling from the shadows.
“Widely ranged stock” being an incredibly delicate euphemism for mix and match body parts, organ farms, rooms full of hook chains and dangling torsos, attended by some guy with an apron so slicked with gore it just looks like he’s got a side of beef strapped to his front. Possibly a pyramid shaped hat.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Almost finished restoring that lost scene. Then it’s on to the sex scene I skipped over, though I’m about 10% tempted to just leave [And then they bang] in.
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if they can kill the bastards be sure that they will, it’s just a matter of creativity
And yet, the Turks armed their Janissaries (who were in effect slaves in the beginning) and had no problem with them.
Yeah. And had an empire’s worth of army to hunt down and kill them if they ever stepped out of line, refused an order or wanted to go back to their original religion.
A particularly enterprising Janissary could become a regional official, even a governor. And the Turks made sure they knew that was a possibility. IIRC that’s the origin of several powerful Albanian clans. Several even became court officials and a couple advisors to the Sultan.
More than half of what Ottomans achieved were done by the ethnically non-Turk or religiously non-Muslim population, converted or otherwise.
Yeah, it’s also a fallacy to believe that Muslims hate other religions. They were second-class Citizens back when the Ottoman Empire was around, but they WERE better than slaves, and had rights protected under law. the Quran even states to treat members of other religions fairly, but, like any book of doctrine, there’s always the fundamentalist whackjobs who twist it to claim what they’re doing is acceptable, just like Christianity.
And there’s far more of those in Christianity than there’s EVER been in Islam.
You have to remember that the Seljuk who founded the Ottoman Empire were never very numerous. They used a lot of non-Seljuks and later non-Turks as soldiers doing things like making sure that units from one region weren’t assigned to garrison that part of the Empire
Ah. The Succubi became an instance of the Chord Principle:
Some weapons should not be used because they are more likely than their wielders to win.
Wait, I was wrong.
Dabbler’s not a sex bot.
She’s fucking Pinocchio.
I choose to edit that mental visual to an adult wooden doll futa whose other wood grows when she lies.
There was literally a comic book called Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer, where he sharpened his nose and used lying to kill vampires.
You probably think I’m lying.
I am not lying.
Gepetto is brutally murdered by vampires, and Pinocchio goes on a rampage throughout the undead with his wooden body which is immune to vampire bite.
Even crazier… it’s… actually a fun read.
Hey, there is Dark souls like game announced based on Pinocchio called Lies of P. And trailed looked great.
I KNOW you’re not lying because I read and reviewed it on Goodreads. I was so jaded and bored by vampires by then (thanks to the last two lousy seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) that I was ready to give it a miss when I saw it on the shelves. But then I read the blurb and thought, “Well, this could be very interesting” and it was! It exceeded my expectations, which were very high by that point. Thank you for mentioning it here.
well thanks for adding a thing to buy to my long list lol. comixology has the digital versions of the 4 parter still active. listed on amazon and a few others
And probably many sentient wooden dolls more!
I’m sorry
Have you thought about counseling.
When you can’t convince rational human beings in person about fantasy.
Publish your butt discharge on the internet mindless readers slurp like it’s a fine wine.
Gee, thanks for that mental image.
Non-sequitur blather aside, discharge publishing as social platform has already been done.
there needs to be a bunch of crappy puns here. sadly I am wiped out, and cannot get into the flow.
That’s what I like about historical slavery: slaves were not without honor or power (or rights). Once the slave owners (and SCOTUS) stripped them of their dignity (and rights) it was only a matter of time before slavery lost its legitimacy.
Have you tought about making sense when writing?
Like who are you even adressing?
I think my only issue with this world building information is that it now makes even less sense to why there is no “incubi” or male looking ones.
why? (I mean I understand there probably should be some male models, although maybe the sorceresses were smart enough to get it at stone golems with vibrating stalagmites)
It hasn’t even been explained yet WHY they gained the ability to reproduce.
default mode makes more sense to be sterile,
so if male, female, and hermaphrodite models were made, chances are the individuals interested in the ones with dicks never thought about getting pregnant from their “sex toys” and virility isn’t needed for this purpose.
That said, male models should have been made by this point honestly, and if these techniques still exist, still be made, but not qualify as a species as whatever caused the leap to being able to reproduce was bottlenecked as a female only trait resulting also in only daughters being born.
Really, you just need to game this one out. What’s more complicated to maintain? One model whose shapeshifting swings both ways or two that do not? From a pre-autoproduction standpoint, there is simply not need to worry about the underlying sex of the creation, and if domination is part of your kink, forcing your target into your desired sex is part of the game.
From a post-autoproduction standpoint, you need to understand that sexual reproduction serves solely as a method to retain recessive traits. It’s an evolutionary adaptation to a varying (and probably harsh) environment. It’s hugely inconvenient and stressful compared to asexual reproduction. For beings that are already past evolutionary pressures as they occur in nature, again, there is simply no need.
Sharp knife to throat of overthrown creators always works?
Also, assuming default mode makes more sense to be sterile, making an ant-hive-like society of single sex workers would restrict the possibility of deviations that can reproduce: You’d not only need them to suddenly be able to have kids, but also the reproductiveness of a queen ant to even sustain the population at that point.
… *realizes we’re talking about succubi*
… I think they didn’t think things through?
Yeah, this bother me more than it should.
“The ensuing competition of glamor vs glamor detection”
This is exactly the arms race that the Romulan Star Empire and the United Federation of Planets had going for about two centuries in Star Trek, and it’s why Federation sensors in-setting are considered essentially the best in the galaxy both in terms of range and precision. When you spend your whole existence as a nation on the lookout for an enemy whose specialty is concealment, the arms race of hider versus seeker gets to be really involved really quick.
That saying is simply one of the many corollary of Murphy’s Law. “if something can go wrong , it will” and giving your slave the means to kill is definetly a Thing That Can Go Wrong
Free men own guns, slaves do not. Forget that at your peril.
A nice little self-satisfied smugness. A big dollop of superiority. Extra helpings of entitlement and lust for violence. A hint of personal inadequacy.
Most of all a profound lack of imagination and all the political sense of a toddler 45 minutes past nap time.
A gun is a hunk of wood and metal. All the guns in the world don’t make you free if they’re used as a substitute for grown-up politics. The Nazis got rid of all the Weimar anti-gun laws. Stalin and Mao sprinkled Freedumb Pee-Pees all over the place. Afghanistan has been drowning in weapons. Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia were hip deep in them. They didn’t make anyone free.
I admit, I still have firearms. It’s mostly to protect myself from Conservatives, Neo-Nazis, and terrorists, but I repeat myself.
While I am a strong advocate for gun abolition in the context of “needing to protect oneself from criminals”, as it just escalates conflict in anything other than petty crime (a professional thief that reasonably knows you can’t shoot him will bonk you in the head, a thief that reasonably knows you can shoot him is more likely to simply shoot first, which is largely why most crime in ‘guns only with permit and evaluation’ countries is non-fatal), you have to admit in the context of revolution against an oppressive government they are important. The population in the examples you cited wasn’t able to free themselves because of failure to organize, which is a condition for revolution, but not the only one. Power balance between the soldiers of the government and those of the population is another, and guns definitely figure into that.
Also: “they just escalate conflict”*; “free itself”*; “[…] because of failure to organize: while organizing is a condition for revolution, though, it’s not the only one.”;
I clearly need to study english more, also, Iä! Iä! Tsathoggua!
Also also, if you’ll suffer me ranting: oppressive governments come in all political colours. Right, left… no political or economical theory has a monopoly on freedom, that makes no sense when right-wing americans say it’s capitalism, nor when left-wing americans say it’s socialism, or conservatism or progressivism.
It all depends on people. Capitalism and socialism, conservatism and progressivism are, at core, rule systems. Rules aren’t omnipotent, they work as guidelines: for one, they rely on language, and language is ambigous (what A says and what B understands are often very different things); for two, they cannot be precise (a rule is general, if it was specific, to the extreme it would be a book ruling about every single possible conflict on earth); for three, they can be disattended, and in some situations they should.
Much more than economic theory, much more than politic theory, what matters to the wellbeing of humans is interacting with people that care about the happiness of others.
