Nation relieved by individualized shooting

Pretty much a guide to America, courtesy of Houston's ABC 10

Pretty much a guide to America, courtesy of Houston’s ABC 10

For my money, the most amazing paragraph in the New York Times‘s account of yesterday’s shooting at Lone Star College is the last one, about a teacher administering CPR to a woman who seems to have collapsed in panic:

As Mr. Thomas was trying to revive the woman, she told him that she was more frightened than the others. She said she had survived the Virginia Tech shooting. “She said, ‘I went through this already at Virginia Tech, and I just don’t like this feeling.'”

Now there’s a robust analog. America has become so rattled by the recent string of arbitrary mass shootings that we can’t even handle regular, one-on-one gun violence.

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Why do politics when you can go insane?

To the untrained eye, it might seem like a center-left technocrat beat a moderate Republican last Tuesday, and politics have returned to business as usual. You probably think that, because you have been hypnotized by the mainstream media. People who see past the bias—primarily those who get their news from sources directly affiliated with one of the parties—know that this year’s election sounded the death knell for American liberty. There’s this lady, who ran over her husband with a Jeep because he didn’t vote. There’s Texas’s petition to secede from the union, which cites TSA screenings and is well past the 25,000-signature threshold after which the White House guarantees a response. And there’s Eric Dondero, the libertarian and former Ron Paul aide who has launched a personal boycott of Democrats. Props to J-Sri for the link. Insane elaborations after the jump.

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Friday links! Futility of reason edition

This picture of a sausage comes courtesy of a blog entry on Russian food. Note the "Made in USA" featured prominently on the label.

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time once again for us to rouse ourselves from our intellectual slumber—from the chattering distractions of what the Buddhists call the Ten Thousand Things—and stand outside ourselves to consider the products of the week that is about to have been. You just want to get through Friday as quickly as possible so that you can rush home and watch the Winter Olympics on DVR until the Winter Olympics on NBC comes on, don’t you? Perhaps somewhere, in the shrivel portion of your hypothalamus that used to feel, you dimly recognize the unsettling irony that this celebration of athletic endeavor and bold living should inspire millions of people to stay home and watch TV. Fortunately, you’re an American, and we’ve just won a gold medal in not giving a crap about irony—or any type of connection between concepts, for that matter. The United States has been a country for a long time now, and after two hundred some years we don’t really need to think about operating it anymore. We go with our gut, and if some pointy-headed nerd wants to complain about the details—”those two statements directly contradict each other,” or “you have not actually read the Constitution,” or “your child needs medicine to live”—we can tell in a glance whether he’s a Real American or not. To paraphrase my junior high school wrestling coach, there’s not much difference between a reason and an excuse; it follows therefore that the only people who need to resort to reason are those who need excuses. This is America, and we don’t make excuses here, as the news of the last week will indicate. Won’t you join me in the complete abdication of sense?

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