There is no Combat! blog today, because my valiant girlfriend has been laid low by oral surgery. She has had her wisdom teeth chiseled out of her jawbone, and she requires mostly Vicodin but also my help. While I make like Florence Nightingale, how about you read this fine essay from Bookforum about the problem of the psychopath—both in society and in diagnosis. We’ll be back tomorrow with a fun Indy column and less swollen loved ones.

 

I wrote a column for the Indy this morning and 1000 words of fiction, as one does, and now I face a choice. I can either write a whole blog post for you good people, or I can go on a hike with my brother. I think you know from this preamble which I have chosen. There is no Combat! blog today, because I will be alone with my thoughts again soon enough. While I retreat to lived experience, how about you enjoy the timely comic strip above? I think it’s more common—and perhaps stronger—as only the first three panels, which expose the essential absurdity of a lately popular argument. Those of us who still log in to Facebook occasionally may find it useful. We’ll be back tomorrow, probably, with something more substantive.

 

There is no Combat! blog today, because my brother is in town and we must play a board game we invented involving wizards. While I summon cacodaemon, how about you read this fantastic essay by Tim Kreider from 2013? It is old, and we have linked to it before, but I agree with Sarah Aswell: it bears reading at least once a year.  We’ll be back Monday, probably, unless we get trapped in some kind of soul prison.

Seriously, are there no downstage lighting positions in the auditorium at Big Sky Resort, such that Montana’s two candidates for governor must debate as sharp outlines whose faces are shrouded in darkness, like the dream sequence from a David Lynch movie? I guess not. Greg Gianforte and Governor “Steve” Bullock coalesced from the shadows to disagree about which of them was better equipped to increase jobs, protect our Second Amendment rights, and preserve access to the fields and streams of Montana last Sunday. Neither man offered even the kind of minimal detail that a four-instrument high cross system would have brought to their facial expressions. They spoke competently, vaguely, and tepidly, even managing to find agreement on the contentious topic of gun control. Quote:

Bullock began by emphasizing his commitment to the Second Amendment and his role in Heller v. District of Columbia, a Supreme Court case that affirmed the right to own handguns for self-defense. “Ultimately, I will protect all Montanans’ rights with the firearms,” he said, “but I’m not going to extinguish common sense.”

“This is another area of clear distinction,” Gianforte responded. I still can’t decide if he was joking, but he went on to tout his own commitment to the Second Amendment, contrasting his own “A” rating from the NRA with Bullock’s “C” and criticizing the governor’s veto of a bill that would have allowed Montanans to carry concealed weapons without permits. The clear distinction, it turned out, was between the candidate who thinks we don’t need to exercise any more control over guns and the one who thinks we exercise too much already.

You can read that hot fire and more like it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which practically begs for a more interesting gubernatorial race. Be careful what you wish for. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.