I fear the growing tribalism of human society. You’re a neo-nazi, shouts one, you’re a leftist, shouts the other. Whatever gets out of your mouth is just lies, they shout at one another. I refuse to even listen to you, thunders the whole world. No one understands that this growing inability to discuss our positions, mediate, in favor of dividing into tribes to support no matter what, is poised to do more damage than what capitalism, or socialism, or liberalism, or communism, or monarchy, or anarchy, ever did to us.
What’s becoming ever more clear is that there really are two irreconcilable positions that people can hold: is the universe zero-sum or not? Must one person’s happiness be at the expense of another? For some people, the ideal world is one in which everyone gets to be happy. For others, the ideal world requires suffering: for there to be winners, there must be losers. They gain happiness not from what they have, but from the knowledge that other people do not have what they want.
Unfortunately, if some people’s happiness fundamentally depends on other people being unhappy, then there’s no way for everyone to be happy. But if you have to choose who gets to be happy, why would it be the ones demanding other people be unhappy? Those who want everyone to be happy should get to be happy, while those demanding that some people should be unhappy should be the ones to be unhappy.
Your first sentence is very apt, at describing yourself that is. A guy posts 2 sentences, targeting and attacking no one and then you go on a rant about it. An idiotic, deluded, and completely factually incorrect rant. but hey keep listening to the young turks, they have never been wrong *eyeroll*.
lets look at what one of those figures you mentioned think about guns.
Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the “omnipotence of war”. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
That is a quote from Mao, one of the most brutal and inhumane dictators the world has ever known. Gives a nice honorable mention to Stalin for doing what he wanted to do. What shane is talking about is NOT that. it is precisely the opposite of EVERY one of the characters you named previously. You see they wanted to arm “there” people, to take away and oppress everyone that was not “with” them. In other words they wanted to use force to rip away others rights to things like free choice, freedom of expression, etc…at the end of the barrel of a gun. In order to fight against that, to maintain ones freedoms, one must be armed the same as ones oppressors/potential oppressors. when you dont have that, you get the USSR, Nazi Germany, CCP, etc.
Also your last sentence dumbly enough accidentally PROVES the point. you say you dont trust republicans(because somehow they are terrorists in your deluded mind) and therefore need a gun to protect yourself and your freedoms. the key difference between you and a conservative though is that a conservative thinks everyone, including the people that dont agree with them…have the same right to own a gun as they do. whereas you clearly do not, and that is what is so terrifying. the fact that you want to “repeat” history shown so many times before as to what happens when only ONE side has the guns.
Which group was it that recently attempted a coup against the United States Government again?
And had their stage in the shape of a Nazi symbol at one of their recent conferences?
Also, interestingly, the most recent push for gun control laws in the USA started in California under Nixon when the Black Panther Party started open-carrying in an organised and diciplined fashion.
none? i know what event your referring too, but again the fact your buying into a narrative meant to divide…to put you into a mentality of us vs them, is the issue, because then violence follows as “they” are the bad people and its justified. there were no weapons found on any of the jan 6 people. none. not just “no guns”. no weapons. what coup has ever happened in the history of ever…that not only had no planning, but no weapon of any kind? Now does that mean no laws were broken? nope. there were, a ton of them. trespassing, theft, vandalism, etc. But if that makes for a coup…then antifa and blm have been running coups all over america for years. The proper nomenclature for it is riot. not “peaceful protest” not “coup” but riot and even in riot terms, it was a rather mild one. no random destroyed property(that is to say damage to other buildings, vehichles etc) no death aside from one of the people rioting, no rape or theft from other places. all of ti was localized to one federal building. doesnt make it ok, but its certainly not as bad in my opinion than the other riots that have been taking place. not because of political ideology, but because of the billions in damage, all the murders and rapes and theft that have happened. call me crazy but i consider murder and rape to be a bigger issue than some stolen stationary.
as to the nazi thing–what? no seriously what? i have not heard of this from any media source period left right or center..and im going to assume its complete bullshit till proven otherwise because frankly…im too lazy to look up yet another thing that is almost certainly bullshit.
poli==many tick==blood sucking insect. i still stand by that definition over websters have since i was a kid. in my entire life i think ive ever praised 3 politicians in ANY office. regardless of D or R. Most of them, are out for themselves. i clearly was not talking about politicians but the will of the people. politicians ARE the system, they are who is to be resisted, not individuals. the system ALWAYS wants to take away your rights. its the only way they can have more power and they NEVER use it to your advantage. Guns are as unfortunate as it is, a great equalizer, and at least give those douche canoes pause in their plans. hence why they always go for guns first. That said, in current climate the conservative movement is over all the only ones standing by the constitutional right to carry. Yes it used to be more of a mixed bag 20 years ago, with plenty on the left and center also agreeing, but that was 20 years ago. Just like 20 years ago it was the conservative party that was over all against freedom of speech, i detested them for it. but they are not the same party as 20 years ago. that doesnt make me conservative, just means i dislike them less.
Attempting to sieze control of the capitol of the USA by force. How is that not a coup attempt, weapons and organisation or not?
CPAC using a Nazi symbol for their stage: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EvLcaowUUAAspwu?format=jpg&name=large
You calling anyone a Nazi takes a prize for hypocrisy, little Brownshirt troll, so is calling your wannabe Reichstag fire an “attempted coup”.
What the fuck are you rambling about?
But do you know what the only force is that has prevailed against right wing dictatorship without a foreign invasion? Strong Unions. That’s why Hitler and Stroessner and the Colonels and Pinochet and Orban and Reagan all worked hard to suppress them. That’s one of many reasons the House of Saud and the Mullahs forbid them.
Of course. There’s power in a Union. Power to solve all of the problems that right wing dictators and fascist demagogues depend on people having in order to rally their fear and anger. Without those problems, people wouldn’t be looking for people to blame for how shitty their lives are, and shouty manipulators wouldn’t be able to rally their rage as a tool for political gain. There’s a reason that among the first things Germany did once it became a freestanding self-governing nation again was establish a strong social safety net with substantial labor support.
Nazism is a form of radicalization. Desperate but entitled people are easy to radicalize. Ease their desperation, give them a clear and square deal for getting most of the things they feel entitled to, and it becomes a lot harder to turn them into a racist mob.
That really is the difference between a productive society and a self-destructive one: Trust. If people trust each other to work together to solve their problems, to not sacrifice some people for the happiness of others, then they can create without the waste and inefficiency of constantly needing to watch their back. They can take risks that might prove wildly successful if they know there’s a net there to catch them if it doesn’t work out, and they can get back up and try again, leading to more experimentation and innovation.
When a society is structured around the idea of scarcity and everything being zero-sum, people will sabotage each other, because denying someone else happiness leaves more for you. It’s not about creating more, but about being on top, and taking for yourself.
wow, the gun grabbers come out of the woodwork with that post. The Nazis rounded up all the guns from the jews before they rounded them up and the french after they took France. So did Stalin, and Mao after they instituted their “glorious revolutions”. I don’t know what Post Modern, Transnational, Cosmopolitian bullshit you guys are reading but they are lying to you. Consult a criminologist like Gary Kleck, John Lott or visit some site like the JPFO or Handwavingfreakoutery.com, rather than Salon.com.
also if you believe in a zero sum world look up the Malthusian trap, we broke it back in the 1760’s. More folk get out of poverty each year than are put into poverty, we are slowly bringing everyone up. The socialism you guys espouse puts folk into poverty much more often than a Republic does.
What’s more important? Quality of life or freedom? Does improving the quality of life of slaves justify not freeing them?
“Quality of life or freedom?”
Freedom. Without freedom and liberty, you have no control over having quality of life. I have no reason to ever believe that a master has any reason to give me a positive quality of life except as it directly benefits them, and they can remove that quality of life at any time.
So yeah… to quote Patrick Henry, give me liberty or give me death.
That being said, the second amendment PROTECTS liberty and freedom.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in Commonplace Book back in 1774, “The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
The reason that despots and tyrants have historically disarmed the population is because it’s easier to take away a people’s freedom when they don’t have the means to be a threat anymore. They did so in China. They did so in Japan. They did so in Germany, England, Spain, Italy, etc – anywhere that an authoritarian regime comes into power, it’s usually the FIRST thing they do.
To quote Aristotle in his writing, ‘Politics’ :
“Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.”
