Blogging is a lonely business. We don’t get many comments, likes, or ratings. Oh, sure, we have a hearty core cadre of commenters and likers that keep us busy and feeling like we are making a difference, but we just don’t get much by outside affirmation.

We haven’t had many of the trolly-type comments, either. It saddens me that we don’t. I think we must be missing some be doing something wrong. Either that or requiring every commenter to submit an Email address and wait in the approval queue discourages them. Feel free to speculate in the comments, and, perhaps, your comment will be approved for public consumption!

I suppose other more successful blogs do have lots of commenters and such, but here at Ye Olde Blogge, we do not. Consequently, we cherish and celebrate every commenter trolly or not, we just don’t always approve their comments and allow them to appear after the articles they are posted to.

We now have eight whole comments in the pending pile that I have answered but will not approve because they don’t rise to the standard of informed comment. They are far more harsh opinion and vitriol and really deserve little attention from anyone. About the best that lot had to offer was this comment from MarxistHypocrisy101 who was so upset by the post, He’s a Narcissist! What Else Do We Need To Know? That he posted three comments each one more hysterical and caustic than the last until we ended up with this gem of incoherent angle-bargle:

“WAAAHHH NOT LETTING THE REGRESSIVE LEDT BE A LAWLESS SOCIALIST DICTATORSHIP IS AN ABUSE OF POWER!”

And this is why your side is so dead that you can’t even win elections you rig. Good riddance.

That mess of sputtering outrage needs no further commentary; however, the latest one does.

On Saturday 22 February, one, socialist RA, graced Ye Olde Blogge with his insights into the post, Open Carry: the Ultimate Gaslighting Technique.

so [sic] you’re ok with police open carrying – police, who murder more minorities than any other group in the US, but when we carry guns to protect ourselves from violence -which I can assure you many of us have had to go through, unlike conservative democrats [sic?] in their gated communities- we’re suddenly “gaslighting” – a term you clearly don’t understand.

huh ok. great. keep on supporting white supremacist mass murder and the disarmament [sic] of vulnerable groups then I guess.

There are some interesting “points” here. The notion of police open carry is, well, “interesting.” I guess socialist is trying to draw an equivalence between an armed citizenry and an armed constabulary? I guess, the notion of the state having a vested interest in having a monopoly on the use of violence is a bit lost on him. I mean, if the state did not hold such a monopoly, we would live in anarchy, right? If just anyone could do violence to anyone for any reason or purpose, then we would not be able to live in an organized working society, would we?

One of the problems with open carry for citizens is that when someone shows up to a public place with a weapon, no one knows whether the person is a good guy with a gun, a bad guy with a gun, or a guy with a gun who thinks he can shoot anyone who he thinks deserves it, which to me is a bad guy.

When a police officer shows up with a gun, white people, at least, have enough privilege to feel like he, she, or they will only use those guns under sanctioned circumstances, which is to say, against criminals and PoC. If you’re a woman, mentally or physically disabled, or a Person of Color, though, you don’t warrant enough privilege to feel safe with armed police, especially, if you’re a young black man.

I haven’t noticed many of socialist’s armed vigilante types coming to the aide of young black men who were being gunned down in the street for no better reason than they are young black men. In fact, I suspect that many of the armed vigilantes are the ones vocally opposed to Black Lives Matter.

We shall ignore the dispersion cast by the implications of conservative Democrats living in gated communities protected from the mean streets that everyone else has to live on. Because socialist seems to disdain capitalization or fancy him, her, or them self as some kind of modern day trolling e.e. cummings, it is difficult to discern whether he means democrats as the people who believe in and support democracy or Democrats as in the members of the political party. I suppose conservative democrats might be people to the left of Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar in spite of their party affiliation. It’s hard to say.

I do take exception to the accusation that I don’t understand gaslighting. I’ve spent the past three plus years working to understand gaslighting and feel like I’ve got a pretty good grasp on the concept. I also feel like the thesis of the post, open carry as gaslighting, is accurate. Trying to convince us that we can some how divine the intention of an armed stranger is gaslighting. We’ve spent 40,000 years evolving ways of keeping ourselves safe from the ill-intent of strangers armed or otherwise. Demanding that we allow the armed vigilante types the privilege of deciding whether they are the good guy with the gun, bad guy with the gun, or the guy who decides who needs to be shot and when seems to me the ultimate mind fuck. I don’t think I will accept it as plausible, and it is the very reason we should not allow our populace to be armed in the first place.

Couple that thought of socialist believing he, she, or they should be privileged enough to decide whether he, she, or they is a threat with what happened in California when the Black Panthers decided that they were safer armed — when was that 1967? — well, it didn’t take long for the white California legislature and the racist governor, Ronnie Reagan, to pass legislation banning open carry.

Talk about the disarmament of vulnerable populations! Disarmament, sheesh! What is it with these people?

I think that just about does it for the motivated reasoning hour of our commenters who think that we should just trust their judicious use of firearms in our midst. Seriously, in the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, What a maroon!

Image Attribution

The image was found by a Google labeled for reuse with modifications search. It was created by Kassy and posted to Sketchport. It is licensed by Creative Commons as Attribution 4.0 International.