Book Review of "The Attack"

 I am reading Kurt Schlichter's latest book The Attack. I am about half way through it, but thought so much of it that I had decided to do a book review. Fortunately for gentle readers, Mike McDaniel at the American Thinker is a faster reader than I am and has published Book Review: Kurt Schlichter's The Attack.

On January 8, I posted Terrorists attacks in America: for what are they waiting? In that article I suggested we are probably not facing more 9-11 style attacks. They’re just not necessary. More likely are hundreds of smaller attacks, synchronized to occur in every state across the country at the same time. Churches, schools, theaters, WalMarts, every place Americans gather, every place we’re vulnerable. I also suggested more sophisticated actors such as the Chinese military would strike at infrastructure, the Internet, the electric grid, water supplies, food supply lines, again, everywhere we’re vulnerable. Such attacks would kill tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands.

Schlichter has just released The Attack, a different kind of novel. It’s a first person, biographical history of precisely the sort of attack I suggested. I’m certainly no psychic, but one doesn’t need to be to forecast the kinds of terrorist attacks likely in an America with wide open borders and a mentally impaired President whose handlers appease, and perhaps even, ally with terrorist states. They certainly fund them.

As with Schlichter’s People’s Republic series, The Attack posits an entirely possible reality, told afterward through interviews with Americans who survived.

Gentle readers can read the rest of McDaniel's article. As McDaniel notes, it is a novel made up of a series of first-person accounts people around the world who were either involved in the attack or were affected by it. Schlichter tells it in a matter-of-fact way that belies the emotion of the size and horror of the attack. I also suggest that you read The Attack and keep a weapon close by at all times, because you never know not if but when it will happen.

The inhuman Use of AI

 Some people are early adopters of new gadgets and new technologies.  You have probably met some of these people, or maybe you know them.  They are the people who bought cell phones when they were large and stored in bags.  They probably had the first color television set, the first stereo record player on the block, whatever the new thing was, they were among the first to have it.  Back in college, the early adopters adopted Texas Instruments calculators.  We had been using slide rules to calculate complex quantities since Napier discovered logarithms.  I stuck with the slide rule for a while, until I found I couldn't keep up with students with calculators.  But instead of getting a Texas Instruments calculator, I bought a Hewlett Packard Scientific calculator, which was even faster.

If if you, like me, wait to buy the new thing until you determine a need for it, the early adopters have probably called you a luddite.  So, I was interested to read an article in The Atlantic by Brian Merchant entitled The New Luddites Aren't Backing Down. In this case, the people calling others "luddites" are the early adopters of artificial intelligence (AI).

When Molly Crabapple touched down in Italy last year for the International Journalism Festival, she expected the usual. The annual conference bills itself as Europe’s largest media event, and Crabapple had planned to give a talk about her career as an artist and writer reporting from the front lines of conflict zones. But as she took in some of the panels, she felt herself growing uneasy.

Sprinkled among the journalists discussing topics such as the war in Ukraine and the state of podcasting, some of the speakers were promoting the use of generative AI. She overheard someone say that journalists write too much, that much of their work could be automated. “I was like, this is disgusting,” she told me. “Why isn’t anyone going to challenge this?” When it came time for her own panel, she decided to do just that, saying onstage, “The use of generative AI is not only going to destroy my industry—it is going to destroy all of yours, if you’re anyone who creates anything … If you’re anyone here who creates, it is in your interest to fight these generative-AI platforms.”

Crabapple then released an open letter with the Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting, calling on publishers to ban generative AI from replacing human art and writing in their operations. Nearly 4,000 signatories added their name over the course of the year, including the MSNBC host Chris Hayes, the author Naomi Klein, and the actor John Cusack. But though Crabapple has found her supporters, she noted a particular kind of backlash as well: “Anyone who is critical of the tech industry always has someone yell at them ‘Luddite! Luddite!’ and I was no exception,” she told me. It was meant as an insult, but Crabapple embraced the term. Like many others, she came to self-identify as part of a new generation of Luddites. “Tech is not supposed to be a master tool to colonize every aspect of our being. We need to reevaluate how it serves us.”