Also Thomas Jefferson:
“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
How then, do you propose to inhibit those who would limit the practical freedom of others, through force and threats of force? More force and threats? Is freedom simply to be the endowment of those most willing to take it by force? Is there a means by which we can limit the coercive use of weapons, without equally limiting their defensive value?
“How then, do you propose to inhibit those who would limit the practical freedom of others, through force and threats of force? More force and threats?”
Yes? I’m pretty sure that’s how ‘law’ works as a limiting principle on protecting people’s natural rights. I’m a bit leery, though, on what you mean by threats, because there’s a difference between an imminent threat and a general warning about things that can happen.
Threat – If you rule this way, we will riot and people will die.
Warning – If the jury decides this verdict, it’s likely that people are going to riot as a result.
“Is freedom simply to be the endowment of those most willing to take it by force?”
1) I’m reading this sentence several times and not sure what you’re asking.
2) If you’re asking if freedom is based on who is most willing to take it by force, then no. Liberty is a natural right. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Barring doing anything to remove it from other people, you have these rights as a basic element of existing, as long as they do not require another person’s labor. ie, you have a right to buy health care in a voluntary exchange of services for payment, but you do not have a right to GET health care for free, forcing another person to work for you against their will. There’s also a difference between rights and privileges, so I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking when you say endowment.
“Is there a means by which we can limit the coercive use of weapons, without equally limiting their defensive value?”
You can actually punish people for doing bad things with weapons and not let it slide, and not make the punishment dependent on political ideology/race/class/gender/etc. That would, at the very least, create a consistent deterrence effect. But punishing people for having weapons, regardless of their actions or non-actions, before anything happens, and before there’s even a visible and definitive risk of anything happening, is more like Minority Report, not justice, and definitely not freedom. Also punishing people for having objects that could BECOME weapons if used in a certain way, when they are not actually weapons when used as they’re intended to be used, is even worse.
If you’re asking about stuff like gun control, then I’m against it. Gun control was created primarily for rather racist reasons. Black people were the first targets of gun control measures, then other racial and ethnic minorities in general, then economic discrimination in most gun control laws. Just like how Japanese feudal lords sought to make swords illegal for the peasant class to own, gun control measures tend to be used to prevent the lower classes from owning weapons. And the crazy thing is the places with the strongest gun control tend to also have the highest crime rates, while the places with the most lax or non-existent gun control tend to have the lowest crime rates. Until we have guaranteed ability to see the future, I don’t see a way to limit coercive use of weapons WITHOUT limiting their defensive legal value, except for making sure to have a deterrence effect when people use weapons to commit crimes (and also when making sure that law-abiding citizens have the same access to weapons as those who would use weapons for criminal use). I know, it’s a very libertarian mindset to have, but it’s also in keeping with what the Founding Fathers intended.
I see a difference between “rights” and “freedom”, with the former being an entitlement, whether natural or legal, and the latter being the actual ability to exercise those entitlements without obstruction. The question, then, is how to guarantee a moral state of affairs, in which everyone is free, and nobody uses their power to obstruct the rights of others.
If the only answer is that the most powerful set the rules, then it doesn’t matter how moral those rules are, because they rest on an immoral foundation. What guarantee do we have that the most powerful will also be the most moral, or that they will impose moral rules? Particularly if it’s not the most powerful who set the rules, but those most willing to use power to impose rules. The natural result is rule by the most evil, under a system engineered to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.
I always find arguments about “gun control” disingenuous, because people define “gun” so nebulously, and have granted the concept such power. A gun is a weapon, like any other. Some are more effective than others, some are easier to use, some have longer range, etc. What makes a gun special, out of all other weapons? The second amendment doesn’t mention guns specifically, but merely “arms”. But it’s guns people debate, and seem to have little opinion on restrictions on other weapons, or think them obvious. Should people be able to have bombs? Chemical weapons? Mortars?
Political power through intimidation is just as much a problem as actually using violence, but much trickier to identify, trace, prevent, or punish. And that will be a problem in a culture that glorifies and excuses violence, rather than punishing and deterring it. If people could trust that the initiator of violence would be punished, that it was only acceptable to use weapons defensively, then it would take much of the intimidation factor out of owning a weapon. But in a culture in which people believe they will not be punished for initiating violence, that they will be the victor legally as well, merely making a big deal about owning a weapon becomes a show of force, a threat.
“I see a difference between “rights” and “freedom”, with the former being an entitlement,”
Torabi, no offense – you’re making a layman’s mistake – but this sentence is completely wrong. Rights are not entitlements. Rights and entitlements are two ENTIRELY different things.
Rights are freedom from oppression by the state or by society. There are things that you have by just existing, and rights attempt to make sure that no one will take it away from you.
Entitlements are welfare measures entailing government handouts. Things which the government gives you that you are not owed by dint of existence.
“The question, then, is how to guarantee a moral state of affairs, in which everyone is free, and nobody uses their power to obstruct the rights of others.”
You just described the system of negative rights which form the backbone of the United States Constitution, except you’re being a bit overbroad about it.
“If the only answer is that the most powerful set the rules, then it doesn’t matter how moral those rules are, because they rest on an immoral foundation. ”
Wrong. This would actually run counter to what you’re wanting, and basically be the same system that all societies have had prior to the United States Constitution. The strong ruling over the weak. The whole basis of the US Constitution, which wound up also influencing a lot of the rest of the western world, is that the government only has power that is granted to it by the people. When we start assuming the people in charge are the most moral among us (which is complete BS), that leads to tyranny and despotism. The people in charge are rarely the most moral among us. In fact, the entire concept behind capitalism AND representative government (private and public leaders respectively) is that they are supposed to be dependent on the will of those they ‘rule’). Public was the threat of being voted out (or worse, rebellion). Private was not being profitable (or worse, dissolution). The problem nowadays is that many people in charge, both in public (government) and in private (corporations) do not feel like they have anything to worry about from those they’re lording over. In government, because of weak-willed politically scared politicians and a populace that is largely duped by propaganda and political tribalism (on both sides btw). In business, because of unchecked monopolies and oligopolies engaging in violations of antitrust laws without getting suitably punished for it.
“What guarantee do we have that the most powerful will also be the most moral, or that they will impose moral rules?”
We have no guarantees of that. In fact, it’s almost a guarantee that the people who lead will NOT be moral, and will likely be the most psychotically obsessed with power, or utterly incompetent and controlled by people who ARE psychotically obsessed with power from the shadows. It’s a very rare leader who is a George Washington (willing to voluntarily step away from power and live under the laws they helped to make, not corrupted by the chance for absolute power).
“Particularly if it’s not the most powerful who set the rules, but those most willing to use power to impose rules. ”
You’re literally pointing out, though you don’t seem to realize it, the inherent flaws with government that caused the Founding Fathers to write the Constitutional system of checks and balances the way that they did. To LIMIT government, since government will ALWAYS lead to corruption if left unchecked and grows too powerful. Welcome to being a libertarian like me.
“I always find arguments about “gun control” disingenuous, because people define “gun” so nebulously, and have granted the concept such power.”
The Constitution does not say guns. It says arms. ANY arms. The intent of the 2nd Amendment was that you have a right to bear ANY arms – guns, knives, swords, cannons, flamethrowers, machine guns (and yes they had a concept of machine guns back then – look up the Puckle Gun), any armaments whatsoever, you were supposed to have a right to bear. Gun control itself is inherently contradicted by the Constitution, started originally as a racist set of laws designed to keep freed slaves in their place, since guns are the great equalizer. Then gun control became a means to make sure the leaders have less reason to fear the people who they rule over, and less concern about violating people’s rights. It’s the whole “A well armed society is a polite society” mindset that they have tried to squash. But there are now so many laws on the books which have chipped away at this basic Constitutional right, unfortunately, and very little political will to fight against more encroachments on this right.
However, the problem is that there are some people who would use certain arms to cause so much devastation that just punishing them after the fact does not feel like enough protection of the society from a few crazy people who might not care about punishment for their crimes. So it becomes a balancing act of ‘security’ and ‘liberty.’ And I’m of the mind that we need to be VERY careful when taking away liberty in order to promise security (especially since even then, security isnt even remotely guaranteed, as we can see from violent crime statistics in cities like Chicago).
“The second amendment doesn’t mention guns specifically, but merely “arms”.”
Correct.
“Should people be able to have bombs? Chemical weapons? Mortars?”
