For the boomer readers of Zoomchron, I apologize in advance. I’m about to generalize the hell out of you, and in a manner I hope to be profoundly critical and unflattering. If however, I should be factually accurate about your views and attitudes regarding violence and class warfare, please try to absorb some of the constructive criticism instead of getting defensive. Some of you fucking fossils are alright and I’d love to see you grow past this insincere pacifist thing so many of you have adopted.
Let’s set the scene…
You’re visiting your boomer parents for Christmas, and you’re enjoying the novelty of cable television. Maybe you’re enjoying a nice episode of the Daily Show or choking down your myriad objections through the interminable drag of Colbert… when the painfully mainstream host makes a reference to Luigi Mangione… The live audience erupts into jubilant cheers, you smile and let go of a little of that tension that’s been building in your neck for your whole fucking life… The execution-style murder of medical CEO Brian Whatshisname is after all the one real feelgood story of the last few years and you remain pleasantly surprised to know SO many people are SO unironically on board. You think maybe there is hope after all… But then you notice your otherwise-hip, sometimes-wise boomer parents are all tensed up, their tension is the reflected inverse of your relief, and it surprises you because they know as well as anybody how fucked things are and how cunts like that murdered CEO are the ones responsible… So what gives? Why aren’t they smiling?
You strike up a conversation, trying to figure out how they could POSSIBLY be unhappy about such an unprecedentedly positive story…
And just a couple lines into the conversation they drop this turd into the punch bowl…
“Violence is NEVER the answer.”
They say it with this affectation of sincerity that is meant to telegraph that they are SO fucking enlightened and how much they pity the foolish peons succumbing to this plague. They say it like saying it while not doing anything makes them a GOOD PERSON.
We’ll talk about why this is happening and what can be done about it at some length, but the important thing to remember is that this bullshit, phoney platitude needs to be countered quickly and effectively, lest it derail the first meaningful conversation provoked by mainstream news in the last decade.
There’s a quick and effective riposte to this “violence is never the answer” nonsense.
You just look them straight and the eye and say: “Shut the fuck up. You’re fucking stupid. Shut your stupid fucking mouth.”
In some circumstances a sharp slap on the cheek helps punctuate the sentiment, but you’ll have to determine on a case-by-case basis if it will be appropriate.
After the shock has worn off you can attempt to go into all the reasons that what they’re saying is stupid and wrong, but I think the most effective point of actual explanation is that NOBODY who ever says “Violence is never the answer” actually means it. What they mean when they say it is “I’m not comfortable discussing real solutions to this existential problem, and so I’ve emotionally shut down, but I still want to assert a position of moral superiority over you even though I refuse to engage in any meaningful way.”
This learned uselessness is especially easy for boomers. They probably own their own home. They were probably hippie, idealist types in their youth, but in their old age they’ve probably drifted to either outright conservatism, or that form of indolent, toothless “progressivism” that comes so naturally to their pampered generation. OF COURSE they’re not invested in real solutions. Real solutions involve sacrifice, involve risk, involve hard decisions and even harder work, and they already got theirs. They really have nothing to gain by fighting to save the functioning society they inherited because it’s very obvious that it has always worked for them and will continue to work for them until they’re all dead, which is only 20 or so more years anyway. The system worked just fine when they inherited it, and sure it was broken beyond repair by the time you inherited it, but that is of course a YOU problem.
So the next time you’re trying to have a productive meeting, like deciding who is the richest, most powerful person that you and your friends can realistically find and execute, and some smarmy cunt trots out ol’ reliable “Violence is never the answer”… Punch them in the throat. If they fight back you can see that they just learned how wrong they were. If they don’t fight back then just keep hitting them. They were never going to contribute anything of substance anyway.
Bye for now. Keep your Teeth clean.
– Freeman Tao
Gay and retarded and a take that can easily be found on any overly-earnest leftist’s blog.
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
“Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”
“Punch them in the throat. Keep punching them until they fight back, then punch harder and, if you can, kick them while they’re down.”
I am Boomer. If I live another 15 years, I will be older than both my parents were when they died. In my nearly 67 years I have learned a few things, one of them being that treating people badly or retaliating in kind only makes the problems worse. It does not make them better and, because of this, I recommend that anyone reading this drivel simply ignore it and go about building solid relationships with those around you instead of destroying them. Which you will do if violence is your Modus Operandi.
