Dig this. It's bad juju, no mistake.
It is a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. It is a constitutional right to be in a “well-regulated militia.”— Mike Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) April 30, 2020
The more liberal politicians stray away from the constitution, & enforce draconian policies, the more people will rebel against them.
#MichiganProtest pic.twitter.com/GtLUNloEbZ
Governor Whitmer of Michigan wants to extend her lockdown orders. The State Legislature turned her down. She's insisting she can do it anyway. That's when the guys got together to flex some muscle in the capital. Is the governor a dictator? That's the question that was being resolved here.
The first thing you notice in the photo are all the guns. It's a good bet those boys knew how to use them and the magazines were loaded. You don't go armed to a protest in the capital lightly. This was serious.
I saw lots and lots of people online, gasping in shock that this was not a well-regulated militia or that these were terrorists or that they were white. Maybe. So what? You can't poke a bear endlessly and not make it mad. The progs never thought it would get mad or if it did, had no concept of what an armed protest looked like.
Just how would you break up this protest, anyway? How anxious were the cops to get into an altercation with these guys? Would you call up the National Guard? Would they obey a governor disobeying the legislature? How many people on either side were exactly sure who had the authority? My bet is close to zero. What a mess.
This was the collision between the fantasy world of the Elites managing our lives and a seriously ticked-off bunch of citizens demanding to make their own decisions.
Broader Issues: How much authority should we give the Elites over our lives? How many decisions are we allowed to make for ourselves?
The Democrats have gone all-in on "all authority except for sensual gratification." The nomination of the hollow candidate, Joe Biden, a confused old man they can manipulate, is their latest plan. On their side, they have righteousness. They will end
Governor Whitmer thought she had it. In her world, she did. Her world isn't the real world, however. Those boys with guns just introduced her to it.
12 comments:
I don't really know what is going on down in Lansing other than what is in the news, but in the rural part of the state (like up here), on the one hand there is an "official" shutdown of many things. But, on the other hand, my wife called the health department a while back to check on what the actual restrictions are, and they said straight up that there were no actual penalties in place for violating them. The police are not stopping anyone from going out, stores are open if they choose to be, and in general everyone seems to be treating the "restrictions" as advice, not as an order. I am not staying home from work because the State told me to, I am doing it because my employer told me to (and they actually sent me home some days before the official state "order" came out).
As far as I am aware, the only legal penalties for violating the orders, at least so far, is that if I violate them, and as a direct result I infect someone else and they get dangerously ill or die, then they might have grounds to sue me. Otherwise, I can ignore the restrictions if I like.
Incidentally, I was just down visiting the State House a few months back, and one of the refreshing features was the almost complete lack of the sort of security theater that most federal buildings have. I just walked into the building and wandered freely, with no one paying the slightest attention to me. The only security was the guys at tables in front of the actual House and Senate chambers. They were keeping people other than the senators and representatives and their guests from going in (and I think that was more to keep tourists from messing with their desks than anything else). There was nothing restricting anyone from the observation balconies, though, which were completely open to, say, toss things over the railing. Basically, these demonstrators didn't have to do anything other than wander in. It's not like they would have had to actually storm the place or anything.
California is a lot more restricted. We are prevented from doing a great many things. Still, from the virus' point of view, it's all an illusion. Places like Lowe's are packed.
I grew up in Ohio, which is just a better (I.e., less cold, particularly as opposed to the U.P.) version of 'that state up north'. Then I went to MSU in East Lansing for grad school. Drove into Lansing many times and other places in the state (including Hell - look it up). I can tell you without any doubt that those weapons were loaded and everyone of those guys had hunted deer with them, so, yeah, they know how to use them.
As to the folks being “white”. Look up the demographics of the state. Do the same for Detroit and subtract. The non-Detroit parts of MI are 80% white, 10% African American, and 10% all other. Michigan ain’t California.
But even still when the story got out that our wonderful Goober here in CA (it’s a ‘Gubernatorial’ election, so he’s the Goober, right?) was going to close the beaches state-wide, the extent of the weather event involving excrement that blew through his office was enough to change his mind. Yes, I know he said the he’d been misunderstood and that only closing Orange and Ventura County beaches had been his plan all long, but please excuse me if I don’t believe him (mostly because it took too long to ‘correct’ it for me to believe that the memo from law enforcement describing what they’d been told wasn’t absolutely correct).
Finally, something I think the elected officials would be wise to consider: Yes, staying locked down is something that many on the left want. But I suspect they are mostly (not all, but mostly) the snowflakes that insist on 'safe spaces' where nothing and no one can possibly even say anything that would 'trigger' them, let alone potentially expose them to a potentially fatal disease (although they walk around happily every year during flu season). Look at the picture again. Do any of those guys look like 'snowflakes'? Can you imagine them hiding in a safe space to avoid being triggered? I know I can't. (And yes, I know that judging people by appearance is wrong and fraught with errors, but nonetheless I stand by my opinion.)