And that’s where we get to trying to figure out the best balance between ‘liberty’ and ‘security.’ How much liberty are you willing to sacrifice for the promise of security, and how do you know that if you sacrifice that liberty, it will actually bring you security? Because the person who will use a chemical weapon to murder people is going to do that regardless of whether there’s a law saying you can’t OWN or MAKE that chemical weapon. But chemical weapon bans are at least a good ‘extreme’ case where most people will be willing to trade that particular liberty for the hope of some security.
But then you go down to less extreme examples. Flamethrower? Machine gun? Burst-fire gun? Semi-automatic? Clips with more than 10 bullets? Six-shooter? Single bullet guns? Muskets? Swords? Knives? Clubs? Objects which COULD be used as weapons even though that’s not their intended use?
Eventually you just get rid of liberty altogether.
The whole calculus is to figure out how much of a risk to the safety of society is too much risk, usually based on how many people might die before the aggressor can be stopped. With something like chemical weapons, it’s easy to make a calculation for most people that the risk is simply too high to allow that liberty. But at some point would there be too much liberty taken away for the security promised, and rarely actually is that promise fulfilled.
It also doesn’t seem to work out the way gun control proponents think it will. Oddly, the places with the lowest levels of gun control have the least violent crime, and the places with the highest levels of gun control have the most violent crime. Probably because criminals do not obey gun control laws in the first place, and law-abiding citizens do, which means the majority of people you’re removing guns from are those who already follow the law.
“Political power through intimidation is just as much a problem as actually using violence,”
I agree with you here. Possibly more of a problem, in fact, since it’s easy to determine when someone is using physical violence and has gone over a line, but NOT as easy to prove when intimidation has gone too far. When something is difficult to identify, it’s difficult to make a law to protect society without completely squashing liberty. And like I said before, many would sooner die than give up their freedom. “Give me liberty or give me death.”
“If people could trust that the initiator of violence would be punished, that it was only acceptable to use weapons defensively, then it would take much of the intimidation factor out of owning a weapon.”
I COMPLETELY agree with you here Torabi. Completely and absolutely. The problem tends to be no political will to actually back the laws that are already on the books, and just make new laws…. which will also not be used, or will be used only based on ideology, not uniformly.
AWw, that’s sweet. You still think the world is run by nation states and their monopoly on violence. Violence has become irrelevant, the algorithms took over a long time ago.
The dominant organism (an outdated concept, but thinking new ideas requires small steps) is the corporation, and the algorithm is their DNA.
Nation states now serve corporations through central banks. Profit is no longer the driving engine of the economy, the central banks replaced the driving force of profit by protecting the big corporations from their natural deaths. Capitalism was at one time the villain but it already died in 2008. It was supplanted by some kind of neofeudalism where the platforms determine everything we see, sell, buy, and talk about.
“AWw, that’s sweet. You still think the world is run by nation states and their monopoly on violence.”
Yes, it’s my curse that I believe in Constitutional values, and feel that having a bunch of Robocop style OCP megacorporations would be a dystopian nightmare (aka, a bad thing).
“Violence has become irrelevant, the algorithms took over a long time ago.”
Sadly I don’t disagree with this observation, but I think it’s a terrible thing that it’s happening and that it needs to be stopped before the world is more of a dystopia than it already is. And maybe rewind it a bit on the corporate dystopia like they did when the government broke up monopolies like Ma Bell or the big Railroad companies. Unfortunately there’s a lot of corruption in government and very little political courage or commitment to laws to keep monopolies in check (ie, actually enforcing laws like the Sherman Antitrust Act).
I’m trying to figure out how this thread has gotten to this from the webcomic btw.
“Profit is no longer the driving engine of the economy, the central banks replaced the driving force of profit by protecting the big corporations from their natural deaths.”
I don’t disagree with this observation either. I just don’t like it because it’s dangerous to liberty.
“Capitalism was at one time the villain but it already died in 2008.”
I don’t consider capitalism to have ever been an actual villain – but not punishing criminals who happen to be capitalists as well is the real evil. Ie, Oliver Queen is not a villain and Lex Luthor is a villain, because Oliver Queen does not use his wealth to commit crimes, while Lex Luthor does.
There. Brought this back to superhero stuff at least.
” It was supplanted by some kind of neofeudalism where the platforms determine everything we see, sell, buy, and talk about.”
I don’t disagree with this observation either. I just don’t like it because I like capitalism (like what the paragon of humanity, Deus, uses – all praise Deus amen), but I despise corporatism for the dystopian nightmare that it would lead to, which is just (to paraphrase Rick and Morty) communism with extra steps.
False, that quote is from Cesare Beccaria. What’s more egregious is that you know the book , but somehow missed the definition instead thinking that commonplace book is the title or some such. A commonplace book is a collection of quotations by other people.
Whivh quotation are you talking anout, because all quotations that I used were attributed to the correct people. Let me know which quotation and i will give you a direct citation link to ahow that I am correct.
“if you believe in a zero sum world look up the Malthusian trap, we broke it back in the 1760’s” – Shane Powell
Often delayed, never defeated. There’s only a finite amount of resources in the world, and the only people who believe you can get infinite growth in a finite system are idiots and economists. Efficiency can make the resources go further and effectively raise the limit, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is a hard limit.
Hope to see Dabbler’s part of this story…
Yes, unfortunately the Nazi symbol thing is true. The 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference had a stage shaped like the Odal rune. You can google for news coverage or just follow this link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/01/cpac-stage-nazi-symbol-hyatt/
But if you’re going to claim “no weapons” for a riot that injured 140 police officers and sparked a bomb investigation, readers are going to wonder if you’re open to facts. The bombs: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/09/1035402389/the-fbi-releases-new-video-of-the-suspect-who-planted-bombs-before-the-capitol-r
I don’t know why people say “no weapons” when “no firearms” may be true but not “no weapons”.
For most of human history, a chunk of metal powered by the human body was considered a “weapon”. Are we going to have to re-write Caesar’s Gallic Wars as a history of peaceful demonstrations?
I have a bit of a problem with the desire to classify personal armor as weapons and consider it evidence of malign intent.
The way American politics has been for the last three years or so I would wear at least something to anything I went to. Not because of planning anything but because virtually everything political is now a target – either of mis-aimed law enforcement, agents provocateurs, random freaks with AK-47s who want to “counter-protest”, etc etc etc…. You can want to protect yourself without planning anything anyone else would need protection from.
Also, flags (that you do NOT beat people with) are not weapons either. There are legal reasons to want to wave a flag. But the minute you modify it to make it more useful as a weapon, the minute you select A over B because A would be more useful as a weapon, the minute you open your mouth and indicate a plan to use it as a weapon, and most especially the minute you crack the darn flagpole down over somebody’s head, that flag is a weapon and you can be charged with coming bearing a weapon.
Do you have classifying clubs as a weapon?
Improvised weapons are weapons. Feel free to argue the point in court any time you like.
Flags may not be weapons but flag poles, when used to strike a person, are definitely weapons.
“may be true but not “no weapons”.”
They’re saying there were no weapons because there were literally NO WEAPONS by the protestors/rioters (I’ll keep using both words so I don’t get crap from anyone on either side).
There were no firearms. There were also no ‘chunks of metal powered by the human body’ designed to be a weapon. You’re sort of stretching things to say that the people there were armed. The only people armed at the Jan 6 riot (or Jan 6 protest, depending on your political leanings) were the police, who are obviously going to be armed.
Also the only person killed by weapons was one unarmed protestor not attacking anyone, BY the police (Ashli Babbitt). The other deaths were from:
1) natural causes (two had heart attacks – Benjamin Philips, 50, and Kevin Greeson, 55), one accidental overdose form amphetamines (Roseanne Boyland, 34), one stroke victim (USCP Officer Brian Sicknick); and
2) four USCP suicides that occurred several days or months AFTER the riot.
18 U.S. Code § 930 (g)(2):
“The term “dangerous weapon” means a weapon, device, instrument, material, or substance, animate or inanimate, that is used for, or is readily capable of, causing death or serious bodily injury, except that such term does not include a pocket knife with a blade of less than 2½ inches in length”
The club, flagpoles, bear spray and other items used to inflect kinetic damages upon America’s law officers that day are “dangerous weapons” under American law. Whether those items or substances have other primary uses – such as flag poles or repelling bears – is of no relevance what-so-ever.