But, hey, we live in a country which regularly visits violence on others and just look at how “rich and powerful” America is. Yeah, violence can do wonderful things for you. We can do anything and if we want to pick up some shitty little country (e.g., Gaza, Libya, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.,) and throw it against a wall, we will. Because we can. And then congratulate ourselves on how good we are and how blessed the world is that America is not like other countries.
Here’s hoping that you live long enough to see the error of your ways.
Good luck “building solid relationships” with the Technocrat overlords stripping your community down for parts Roger.
I’m sure they’ll really respect you for your good-natured kindness while they discontinue your social security payments.
“The technocrats” are stripping away the bureaucracy and the funding mechanisms of the useless and degenerate NGOs who have been profiting off of the misery of humanity at our expense.
As a leftist, the federal bureaucracy and the non profit industrial complex may be your “community” but they are certainly not mine. And I’m gleeful for the stripping.
Come put a bullet in my head if you believe that is “justice,” fool.
You deride the “jerks and lesbians” at Democracy Now and NYTimes but your critique is indistinguishable from them. It’s even worse. It’s like Rachel Maddow took a creative writing class at the UM.
Fake and gay.
“leftist” LOL.
The notion that you can make useful distinctions in a complex and paradox-laden minefield by resorting to strict and prescribed binaries is a psychic trap. You deride only yourself when you read a treatise on avoiding the pitfalls of partisanship and binary thinking and respond with “YOU’RE ON THE OTHER SIDE!”
My political and social views are not “left”. Neither are they “right”. They’re not even “wrong”. Nor are they “right”.
Fall not into the snare of trying to map a 3 dimensional reality onto a 1 dimensional left-right axis. Settle not for the pitiful improvement of the 2-dimensional “political compass” plane. Adding a libertarian-authoritarian axis to the simpletons’ left-right axis may expand your possibilities exponentially, but it is still a tool to contract your reality. Don’t even settle for 3 dimensions.
My thoughts and beliefs and ambitions can only be charted on an axis perpendicular to all the X, Y, and Z axes. Simply because you don’t understand them doesn’t mean you’re not capable of it, but mapping my wild and unhinged performative mania onto the boogeyman left of your prescribed simpleton enemies is an insult you lay upon your own doorstep. Not on mine.
Toughen the fuck up Roy. You can do better.
Your post leans heavily on the friend/enemy distinction but then you curiously recoil when I apply that same lens. You deride the left, yet when I identify your critique as leftist in character, you reach for a higher dimensional axis, as though taxonomy itself were a failure of imagination.
But surely you recognize the pattern: hostility toward hierarchy, disdain for capital, suspicion of order—all hallmarks of the modern left, however artfully recast. That doesn’t make your view invalid, but it does make it recognizable.
I don’t invoke the label to flatten your ideas, only to locate them. Categories are not cages—they’re coordinates. And if we’re to engage seriously, we ought to know roughly where the other stands.
A shockingly cogent and sensitive analysis. One in which I find myself essentially understood. A definite rarity in interactions of any sort, particularly one couched in a comment exchange in an internet setting.
Thanks Roy. Well said.
You are not fundamentally wrong in your assessment. Naturally my position as the interloper executive editor of a news and information website which you likely have some ongoing relationship with leads me to adopt a certain bravado. I found myself reflecting on our interaction and set out to log on at this late hour and write a response that attempts to give a peek behind the mask and encourage genuine understanding. Only to find you’ve beaten me to the punch and achieved my objective more effectively than I likely would have.
Again. Thanks Roy. Well said.
You doubtless gathered that in my rush to post as many articles as possible while Travis was in jail, I kinda took a shotgun approach, including more than one piece that was completely unsupported by any significant research or evidence or in some cases logic. In this particular circumstance I’d rather be wrong and provoke an argument than be right and ignored.
Thanks for arguing with me Roy.
I could return to the topic at hand and speculate that you yourself would likely disagree with the platitude “violence is never the answer” (if you were attacked I expect you would defend yourself), but returning to the topic feels extraneous at this point.