Here, our courts are closed down. That's killing me right now as my mom's estate is sitting there in limbo, waiting for one California's idiotic time delays to pass. In fact, it passed in the middle of April, but since the courts have been closed, the deadline for filing an objection will be moved to whenever the courts reopen, possibly plus some undetermined amount of time.
The courts were supposed to reopen today, but that date has now been moved to May 22. In exchange for that, we have hospitals that are going out of business because they don't have enough patients providing them income.
As Ohioan suggested, I don't think this is about safety any more, it's about political calculations. Governor Newsom is clearly aiming at the presidency, so he's trying to look tough at the same time he damages the economy to hurt Trump.
I know we're twigging where the comments take us, but allow me to do a slightly better job making my original point.
I would argue that Whitmer, Cuomo, Newsom and all the rest have a fantasy view of the world wherein political power is everything. It isn't. If your population is heavily armed like ours, you can push them too far and then discover that men with guns have a power all their own.
At that point, your calculations had better be accurate to many decimal places because your faculty lounge debates did not prepare you to deal with good old boys firing semi-automatics in the capital.
They might be white, they might be misinformed, they might be wildly wrong. Whatever the truth is, once they're out in the streets, waving loaded guns around with impunity, you have an entirely different set of problems.
I don't think the comments have twigged. To me your post is really summed up in two quotes:
"Broader Issues: How much authority should we give the Elites over our lives? How many decisions are we allowed to make for ourselves?"
and
"They need total control to accomplish these things. Governor Whitmer thought she had it. In her world, she did. Her world isn't the real world, however. Those boys with guns just introduced her to it."
I thought that both Tim's and my earlier comments were directly relevant to these points. Tim was saying (I think) that he's not impacted by her grasping overreach, because outside the major cities, MI is still doing business not terribly modified from before, so his reality is different from what the MI Goober thought it was/should be. My point was that both the MI and CA Goobers (and others) had better pay attention to the little people, as they are rapidly reaching the point where they will rebel. And even here in San Diego, CA there are lots of folks with weapons.
And as long as I'm typing... You also asked about on whose side the National Guard might come down. Your typical National Guard, or police officer, isn't a wild liberal. Most of them have families. Many have probably lost their jobs or have close friends who have. I wouldn't bet a wooden nickel on them siding with those who've ordered the extensions on the lock downs.
My oh my! I don’t know long it will be before YouTube bans this as contrary to the established policy, or whatever bull they are using to ban all the Coronavirus stuff they are banning, but seriously watch this interview between a serious actual journalist and a deadly serious Swedish expert (full disclosure I stopped the play half way through to post this, so I can’t speak to the entire thing, but at least the first half rocks!).
https://youtu.be/bfN2JWifLCY
I wasn't accusing you or Tim of twigging into strange areas, I was accusing myself of having written an unclear post. 😊
At what point do we-as-The-People admit to ourselves that the bureaucrats and politicians who rule us did not burn down the economy (and even now many of them keep trying to make things worse) for the sake of anyone's health?
==The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed the positive cases on Friday. Out of the 2,450 total tests, more than 1,300 staff and inmates tested positive.
According to the state, analysis of the test results confirmed that 98% of those who tested positive are asymptomatic.==
More than 1,300 at Trousdale Turner Correctional Center test positive for COVID-19
"But I suspect they are mostly (not all, but mostly) the snowflakes that insist on 'safe spaces' where nothing and no one can possibly even say anything that would 'trigger' them, let alone potentially expose them to a potentially fatal disease (although they walk around happily every year during flu season)."
Are these not the same snowflakes who insist that they have the right to f[ornicate] anything that moves, or that doesn't move, and that the rest of us have the duty and moral obligation to pay for the consequences?
Ilion, thou hast hit upon a truth.
Tim-
As of the 23rd, violating the stay-at-home was made a misdemeanor with $500/90 days, and as of the 30th Michigan Department of Health and Human Services director Robert Gordon issued an Emergency Order setting a civil penalty of up to $1,000 for violations of the order. (AP feed, I believe.)
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As for being "white"-- what an elastic term! Dude without a mask on the left appears to have either Arabic or Asian blood, possibly Persian even; are they white this week?
Hoodie and mask above the guy in black looks like my old shippy who the kind of folks who would declare everyone in that picture to be "white" would call "black." (IIRC his bio-father was African-American and his mother's folks are mostly from the Philippines.)
I'm seeing at a minimum Norse, United Kingdom, German or possibly Norse, Eastern European and the reddish blond guy with the nose looks kinda French.
What they usually mean is, "I don't see someone that I'd call black." Of course, when there *IS* someone they'd identify as black, they are either a "token" or a "traitor," when they can't be flatly edited out of existence like the infamous 'assault rifle' cropping.
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I'm honestly uncomfortable with this protest-- but I don't disagree with it.
The guns are a threat.
...what the hell do folks think the gov't orders are, a polite suggestion?
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