As for Ashli Babbit: it is beyond rational dispute that she was attacking the Congress of the United States assembled for the purpose of performing their duty under our federal Constitution. By climbing in a broken window or door, she showed the intent to enter their Chamber and do harm to them. She had the means to do harm to them, in the form of a mob of helpers that had ALREADY injured more than one hundred law officers who were performing their duty of defending Congress. She was given verbal warnings not to continue her violent criminal activities and showed every sign of intending to continue committing a violent crime.
I am sorry that she made a bad decision, but please do not dishonor her attempt to overthrow the lawfully constituted government of the United States by claiming she intended to do anything else. She knew what she was doing; she simply did not think there would be consequences.
You are free to argue in court that a club is not a weapon, and you will lose because a club is a weapon.
Some of those who attacked the police brought clubs, some improvised clubs from flagpoles and found items, some through projectiles – which are also weapons.
Okay I’m hating that I’m getting drawn into a political discussion on a webcomic forum, but some of this stuff is just blatantly false or misleading, and after this post I’m going to try to not continue talking about it.
” that is used for, or is readily capable of, causing death or serious bodily injury”
1) This would be the pertinent part of that legal definition. They were not being used or even readily capable of being used as weapons from any legal standpoint. To say they are would mean every person who has ever driven a car or picked up a pen or pencil has been guilty of brandishing a weapon. Don’t be disingenuous please by claiming a person who holds a flag or a placard is armed with a weapon, as if they’re holding a spear or a knife or a gun, which is what is being implied by ‘insurrection.’
2) Even with blades, the definition makes exceptions for blades that are less than 2 1/2 inches in length. So are you seriously trying to argue that a flag is a weapon, but a pocketknife is not?
“The club, flagpoles, bear spray and other items used to inflect kinetic damages upon America’s law officers that day are “dangerous weapons” under American law.”
Again, incorrect. Please pay attention to the entire definition. What you are doing is cherry-picking part of the definition and ignoring the other part. Which literally is not reading the definition.
It’s like if I am to say that a backscratcher is a long stick with a rake or claw-shaped object on the end…. then not mentioning the second part which says ‘used to scratch one’s own back.’ Just using part of the definition makes it sound like something completely different, and it’s not an honest way of describing something.
“As for Ashli Babbit: it is beyond rational dispute that she was attacking the Congress of the United States assembled for the purpose of performing their duty under our federal Constitution.”
That is completely false, and provably false since it WHAT HAPPENED WAS ON VIDEO TAPE. She was not attacking anyone. She was not using any weapon. There were no congressional people where she was shot. She was not even in a position where she could have done anything. In fact, the police officer who shot her did so when he was not even in any danger or risk of danger. Had this been any other situation that was not so politically charged, he would have been in the same position that Derrick Chauvin is now in. Jail.
“She had the means to do harm to them, in the form of a mob of helpers that had ALREADY injured more than one hundred law officers who were performing their duty of defending Congress.”
This is also completely false. There were not 100 officers injured by the protestors/rioters, plus there was no concerted group effort by the people involved to do anything. The same claims of 140 officers being injured said that Officer Brian Sitnick died from being hit with a fire extinguisher and that another was stabbed with a metal stake – things which NEVER HAPPENED. Please stop repeating articles from 10 months ago which were already proven to be false.
“She was given verbal warnings not to continue her violent criminal activities and showed every sign of intending to continue committing a violent crime.”
Maybe you should actually watch the video during which she was actually shot, rather than getting the information second hand.
“By climbing in a broken window or door, she showed the intent to enter their Chamber and do harm to them.”
Incorrect. By climbing through a broken door, she showed the intent to enter the hallways. If I cross a street, I’m showing intent to get to the other side. I’m not showing intent to get to the other side AND PUNCH A PERSON IN THE FACE. That is NOT how proving intent works. She did not say anything to prove intent of doing anything violent. She did not make any actions to prove intent to do anything violent. Intent is not ‘if I do one thing, you can assume everything in your imagination is my intent.’ There has to be something that directly leads from intent to action.
“You are free to argue in court that a club is not a weapon, and you will lose because a club is a weapon.”
The court would require intent and context to use something as a weapon. You need proof to show intent to use something as a weapon. If I’m holding a pencil, and a police officer shoots me dead because he says ‘I had a weapon’ – guess what? The police officer murdered me, rather than executing a legal shooting. Unless I’m doing something like charging at him trying to stab him with said pencil. Or where I was not obeying an order by the police to stop moving, and instead I grab for a pencil. In which case the officer would NOW have reason to shoot, because I would then have been grabbing for something that could have been used as a weapon. Intent…. MATTERS. It’s part of the definition that you were using: ‘is used for, or readily capable of.’
“Some of those who attacked the police brought clubs,”
Show a picture of people bringing clubs. There were no people wielding clubs. In literally EVERY picture I’ve seen, the protestors/rioters were not holding anything except flags. And one idiot wearing a buffalo helmet because he’s an idiot. I’m not sure if you’re lying or are just grossly misinformed, but please stop whichever you’re doing. It’s fear-mongering.
“some improvised clubs from flagpoles and found items,”
Show a video of anyone using a flag as an improvised club. There were more than enough videos taken that if that actually happened, you can show video proof of it. You can’t, because it did not happen.
“some through projectiles – which are also weapons.”
Show a video of anyone throwing a flag as a weapon. See above.
I’m still sort of staggered that you’re arguing that a legal definition says that a knife under 2 1/2 inches that might be used to stab someone is not a dangerous weapon, but a flag being used to wave around in the air (as flags are meant to be used) is a dangerous weapon. I mean I’m a lawyer and that’s a stretch even for me. I’d need to show that it was being brandished AS a weapon. Not just say they had a flag, therefore I can assume it was being brandished as a weapon despite all video evidence to the contrary.
Okay well that’s all for me on this non-webcomic-related crap. Pander out.
could be an odal rune, but it could also easily be some creative photograph and camera angles.
also, the capitol riots, if it would have been an attempted coup, there would have been a lot more guns. tow pipe bombs sat at the DNC and RNC do not a coup make.
I -really- hope Illy does not read anything into my saying this because I don’t feel like having another fight, but it wasn’t actually an Odal rune. The design firm, Design Foundry, that designed it did so before CPAC had even rented the room without any input from CPAC, and Design Foundry had stated that it had no idea that the shape looked like an upside-down version of a relatively unknown rune that was used by the SS. But some twitter users made a connection to the ancient norse symbol that got used later on by the SS in the nazis (despite how it’s weird that this was not a well known thing), claimed it was a dogwhistle for antisemitism, and a bunch of publications and media sites picked this up and ran with it, largely as an anti-Trump or anti-Republican attack.
The failure of the coup attempt does not mean it was not attempted.
The Trump Crime Organization is not really good at planning (which is why bankruptcy and tax evasion are so important to its operations) but they are daring and persistent; they might have succeeded if Congress had not immediately reassembled and completed its duty. We are learning that there were plans to ask federal judges for a stay – which is a pretty strange thing to contemplate but our current SCOTUS is a pretty strange court – and of course there was a lot of pressure on Pence to play-act being unable to count the votes of Michigan and some other swing states, throwing the election into the House which would have given it to the Trump Crime Organization.
Let us not be so arrogant as to think fascism can not come to America. We’re special, but we’re not that special.
Yeah rewinn fascism has indeed come to America. But it’s it’s Democrats and the far left who are ushering it in. Anyone who disagrees with them is quickly labeled a nazi, white supremacist, a fascist, and any number of labels meant to dehumanize their opponents, kinda like what your doing in your posts. Do you know who used tactics like this in order to achieve their goals? It was the nazis. At best your ignorant of it, at worst you knowingly complacent. You are a fascist, and trying to scream it at everyone who you disagree with isn’t going to change that.
You have called rewinn a fascist. Based on what, exactly? What tenets of fascism are being presented here? He’s not supporting a monolithic ruler. He’s not supporting social darwinism. He’s not supporting racialism. He’s not supporting a “military first” policy. And he’s specifically opposing a situation where people were attempting to stop votes from being counted.
He’s called them criminal while specifically laying out what he believes their crimes to be. That’s not name-calling, and it’s not dehumanizing.
And even if it were name-calling…please understand that nazis do not have a patent on name-calling. It has been done by literally every politician ever. That’s not a “fascist thing” or a “nazi behavior.”