I’ll leave off by saying that I write things like that and like this seeking feedback, preferably in the form of resistance. Your feedback was far more useful to improving my model of reality than I expected. Your approach was at the same time insightful and dismissive. Many of my positions are in fact, profoundly fake and gay. I can see that I’ll need to dial up my skills if I intend to brainwash people around here (I’m used to picking on tripping twenty year olds at love ins).
Its been a hell of a pleasure arguing with you Roy. I look forward to doing it again real soon.
Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Chairman Mao, errr…, I mean Freeman Tao. But, hey, if you really believe what you are saying and want to convince others that you are sincere, then why don’t you become consistent with that and show us, by example, the level of violence you can achieve in a very real newsworthy way. Instead of simply opining about it, visibly demonstrate why your philosophy is sooooo much better than mine. After all, a picture of smoking ruins in the heart of Missoula is certainly worth more than the 10,000 words you would use to describe it. Isn’t it?
All hat, no cattle.
Come now, we both know that you are irreparably charmed by my sarcasm.
But, I will address the rest of your comment as if you were taking yourself seriously (which it is quite obvious you are not).
Since you’re an adult I shouldn’t have to spell this out for you, but the article you’re replying to is not a call for indiscriminate terrorist attack. It is a criticism of people (like you) who support a position they DO NOT BELIEVE in, because they refuse to have a substantive discussion about a real and serious issue. I will be blunt and concise.
There is absolutely no way YOU actually agree with the phrase “violence is never the answer”. If you were attacked would you not defend yourself? Do you believe America made a fundamental mistake in standing up to their colonial overlords and fighting a bloody revolution in order to become their own country? Do you think America made a fundamental mistake involving themselves in World War II? If good people are incapable of using violence to defend themselves, then the world will be ruled by evil people because they ARE capable of using violence. So on the most fundamental level “Violence is never the answer” is a completely indefensible position.
As I said. I do not believe you to be so foolish as to believe that defending yourself when attacked is morally wrong.
Second. As I said, the type of violence I’m actively advocating for is not indiscriminate terrorist attack, nor is it unprovoked attack on my friends and neighbors. Those are the two methods of violence YOU have mentioned in these comments, and I could try to be a smartass and imply that you have some sort of psychopathy issue if that’s what you think I’m advocating for, but that would be unnecessarily smarmy, and get in the way of the bridge of understanding we’re trying to build here. (the whole bit I said about punching people in the throat if they say “violence was never the answer” was a joke, rather than my legitimate position.)
Again, I’ll be blunt and direct in what I’m talking about. You may have noticed that the Featured quote from the article was a quote of Luigi Mangione. You might remember him. He shot a CEO dead in the street (allegedly). Like a dog (no offense to dogs).
I, and millions of other people, think that was the fucking feelgood story of the year. And it frustrates me when a lot of people who have been fucked over by the current system stand up for the rights of people who have abused, manipulated, exploited, and violated the spirit of our system of laws, to create a system whereby their acts of unmitigated evil in the name of irredeemable greed are technically legal, and they are thus immune to consequence. It saddens and dissapoints me when otherwise intelligent and enlightened people (like yourself, like my boomer parents, etc) shake their heads in feigned moral outrage and use this self-congratulatory form of performative pacifism to defend the right of evil men to commit evil acts with impunity.
I’m not asking you to lock and load and go to Larry Fink’s palace and blow him away. I’m asking you to get the fuck down off your high horse and acknowledge that when (not if) somebody does that, that person was a fucking hero. There is absolutely no way you ACTUALLY believe “violence is never the answer”, so stop fucking acting like it is. I know Roy’s gonna tear me a new leftyhole for this one, but what I’m trying to tell you Roger is that I think income inequality is the defining evil of our generation, I think something needs to be done about it, and every other mechanism of justice is so completely compromised that there is literally no solution left other than violence.
As for your kind encouragement that I take up arms and spill blood myself – remember when Robert Dove came to Missoula to argue in court that Missoula shouldn’t be legally allowed to own our own water system, and that he should be allowed to continue to own it and to jack up our rates to an exploitative degree? (if you don’t remember, you can easily look it up). Well… I had a good rooftop position, a well maintained Winchester 308, and a shitload of target practice, but unfortunately I didn’t have an angle on him (he entered the courthouse through a different entrance than expected).
