The standard expression “You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out” could be adjusted for recent events in Iran, where a popular uprising doesn’t seem practical: “You can vote your way into Islamic Theocracy, but you have to shoot your way out”.
It seems that very few Iranians could shoot their way out even if motivated to do so. The Islamic Republic has a near-monopoly on gun ownership that is enforced by a Chicago or New York Democrat’s dream common sense gun control system:
The Islamic Republic purportedly has only about 20 percent support (poll), but could probably have stayed in power forever if not for its nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, Hezbollah, Houthi, and Hamas programs.
Could the divergence between what the Iranian people supposedly want (to the extent that can be measured accurately) and what the Iranian government does lead some Americans to reconsider their goals of eliminating private gun ownership in the U.S.?
(Note that I personally believe that Americans’ right to own guns will disappear within the next few decades, a casualty of our immigration system and the consequent creation of a society that is a random assemblage of humans without any common values. When shooting jihads such as Ndiaga Diagne‘s become weekly events, Americans will gladly surrender their rights in exchange for a perceived safety advantage, just as Americans meekly surrendered their First Amendment right to assemble during coronapanic.)
Phil, here we go again with another of your brutal, divisive, racist rants. Of course no rational American wants to reconsider their righteous goals of eliminating private gun ownership. Among many issues here, you cleverly ignore the inherent racism of gun violence in America (as you do in every other instance of white supremacy and colonization). You apparently weren’t aware that year-to-date there have been approximately 250 blacks shot and killed in Chicago (and similar huge #s in other large cities nationwide), while only 4 whites have been shot and killed in Chicago. Clearly, gun violence is hugely and disproportionately racist and we urgently need new laws and enforcement to confiscate and eliminate guns from our society! Michelle adds that your racist, dishonest rants are repugnant in every way. Allahu Akbar!
Alhamdulillah, Barack, that one day Chicago will be gun-free and your Library will be safe from gun violence!
Agree with your pro 2A sentiment and, as a long time reader, hope that your prediction will have a fate of your earlier AI prediction from over a decade ago, when you called AI “just a symbolic logic” or something like this.
perplexed: I remember saying that academic AI labs were useless! I don’t remember saying that LLMs and the modern statistical approaches to AI were going to fail. But 99% of academics who got funded to do AI had nothing to do with LLMs/stats.
Philip, image processing AI was done in academia. Not at MIT though. DNN, Convoluted NN, its all academia. Recalling mentioning some of this before here. Of course, everything on digital computers is symbolic logic, so, as some academics say, you were not even wrong. But wrong in sentiment. LLMs came from chatbots and they were around for a while. I was a general intelligence sceptic as well. And, deep in my heart, still is. Models need lots of computing power. Working with underpowered tech help models which are replacing help desks is very frustrating.
Figure the Iran situation is going to make Amerikans ban all private drone ownership, though today’s Tel Aviv explosion after Trump’s declaration of victory was caused by a missile.
Tucker Carlson said that Israel was ugly so the bright side of these Iranian attacks on random civilian areas of Israel is that it gives the Israelis a chance to build some new stuff that will be considered aesthetic by Tucker. (Gemini: During a monologue, Carlson claimed he had traveled extensively throughout Israel and that “nothing of beauty has been built there since 1948”. Carlson contrasted Israel with Beirut, Lebanon, which he described as “one of the most beautiful places on the planet,” and accused Israel of carrying out a “war against beauty” in the region.) Because the Israelis have gotten good as running into shelters and because a lot of the missiles lately seem to have been falling short and coming down on the Lebanese, the Iranians are mostly damaging buildings rather than people.
Nobody was hurt in Tel Aviv. It was again a partially intersepted cluster missle, with large 220+lb cluster scoring a direct hit on an apartment building. The building still standing, the divorced dude whose apartment absorbed the direct hit went to a shelter for the first time.
perplexed: Thanks for this info. Fair to say that the man suffered a bigger loss as a consequence of his decision to get married than he did from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s attempt to destroy the Zionist entity?
Philip, per his interview he sometimes hosted his kids in his apartment, so seems that he has real split custody of his children. Now he has to take them to McDonalds.
perplexed: He was temporarily displaced to a different apartment or hotel room by the Islamic Republic of Iran. It appears that he was permanently displaced as a father by his plaintiff! “sometimes hosted his kids in his apartment” could be a grandparent or an uncle role.
Neither agree nor disagree with what will be legal in 20-30 years as I can’t predict the future as well as Philip, but it is going to be tough as hell to take the guns back in a nation that will have 500 million or more by then and doesn’t really have the guts to enforce sentences in excess of a few years in most cases. What a change in law will most likely lead to is a no-go zone for the federal government outside of urban areas. So I disagree that the government is going to be successful in getting the guns back.
GLoG: I guess the fact that the U.S. can’t deport more than 0.001% of the migrants who live here contrary to federal law (not to say “illegally”!) lends support to your theory. Here’s some 2016 data: https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates
> Could the divergence between what the Iranian people supposedly want (to the extent that can be measured accurate) and what the Iranian government does lead some Americans to reconsider their goals of eliminating private gun ownership in the U.S.?
This reminded me of a short talk from Bauman, he calls this “Separation b/w power and politics”
> a casualty of our immigration system
It’s not largely immigrants committing school and other mass casualty shootings, you nonce.
No, but at the current time immigrants are committing all of the highly publicized terrorist attacks that seem to shape public perception strongly and therefore might shape public policy at some point. And this is a situation that seems likely to continue. Thank you for your contribution, but the adults are having a discussion here.
Anon: of course you’re right that the majority of shootings in the U.S. aren’t jihads waged by migrants. But for whatever reason, Americans have apparently become accustomed to the idea that native-born residents of Baltimore shoot and kill other native-born residents of Baltimore (for example). A jihad waged by a migrant or a child of migrants, e.g., Omar Mateen, child of Afghans, attacking the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community in Orlando, is more upsetting.