You left out forcible suppression of opposition, but you probably did that on purpose, and labeling someone is a way to dehumanize them, which can include calling people criminals because they oppose your ideals. Like labeling one group “peaceful protesters” then labeling another “insurrectionists.” Yes that is fascist and nazi behavior.
I’m not trying to get you on board with my political beliefs, here. We clearly get our news from different places and mistrust each other’s sources for what reality is, on a pretty fundamental level. What I’m asking is that you recognize that fascism is a specific thing with a specific definition. Not every thing the fascists did becomes “a nazi behavior.” The allies used tanks and guns to kill their enemies, and that wasn’t “a fascist thing” even though the fascists did an awful lot of it.
Likewise not all BAD things done by fascists are “fascist things.” The example you gave of labeling your “peaceful” (friendly) group and your “insurrection” (rival) group is also something done to this day by communism, which is lethally opposed to fascism. It’s also a common dirty tactic of monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies.
I’m not asking you to call shitty, two-faced behaviors acceptable. I’m asking that you not call them fascist when they aren’t, because that muddies the waters on what fascism actually IS.
And by the same token, from here it looks like the only indicators you have that rewinn could be fascist came from assumptions you made about his mental state when he was saying stuff you didn’t like. Please give people a little more of the benefit of the doubt than that.
The Democrats disagree amongst themselves, and yet can mutually remain Democrats. Same among the Left, which the Democrats are generally not. It’s on the Right where disagreement on a number of topics means immediately being cast out and branded as an enemy, regardless of their past loyalty.
I’d really love it if people could get back to arguing about the comic instead of about politics.
Political tribalism keeps infesting everything I enjoy, even where it has nothing to do with the g.d. comic.
I’m pretty sure that, as a libertarian, I’d be at odds with a lot of people that I otherwise share a ton of things in common with, and part of the reason i like this forum is I don’t have to hear about people calling each other fascists when they’re being bombarded with propaganda and echo chambers outside of the forum.
If I wanted to, I could go into a long diatribe about how bankruptcy works since I’ve actually filed both Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 bankrupties for people, BUT IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHATS GOING ON IN THE WEBCOMIC WHATSOEVER. For the life of me I don’t even know how this thread has gotten to this from the comic. Usually I can at least figure a trail of breadcrumbs that lead from ‘webcomic’ to ‘tangential ramblings’ but here I have no idea where Trump or the Supreme Court came into this.
How about everyone calm down and get back to arguing about the comic and maybe RL elements that tie itself to what we’re seeing in the comic instead?
I don’t agree with you on many things, Pander, but…
I feel like if this comic was enough of a spark, people must have been in a serious tinderbox state to begin with.
I can sort of track the line from “what is a weapon” and “who deserves to be overthrown” to the discussions being had, but also…
I think people just had some things they had to say, and honestly as jarring as it is to find it here, under Gold Superwoman and the Atomic Nerd, I feel like this is one of the less harmful locations for the venting to occur. So my personal opinion is (I’m Going To Allow It Judge Dot Gif). That’s just me though.
“I feel like if this comic was enough of a spark, people must have been in a serious tinderbox state to begin with.”
People have been in a serious tinderbox for years now. It’s just getting annoying to me at this point that there’s nowhere to escape from it. Heck, I like rewinn and most other people I disagree with on here. Despite my sending out all those ninja hit squads. I just really do not want to have to hear about stuff like Jan 6, vaccine mandates, critical race theory, pro-abortion/pro-life, Trump, Biden, or election fraud/fortification. Especially when any link to the webcomic seems REALLY tenuous at best, and nonexistent at worst. It just serves to make having fun arguments impossible. It’s not like having discussions about video games or old computers, which are also tenuous connections but at least that tends to make people realize they have more in common instead of less.
There are more than enough forum boards on the internet that are full of flame wars over BS that I don’t need to hear about them on this forum board which has largely stayed clear of that crap, or at least has not wallowed in it.
“I can sort of track the line from “what is a weapon” and “who deserves to be overthrown” to the discussions being had, but also…”
I’m having a very hard time figuring out how it got to ‘what is a weapon’… and ‘who deserves to be overthrown’ was not even a part of the thread in the first place – at least the latter would have a connection to the webcomic.
“I think people just had some things they had to say”
People always have something to say. Then they say it, start to destroy the forum that it’s being said in, and move on to some other forum to destroy :/
“I feel like this is one of the less harmful locations for the venting to occur. ”
I’m really not a fan of the ‘everything is political’ mindset. I think it’s harmful to forming cohesive and peaceful communities online. At least in RL, you have to usually face the other person.
Yeah Dave B deserves better than this. The least we can do for him is to keep this forum fun, polite and relaxed.
I’ll apologize for adding to this nonsense. Hypocrisy is something I can’t stand and it’s hard to stay silent about it. My last comments on the matter shall be their last and if I make any more comments on this site I’ll try to keep them on the topic of the comic.
Not having time to read the whole forum, I’d assumed the connection between the comic and the “what is a weapon” question started from the fact that this is the point in Dabbler’s story where proto-succubi became weapons themselves. Sorry if I was off-base about that; It’s totally believable that the contention point materialized out of literally nothing. That is a very common thing, in forums.
Someone made a vague, posturing comment, someone called them out on it, and it escalated from there as people felt the need to fly their colors and guess at each other’s belief’s based on vague posturing.
It’s fundamentally a defensive survival tactic, but maybe ends up feeling a little weird in such an indirect context. I mean, how much impact does a vague threat on a webcomic have on the world? Does it need to be challenged? On the other hand, each little threat adds up, making the world feel like a more dangerous place, particularly when those threats are even popping up in a context where they should have no impact.
I guess from that perspective, I can understand the frustration with “political discussion” sprouting everwhere. It feels like nowhere is safe. But I’d argue that sense of safety was always an illusion, and we’d have to face these questions eventually.
Stories prompt discussion of right and wrong, of morality and ethics. That leads to discussion of law, both existing and potential. Discussion of the abstract leads to discussion of the specific, as people look for examples to talk about.
The problem is that political affiliation has become such an important classifying feature. It’s gone beyond disagreements about policy, and has become a marker for whether you can trust a person to respect your rights. Perhaps political parties are harmless when it’s just intellectuals debating policy, but when it becomes something the common person joins for the sake of belonging, it just creates division. When enough angry people talk about killing any and all members of a different political party, it makes it hard to trust any member of that party who doesn’t actively distance themselves from that rhetoric and disavow those people.
I don’t mind discussions of law. I love that obviously.
I just can’t stand political tribalism, which is what politics has become. Outside of few people who are in a third party, you will rarely ever see anyone not demonize the other side without even bothering to understand what the other side is saying, or actually watching first hand accounts of the speeches or events of the other side (usually just relying on a pundit’s second or third hand report of it, often where they themselves did not even bother to watch it either). As an attorney it just irks me to no end. And as a person who enjoys a good argument but hates fights, it doesnt make forums more enjoyable.
So yeah, I agree with your post.
The world is made of weapons.
It’s a matter of perspective I guess.
I can’t take weapons charges very seriously because literally everything is a weapon. Oil cans, spray paint, hammers, shoes, tape measures, personal stereos, books, pens, pencils, doors, doorknobs, pianos, bowling balls, bowling pins, belts, pants, saws, pliers, bottles of bleach, spices, lemon juice, baking soda, alcohol, kerosene, acetylene torches,….
Seriously. Just about everything. The only distinction between any object and a weapon is an intent to use that object as a weapon.
Isn’t that the point though? It’s not really about the weapon, but about intent: it’s not lashing out unarmed, but choosing to use an object as a force multiplier. Some objects are better force multipliers than others, and your choice to use one over another says something about your intent in using it.
“It’s not really about the weapon, but about intent:”
I’m pretty sure what the people arguing with you are getting at is this:
If you’re going to try an insurrection in a nation where firearms are actually rather easy to obtain, you’re going to use actual weapons for the insurrection, not common objects used for non-weapon use that could plausibly be used as a weapon (which would be almost any object).
So the fact that no firearms were used (heck, no knives were used either) works against your argument of intent, Torabi.
Multiple insurrectionists explicitly stated that they did not carry firearms into DC because of firearms laws. Some had them ready nearby for access when they thought the time was right.