What a concept, that the technology should serve us rather than we serving it. The use of AI to replace actual writers is incredibly dangerous. It has the potential to concentrate in even fewer hands the official narrative. It is bad enough now with so many in the mainstream press essentially being scribes for the administration. But there are still independent journalists who look at all relevant facts and offer counter narratives that give us a better understanding of the issues.

But it is not just that it places the information you and I get into a few powerful hands. The act of going out and finding and interviewing sources, of sifting through those sources, evaluting the relative weight of credibility, and of making sense out of chaos is a fundamentally human act, one which no machine should be doing, even if it could.

In our many conversations, those who view themselves as new Luddites made clear to me that they do not want to reject the many technologies that have improved our lives, or send anyone back to the Stone Age. They know that above all, the first Luddites wanted a seat at the table, a say in how technologies were used to facilitate activities foundational to the human experience, such as work. If they had shared in the gains instead of being left to starve, if they had been given agency over their technological destinies, they would not have taken up their hammers.

Work intrinsically gives meaning to life. But Klaus Schwab and the sycophants of the World Economic Forum believe that in the future most work will be done by machines, so fewer people will be "needed." Thus, they posit that billions of us must be "eliminated" as useless eaters. Oh, and they are pretty sure we won't need elections either. Wonder where they got that notion? But the world really needs all of us, working for each other. You never know from where the next big idea will come, after all.  Electrical lines will always need repairs, for instance. And robots cannot build or repair roads. Or will the billionaire WEFers build and repair their own water heaters, air conditioners and refrigerators?  Can they build and repair their own aircraft?

But there is more to life than Schwab dreams, of course. There is art in all its forms, whether music, or painting, or sculpture, or writing great literature. AI may be able to mimic art, but it will never create it, because it is, at heart, a machine. It is not, and never will be human. Perhaps a philistine like Schwab doesn't understand human culture, but if he gets his way, he will find it a very poor world indeed.

Government Agencies Should Justify Need for Guns. You and I Do Not Need To.

 We often hear that nobody "needs" a 30-round magazine to hunt deer, or that nobody "needs" more than ten rounds to defend oneself.  People who have no idea about guns, self-defense, or tactics are all too happy to tell us what we "need."  Of course, the Bill of Rights is about "rights" not "needs."  Each individual should evaluate for himself what are his needs.

But government agencies are another matter.  As Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms notes If Anyone Needs to Explain Why They Need Guns, It's the EPA and a lot of other federal agencies too. As Knighton notes at the end of his piece "After all, I’m not sure I want to trust guns to an agency that thought a mud puddle counted as “navigable waters” in any way, shape, or form."  I would hope not.  It sounds silly, but this was actually a thing with these whack-jobs

Gentle readers can read the amounts of their tax dollars wasted on providing EPA agents with weapons, ammunition, and training. Since the EPA typically brings civil suits rather than criminal proceedings, which would be the domain of the Department of (in)Justice and the FBI, one wonders if these are not Obama's national security force? Remember that Obama said during his campaign that "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." One has to wonder what all these federal agencies are doing with all these guns? The Department of Energy or the Social Security Administration...what the heck?

These agency heads and others need to defend their agency's need for and use of guns. On the other hand, you and I do not. Period.

America First Sometimes Means America Fights

 I was drawn to Kurt Schlichter's article today at Townhall because, just as my Pastor had made the point that sometimes you should give hate a chance.  God hates people peoples' sins, and therefore we should hate it too.  Thus, Schlichter suggests Conservatives (should) Give War a Chance. Schlichter is correct that as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:8 there is a time for everything, including war. Sometimes, rarely, you must fight. Some things are worth fighting for.