Cheers Roger. I genuinely hope they don’t discontinue social security payments before you get some portion of your investment back, but as YOU pointed out in YOUR POST like a day or two ago, neither you nor I expect ME to get any of my money back, and yeah, I’m pissed off about it. I think something should be done about it. If I am attacked, you bet your fucking ass I’m going to defend myself.
A well-written response. Thank you.
No, I don’t expect you to run out into the street and burn down the SS building because you feel deprived. You are smarter that that, and I recognize the fact.
No, I do not buy into the “violence is not the answer” argument, since I know that if anyone came against my home violently, I would respond in kind. Violence has its place, but that place is NEVER first in line. It is always defensive. Aggressive violence is always wrong and cannot be justified. Defensive violence is justified in some situations, but must be tempered with good sense and courtesy. For instance, in the case of a home invasion, you don’t shoot someone in the back who has surrendered and is lying on your living room floor. Not good.
Personally, I don’t think we are that far apart. I just think you should tone down the rhetoric since there are people out there who might take you seriously. And literally.
Nevertheless, it is a pleasure debating with you. Can we continue?
OF COURSE we can continue debating. I would love to. Frankly I doubt either of us have the constitution to resist saying something when we hear the other say something we disagree with. Praise GAD!
Regarding violence, when I’m in a position of actual authority I tend to adopt a (somewhat) more reasonable position, but as a writer of fringe political blogs and seditious handbills, I often find my role is to take a more extreme (and objectively less defensible) rhetorical position in order to spark a response. I find people think harder when challenged than when presented with something they generally agree with, so the pushback I get when I say something less-than-completely reasonable often results in more robust development of ideas from the person who challenges me and from myself in my response.
I COULD go into a long diatribe about how my (partly sincere) advocacy for political violence really is a form of defensive violence (Brian Thompson, the CEO Luigi Mangione slaughtered like a fucking pig [no offense to pigs], could be described [accurately?] as a mass murderer), but returning to the topic feels superfluous at this point. The point was to have a discussion on the merits of the issue, not to have you adopt my viewpoint. (If everybody thought the way I think I’d have to change the way I think because of my fickle and contradictory nature)
Regarding toning down the rhetoric incase some wild-eyed loner pushed to the edge takes my call to action as a call to action and guns down Larry Fink or Larry Ellison or Peter Thiel or whoever…
I’ve heard that one before and while I find it to be a very normal and traditionally defensible response to this sort of semi-artful hyperviolent rhetoric, I no longer find myself in a position to take such concerns seriously. For one thing I think that our society has gotten WAY too careful about people self-censoring out of consideration for what others might do or feel in response. If some wild-eyed loner pushed to the edge reads one of my many manifestos and decides to enact my agenda of righteous hatred, I will disregard with callous, performative bravado any attempts to lay those hundred deaths at my door. I’ll gleefully take my share of the credit, but reject my rightful claim to the blame. We as a community should be thinking more about why that wild-eyed loner was pushed to the edge to begin with (to the point that he would listen to the wild encouragements of an obviously less-than-sane rhetorician like myself). And moreover, we’ve swung the pendulum so far away from personal responsibility and accountability that I now consider it a perfectly normal and socially well-adjusted response for people to suggest that I would be responsible for the violent actions of another.
The only one responsible for the hundred murders I’m actively advocating for is the hypothetical wild-eyed loner who pulls the hundred triggers. Society in general has some debt of responsibility that’s still being tabulated on our civilizational ledger, and I am part of the equation, but a minuscule part in the grand scheme of things. The straw that broke the camel’s back? Perhaps…
Again, I’ll gleefully take my share of the credit, but reject my rightful claim to the blame.
Cheers Roger. I hope to glean more of your inner workings over the months and years to come.
BTW, Roy McKenzie is my friend and has done yeoman work for me (see https://face-of-freedom.org).
Treat him well.
He seems alright to me.
I particularly like how he brusquely dismissed my rhetoric in this article as “fake and gay”. I unironically appreciate candor and brevity more than practically any other quality in circumstances like this.
Tell me I’m wrong in an honest and succinct manor and we’ll be friends (it should be easy, I’m wrong all the fucking time).