The insurrection did not need to overthrow the US Military. It needed only delay Congress long enough to persuade Pence to throw the thing to the House, or murder him as they were chanting. Our Constitution is not clear on what happens in that case, evidently because our Founders never dreamed that a President would try to hold on to power by sending a mob to sack Congress.
The insurrection was not effectively organized – perhaps because the guy in change simply believes that Chaos is a ladder – but when you are committing a crime, it is not much of a defense to say you’re not good at it.
“Multiple insurrectionists explicitly stated that they did not carry firearms into DC because of firearms laws.”
Um you just admitted that your previous statement was a lie. If they did not carry firearms into DC, it works against your previous argument .
“Some had them ready nearby for access when they thought the time was right.”
Prove it.
“The insurrection did not need to overthrow the US Military.”
I don’t think you know what insurrection means then. Insurrection is a rising or rebellion of citizens against their government, manifested by acts of violence. It was at best a protest, and at worst a riot. To call it an insurrection, I’m assuming you’ll also call the riots (or protests) in Kenosha or Portland to also be insurrections against Trump, when Trump was President? Because in those riots/protests, people actually did die, and not just from a police officer shooting one of the protestors. Die as in being burned alive in their stores or homes when they were set on fire, or teenagers in cars being shot at by other ‘protestors.’ Or actual government buildings being torched or literally taken over, such as courts and police stations.
If you think Jan 6 was an insurrection, and riots in Kenosha and Portland, which were far more violent and caused actual dozens of people dying and billions of dollars in destruction instead of papers being thrown around, were not? Then your political tribalism is showing.
“our Founders never dreamed that a President would try to hold on to power by sending a mob to sack Congress.”
I hate when people force me to defend Trump.
1) Trump did not send a mob to sack Congress. His speech is literally on video where he said they should go there PEACEFULLY so that Congress would see how many people were against them glossing over what many had argued was a fraudulent election. He also was recorded telling people to leave afterwards.
Trump was also saying this at the same time that people were already entering the buildings, so he didnt ‘send’ anyone. They wouldnt have even known he was speaking at the time.
2) From a more practical standpoint about the Founding Fathers, actually Jefferson did say that ‘the tree of liberty would need to be periodically watered by the blood of patriots.’ and that ‘a little rebellion every now and then is a good thing.’ in his letters from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison.
Here’s the full quote btw:
“Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.” – Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, January 30, 1787
The latter is a moot point though, since no one was trying to murder anyone on January 6, 2021. I’m just bringing up that you’re wrong about what the Founding Fathers envisioned as being possible.
Btw when Jefferson said ‘without government, as among our indians’:
1) he was more comparing it to ‘levels of representative government,’ since at the time, it was thought by the colonists that Native tribes were a lot more anarchic, even for the minority of colonists who had a positive opinion of the natives (the whole ‘noble savage’ belief system) except in times of war, during which most power rested in the Chief of each tribe; and
2) he was obviously wrong on that, understandable since there was not a lot of peaceful interaction between the colonists and the native tribes. Different native tribes DID have representative government, sometimes rather far reaching ones, like the Great Plains Tribes (Arapaho, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Lakota, Lipan, Apache, Cree, Ojibwe, SArsi, Nakoda, and Tonkawa), or the ‘Five Tribes’ (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole nations) – although they wounded up siding with the Confederacy during the Civil War, mostly because those tribes held a lot of animosity towards DC for a BUNCH of broken treaties.
The degree of effort on your part to gaslight and spin-doctor trump’s insurrection on January 6 as not really an insurrection is depressing in its depths. They attempted to take hostage and overthrow Congress in order to prevent the lawful replacement of their loser in the election with the winner, how you can even remotely claim that wasn’t an effort to overthrow the government with violence and seem to actually believe that is remarkable in the depths of brainwashing required to believe that.
The follow-up to try and equate the protests against police getting away with murder with the INSURRECTION on January 6th is also ridiculously absurd. The protesters were not burning anyone alive in their businesses, homes or anywhere else and they weren’t shooting at anyone. Virtually all violence is directly trackable to right-wing extremists and police doing like they’ve always done when peaceful protestors have protested against things like racism and police corruption: committing crimes and blaming the protestors for it. That scum teenager on trial right now crossed state lines, illegally purchased a firearm and opened fire on a crowd of protestors that were NO threat to him UNTIL he started killing people.
trump’s also never called for anything peaceful, he’s always encouraged violence. He directly undermined the election process making false claims of voter fraud and encouraging his worshipers to ignore the law and overturn the election in his favor because he LOST. Which is why we still have so many delusional people insisting trump won despite the overwhelming evidence he lost and inability to prove any claims of voter fraud (because none occurred, outside of that by trump and some other republicans that was discovered looking for the non-existent fraud he claimed occurred).
You really need to actually watch the actual videos of what happened instead of rely on CNN pundits’ reports.
Pretty much everything you wrote in your post is a bald-faced lie. Not only about Jan 6, but about Kyle Rittenhouse (you clearly have not watched the trial at all), and about things that Trump had said on camera.
I didnt even vote for Trump and now I have to defend him because of how blatant the lies are. :/
I don’t want to have to make these arguments on a g.d. webcomic forum when it has nothing to do with the webcomic, even tangentially.
Upon reflection, I probably shouldn’t say you’re making bald-faced lies. It is more likely that you just are in an ideological bubble where you’re not actually checking the sources and relying on punditry to tell you what to think. So I apologize for that, Nightmask. That’s unfair of me to say. I just can’t stand this becoming blatantly politically tribal.
Ignorance of certain facts is not the same as intentionally lying, and propaganda, political tribalism, and cults of personality can very often get in the way of seeing a full picture, even if it’s about people who you do not like.
No-one said the coup attempt was done by sane or organised people.
And we broke it even harder when the Haber-Bosch process made artificial fertilizer possible. Mass production of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen let farmers MINE that soil for food, instead of rotating fields to let them rest for a season or two.
According to Wikipedia, nearly 50% of ALL the nitrogen in the bodies of every human being alive today comes from fertilizer created with the Haber-Bosch process, meaning that half of all the nitrogen in you and I was artificially produced, and we wouldn’t be alive without it.
Current food production would be impossible. If we were still using 1900-era farming methods, we’d need FOUR TIMES the farmland to feed a population of 7 billion plus.
Scary thought, eh?
Wow. So, without artificial fertilizer we’d either have to cultivate a lot of the natural lands that are left today, or let some eighty percent of the world’s population starve? That’s food for thought, especially for people who hate the use of artificial fertilizer. Looks like we as humanity have trapped ourselves.
Pretty much so. Restrict yourselves to totally naturally produced fertilizer (ie, animal shit basically, along with the occasional geological oddity where saltpeter and similar nitrates, salts and whatnot were concentrated), and most of the human race starves in very quick order.
Wars were fought over islands where thousands of years of bird guano had concentrated itself into easily mined nitrates. (See the “Guano Islands Act” in wikipedia, an Act of Congress that basically allowed American citizens to plant a flag in any island with enough guano and shout “I claim this island in the name of the USA!”)
The Saltpeter War (1480-1510) and the War of the Pacific (1879-1884) were fought over the control of saltpeter deposits. In the early days of gunpowder, farms would be invaded by troops of the local power and the dunghills would be dug up and the soil beneath them confiscated in the name of (#insert_name_of_ruling_power_here), because the soil would contain concentrated nitrates leached out of the manure that the farmers were planning on using as fertilizer, and the government was planning on using in gunpowder.
Bolivia & Peru fought a five year long war (the above mentioned War in the Pacific) over the Atacama Desert where some of the largest natural deposits of saltpeter are found. Chile won (more or less) and Bolivia lost its last and only seaport, turning it into a totally landlocked nation. That’s how important nitrates are.
Not only do the weapons come first, they come often. :D
I would change what Dabbler says in the 7th panel, but only slightly.
(First part the same), they had to allow us to kill. (:new bit:) As the saying goes, that was first said during this time period, “If you give a slave the means to kill, they’re definitely going to kill you”.
It is a subtle difference, but I like to think that the Succubus rebellion caused a ripple effect across the Galaxy in regards to the rights of slave. Or is the “PC” term “Thralls”.