It seems bizarre that I have to tell fellow conservatives this, but it’s sometimes OK to go to war. We’re fighting right now, and some cons about our current armed conflict are up in arms. But war is not inherently wrong. War is sometimes necessary. Sometimes it’s not. And sometimes, a war is poorly run. For example, in America, that “sometimes” is pretty much the entire last 30 years. But that does not mean that war is never an option. Sometimes it’s necessary. Conservatism is not pacifism with lower marginal tax rates.

Again, I don’t know why I have to say this, but I do. There is a strain of modern conservatism that believes all war is inherently wrong and done solely for the sake of corporations and blah blah blah blah blah. I get the cynicism. I deployed a couple of times. But this idea that there is nothing worth fighting over outside our borders is childish. It’s not conservative. It’s just lame. And people should stop thinking it.

Schlichter points out that we should only go to war when our national interest is clearly at stake. This does not mean going to war to advance the profits of some corporation or another. And if some corporation has invested a lot of money in some third world hell hole ruled by tyrants who have "nationalized" the corporations' investments, well, tough luck. It does not mean interfering in wars around the globe that do not affect us like the Russia - Ukraine conflict. It also does not mean funding such boondoggles. But when it involves the clear national interest, such as when we are being invaded (which we are), then we don't apply a proportional response. No, we put such an overwhelming response that they will talk about it for generations such that nobody even thinks of doing again.

Gentle readers can read Schlichter's piece. What must be understood is that all war is not wrong. Some wars are necessary to defend your country, your freedom and culture, and your family. Just as aggressive violence against another is wrong, but self-defense is justified, so the counterpart for nations prevails.

War is not inherently wrong. Sometimes, war is the answer. Sometimes we’ve got to fight. Not all the time, and not stupidly, but sometimes. We can distinguish between situations. We should not be fighting Russia in Ukraine. We should be fighting Iran right now because if we punch it in the nose, it’s going to stop escalating, as is its pattern. We can’t substitute clichés for thought. We can’t just babble about forever wars as if it’s our fault that we have been under attack by these mutants for over 40 years. I am America First. And sometimes, that means America Fights.

For The Children - No Really

 Alan Korwin is an unusual writer at Townhall.com, which is a shame because he is an excellent writer, writing Gun Laws of America through now 6 editions. But today, he is writing An Open Letter On Utopian Pacifism. What? An essay by a gun writer on pacifism? What gives? But if you know the history of "Utopia" it might clue you in to Korwin's philosophy...and mine for that matter.

I’m a Utopian Pacifist. Although I’ve written ten successful books on American gun law*, I support no weapons of any kind on the surface of the Earth, in an era of enduring peace, prosperity, harmony and abundance.

It turns out this is impossible (utopian). The problem is The Four Horsemen of Human Havoc: angry hungry stupid and wicked.

...snip...

If I could wave a wand and make guns disappear, the brutal communist Chinese dictatorship would make new ones. And the Italians (Beretta), Brazilians (Taurus), Russians (AK-47), Austrians (Glock)—all armed nations would be in business making the iron river. Including basement tinkerers.

Wands are fiction but you can imagine a gun-free world—just think back to pre-gun times. What you get is Genghis Kahn with rampaging hordes, Julius Caesar and Roman Legion crucifixions, Vlad the Impaler, universal serfdom and endless millions horribly murdered. A gun-filled world paradoxically turns out to be more civilized, with safer neighborhoods—even though evil people and government tyrants rampage constantly. Our guns help control them.

A gun-filled world is actually more civilized than a gunless one, with sword-bearing bad guys committing slaughter.

...snip...

I stand by my philosophy, and await the day when evil evaporates and guns are no longer needed. Until then, the Marines have it right: Peace through superior firepower. Do not submit to elitist demands to disarm you.

I didn't come up with this formulation, and I don't remember where I first heard it, but I will shamelessly use it: There are only two ways to change a person's mind. You can either use persuasion or force. Persuasion is the only moral and civilized way. If both parties are armed, persuasion is the only way. The gun is the great equalizer, making the old, the frail, the weak the equal of the young, the healthy and strong. Thus, the gun is a force for good, with nearly 1 million defensive gun uses per year, most with no shots fired.

Along the way, Korwin throws out some interesting statistics.  For example, did you know that the shooting sports are more popular than golf?

Gentle readers should read the entire essay, and follow Korwin's advice: Do not, under any circumstance, give up your guns. And keep fighting for your gun rights, if not for yourselves, then for your childrens' sake.

The World Is A Dangerous Place

At the American Thinker today Victoria White Berger writes about the experience she and her husband had of buying their first gun, a .38 Special revolver. Her story can be found at Our First Gun. I would have pointed out that they should have obtained two guns, unless they were always together, and should have gotten their permits for concealed carry too. But baby steps, right?

It’s a .38 Special revolver. Up until one month ago, I had scant idea what such a gun looked like or could do. My husband eventually made the decision to get a gun, which surprised me a little as he is a very peaceable man. Yet, he is a lover of the U.S. Constitution: peaceable, but no fool. This week is our 30th anniversary. For our anniversary present, we bought the gun together.

We have talked about buying a gun over the past few years. We live in the South in a semi-rural area bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Traditionally, gun ownership is considered mostly normal here. It is by and large a quiet, working-class, family area, and nobody thinks of gun ownership as a threat to anyone but to those with evil intent.

However, the current reasons that many, many more are buying guns are not the past’s ‘regular’ reasons; nor were our own reasons, this week, in any way ‘regular.’ It was a scary decision, but we are not interested in being shot, molested, raped, or carted off from our home. We would rather take a stand for ourselves, for our lives. Our reluctance to submit to the growing tyranny in the United States has reached, if not our doorstep yet, a place in the core of our hearts. This is happening everywhere, to all sorts.

Isn’t it interesting how much firepower the FBI commands, and how they regularly and with impunity break down the doors of the common people now? Isn’t it curious how Joe Biden makes such a big noise about guns, but lives, travels, and sleeps in fortresses of one sort or another -- stationary or mobile?

We all have our reasons. In my case, I had had a revolver since 1976 but didn't carry it. A revolver is a good choice for a first gun, because they don't require as much maintenance.  Then 9/11/2001 happened and I realized that we were not safe. I came to realize that we had never been safe, that we were always our own first responders, and that we always need to carry our weapons with us. But that realization came over time.

In the meantime, please read Ms. Berger's experiences, and encourage your friends and acquaintances to at least think about getting some kind of self-defense training, possibly getting a gun. We pray we will never use it, but the normal state of the world is a dangerous place.

Shadow Banning?

 You may have heard of somebody complaining about "shadow banning."  Usually, it is someone who makes money off his or her blog, and usually it is because they are saying things the Left doesn't like.  Well, as it turns out it is happening to John Petrolino at Bearing Arms in an article entitled Social Media Censoring 2nd Amendment News Just By Searching!?!?

The technocratic overlords who run Meta, and whoever else is in the pocket of the U.S. government, the deep state, or otherwise affixed via Operation Mockingbird, have truly jumped the shark. The other day when I was searching for my own work here at Bearing Arms via a search engine, I could not find the piece. That multi-colored logo did not deliver, even when I put the full title of the piece into the search. It actually happened again with another article. Alphapet Inc. is not the only company that’s putting the clamp down on searches they find disagreeable. I got a ping the other day about a search in a Meta property that did not go according to plan.

My friends over at News2A.com were doing some research for an article that they were working on. Much like many journalists, leaning on social media for details or information gathering, News2A was cruising Facebook. Just lurking in some solid 2A pages will provide a luscious amount of fodder to look into following up on. In this particular instance, they got an angry notification after trying to execute their search.

I have to confess to finding it hard to find my own blog sometimes on the search engines, whether bing or google or even Duck Duck Go. Shadow Banning? Who knows