Maxima is way too happy and eager to hear about a mass slaughter of people, as it’s because she’s clearly looking forward to it not because they were despicable people in general but specifically because of her prejudices and biases and because they had created female slaves from scratch. Makes me think of the Sisterhood from the Sinfest comic, going around ‘liberating’ the female sexbots because they looked female and giving then programming upgrades to make them more self-aware and no longer machines when that’s all they were previously, just machines, so basically just really detailed inflatable dolls.
Funny little addendum to that. I don’t exactly read the comic regularly (the main comics I read that are still active are Grrlpower, Freefall, Outsider, Order of the Stick, Goblins, PS238, and Emmy the Robot) but occasionally skim it from time to time. The sexbots who now work at Lillith’s female-only cafe (Lillith is sort of the uber-supernatural feminist on par with the Devil and Li’l Evil’s mother and the grandmother witch who bakes cookies) had an update where they became ‘woke’ (not my interpretation, it’s pretty blatant a description of what happens) and so Lillith shut them off, as the machines they are.
I haven’t read the strip in years after the Sisterhood cancer completely took it over, particularly with the character derailment of several main characters like Slick and Monique. That doesn’t surprise me though, treat them like people while they looked female but only when going along with Sisterhood-approved thoughts, when they actually start showing independent thought shut them down because now they’re just broken machines that aren’t repeating what they’re supposed to.
Honestly the comic started going downhill when he started getting political in general, starting with the radfem stuff (he’s described himself as radical feminist and a TERF, this isn’t me just insulting and name-calling).
The Slick + Nique stuff was funny. The sisterhood stuff was just… very Mary Sue-ish. And a VERY sudden change in the feel of the webcomic. And I’ve made it very clear about what I think about Mary Sues in fiction.
It’s sad because the guy is actually a very good artist, but his storylines have been very hypocritical for a long time now.
True, the political stuff certainly wasn’t helping things. The deal with the Sisterhood isn’t the Mary Sue feel to them it’s the trope where they’re presented as unquestionably in the right and that they can do no wrong (since they seem to be the main characters of the comic anymore and the rest there just to dress them up and show how awesome they are it’s the Protagonist Centered Morality trope nowadays). They commit all sorts of crimes and are clearly in the wrong but we’re supposed to believe them in the right simply because they’re doing it.
Yes his art’s pretty good and he’s had some good material in the past (like Criminy’s purity redeeming a devil girl and Slick’s later stolen character development to escape from Hell and become a better person just to play up how ‘right’ the Sisterhood are because he’s just a dirty male) but he’s jumped off the deep end. The hypocrisy makes me think of RHJunior’s Good-Old-Boy republican characters, unquestionably in the right because he’s an ultra-conservative, evangelical Christian republican who rants against programs to help people in need while begging people to give him money so he can pay his bills. So apparently welfare isn’t welfare when he’s the one asking for it.
I actually still read Sinfest because it’s well-done commentary that’s nearly always dramatically opposed to my personal views. Helps shake up the default internet echo chamber and gives me practice thinking through my rationale for disagreement with the arguments presented.
But yeah, very very different comic from the one I started reading. 0_o
I honestly do try to avoid as much political tribalism as possible so that I don’t feel like reading a comic where political tribalism is a major element. But it’s good that you make sure to not live in an ideological bubble – that makes you a more well informed person when you look at things that might be outside your viewpoint, so +1 internet for you. :)
” The deal with the Sisterhood isn’t the Mary Sue feel to them it’s the trope where they’re presented as unquestionably in the right and that they can do no wrong”
That’s actually one of the core elements of being a Mary Sue, actually. :)
” They commit all sorts of crimes and are clearly in the wrong but we’re supposed to believe them in the right simply because they’re doing it.”
Again, that’s a core element of being a Mary Sue :)
” RHJunior’s Good-Old-Boy republican characters,”
I have no idea who RHJunior is, but Tatsuya Ishida is not right wing or Republican. He’s rather strongly a Democrat and was a big fan of Barack Obama. He had Obama in his webcomic frequently as the coolest person ev-ar, under the name Barack star (a wordplay on ‘rock star’). It’s just he’s a third wave radfem (by his own admission), and they tend to be at odds with fourth wave intersectionalist progressives (usually because of transgender issues, which is a large focus of intersectional progressivism, being in conflict with third wave radical feminism), for much the same reason as there’s a major schism between people like JK Rowling (who is not a particularly great writer IMHO, but is likewise NOT right wing by any stretch of the imagination) and intersectionalist progressives.
Yes I do remember how he presented Obama in a positive light (such as his no text page with Obama as Clark Kent turning into Superman with a slow walk into the Hall of Justice filled with the world’s greatest heroes).
RHJunior has several webcomics on his page, Goblin Hollow (which was good for the most part, other than one teenage girl who rightly spoke out against a preacher the church had show up as he was all fire and brimstone condemning people to hell and she protested it, to the point her sister slapped her and got away with it despite clearly being in the wrong). I think the good-old-boys is Tallyho (not going to bother checking), his Questor webcomic is a fantasy world with his eventually Mary-sue race of raccoon, Quentin Quire, Space Ranger is the future of that setting (among other things the author did an author’s saving throw trying to clean up the MC’s actions after he set off a genocide world war complete with floating cities being dropped on other cities by religious extremists by releasing advanced replicator and free energy technology into their internet as the character was proud of ‘saving’ them from their ‘evil’ governments so we got pages of trying to justify it as the only option possible for the least suffering of the world). He later cross-overed the MC raccoons from the two stories in a massive comic whose only purpose apparently was to ‘prove’ intelligent design real, as the ‘villain’ is driven to prove evolution is real by using stolen recently developed reality-warping technology to cause life to evolve naturally on a world when as everyone ‘knows’ God made all life everywhere.
So Dabblers ancestors were Frankenstein like flesh golems animated by magic, then refined through various things like infusions of souls… Then the crafters got the bright idea to get to the “It’s Alive!” stage of the story by using not lightning, but the lifeblood of a race that deals in murder, deceit, and trickery…
Oh yeah, that is a wise idea… Like a Pharaoh deciding to infuse his slaves with the blood of the Sky God/Superman or dead Kryptonian, breeding the survivors, and then deciding to try and assert dominance through might… In a land that is almost always sunny… Dumb asses.
I also feel that the Blonde Succubus ancestor getting that pat down, likely later gave those women who patted her down a more carnal version of said inspection.
Now here is a question for the ages, does a purely Sapphic Succubus exist, or is it treated as a mental disorder if it does crop up?
When the Living Armor wore Dazzler, was it a Golem using another Golem?
Are their gay Tentacle Monsters?
Ghosts that haunt other ghosts?
Banshees that sing like the best singers?
Sirens that can’t carry a tune?
Just questions to keep you up at night…
Is their a world where Maxima accepted Dazzler’s advances and they aren’t together? Is their a World where Dazzler accepted Maxima’s rejection and yet Maxima gets Tsundere Everytime Dazzler hooks up with someone?
on your list.
Gay tentacle monsters: yes, this is also a erotica genre.
ghosts that haunt ghosts…yes, there are two types, one the stronger more evil ghost that other ghosts in the place are afraid of, and the other is the vengeful ghost, the ghost that seeks out the ghost that tormented them when they were alive *basically someone lived in a haunted house, was tormented by a ghost, they pass away, so torment the ghost back; this type of ghost also likes to help out the living from time to time against the other ghost.
Namsjees. yes, all Banshees actually are great singers. Banshee are a type of fae, watches over a specific household and wails when a member of the household is about to die. When not wailing the Banshee may be called by another name as she walks the grounds of the estate, and she may be found humming or sining to herself, sometimes just heard not seen in the nearby woods and secluded parts of the estate.
Siresns…well the bird ones that the name comes from were more hypnotic than actually beautiful or beautiful sounding. if you mean mermaids…its magic, their actual voices were described as sounding like screeches.
Wow, that is amazing and disturbing…
The Gay Tentacle Monster because as a dude, I would nope the fuck out on principle, and in general because you feel for the victims when they are women. Tentacles targeting the pee hole is horrifying on its own…
The rest of it, pretty much leaves me gobsmacked…
Can we get the blonde succubus in nude art, or bring her in as a colleague of Dabbler’s?
YUM.
ok, the tickly succubus frame is adorable! haha
There’s no point in blowing up the past. It’s the past. It doesn’t exist anymore. Why would you want to blow it up even if you could?