Thinking Cap Sunday...

It's often a mistake to accept something as true merely because it's obvious. The truth is only arrived at by the painstaking process of eliminating the untrue.

— Sherlock Holmes

"Dressed to Kill"

This morning, here's an interesting read from the Human Interest blog...it's about intelligence failures on the Ukraine and media response, but the article does an excellent job of explaining whet we've been talking about for years — the inability of the "chattering" classes...politicians, pundits, academics...to get past their own mental blocks:

 Through the rose tinted lenses of a media community deeply convinced that President Obama and his dovish team are the masters of foreign relations, nothing poor Putin did could possibly derail the stately progress of our genius president. There were, we were told, lots of reasons not to worry about Ukraine. War is too costly for Russia’s weak economy. Trade would suffer, the ruble would take a hit. The 2008 war with Georgia is a bad historical comparison, as Ukraine’s territory, population and military are much larger. Invasion would harm Russia’s international standing. Putin doesn’t want to spoil his upcoming G8 summit, or his good press from Sochi. Putin would rather let the new government in Kiev humiliate itself with incompetence than give it an enemy to rally against. Crimea’s Tartars and other anti-Russian ethnic minorities wouldn’t stand for it. Headlines like “Why Russia Won’t Invade Ukraine,” “No, Russia Will Not Intervene in Ukraine,” and “5 Reasons for Everyone to Calm Down About Crimea” weren’t hard to find in our most eminent publications.
...
But this massive intellectual breakdown has a lot to do with a common American mindset that is especially built into our intellectual and chattering classes. Well educated, successful and reasonably liberal minded Americans find it very hard to believe that other people actually see the world in different ways. They can see that Vladimir Putin is not a stupid man and that many of his Russian officials are sophisticated and seasoned observers of the world scene. American experts and academics assume that smart people everywhere must want the same things and reach the same conclusions about the way the world works.

Read the whole thing. The article suggests that the problem is lack of political diversity in academia and the MSM. It reminds me an incident here at the Bunker a few years back...we were spending a pleasant evening with friends from out of town, including one veteran reporter from a major newspaper. At one point she absolutely gushed that her newsroom perfectly mirrored the gender, racial and sexual composition of America (although, if I remember correctly, they were still looking for 1/2 of a gay Asian guy to round things out).

My Sweetie asked the $64,000 Question — how many reporters/editors had a CCW license, as the state was "shall issue?" "None, of course!" was the answer. She followed up with another doozy...how many editors/reporters are pro-life? "None, of course!" Finally, the reporter said, "I don't understand what you're getting at here..."

Truer words were never spoken! Because the newsroom superficially mirrored America, the people who worked in that newsroom believed — absolutely believed — that the newsroom was "diverse." In reality the newsroom was about as intellectually diverse as a meeting of the Young Socialist Alliance.

That is one of the key issues we're dealing with as we move toward an Armed America, the portion of our country who can't imagine the world isn't exactly as they see it. And they are not just committed to their delusions, but they relentlessly demand that the government (many of whose members share those delusions) codify their fevered fantasies into law.

Armed America stands as absolute refutation to the fundamental delusion of the chattering classes. Interesting take on exactly this point from a member of said class, Michael Barone, "Concealed Carry Laws Have Changes America Regardless of the National Debate on Gun Control:"

The result has been that over the years the entire nation has become carry-concealed-weapons territory, as shown in a neat graphic in a Volokh Conspiracy blog post by Dave Kopel. Back in 1987, some people, myself included, worried that such laws would lead to frequent shootouts on the streets arising from traffic altercations and the like. That has not happened -- something we can be sure of since the mainstream media would be delighted to headline such events.
...
In any case the argument that concealed-weapons laws would lead to more violent crime has been about as thoroughly refuted as an argument can be. One lesson, I think, is that responsible citizens tend to behave like responsible citizens, even if — or perhaps especially if — they’re armed. Another lesson is that the national political dialogue can be totally irrelevant to what really happens in American life.

We are seeing the normalization of Armed America at the same time as our blood enemies are on the verge of seeing their fondest fantasy acted out in Connecticut — door-to-door confiscation of firearms by armed government agents.

Here's a great summary of gun confiscation in America (also the wonderful illustration) from the LevelHeaded.net blog, which notes:

If you’ve been involved in any gun debates lately, you’ve likely heard, or maybe even said, “No one is coming to take your guns.” This is often used in an effort to belittle the opponents’ arguments by making them appear to be paranoid conspiracy theories. Even Vice President Joe Biden says that the very idea is “bizarre”. I decided to see if I could come up with any examples of gun confiscations in America in an effort to come to my own conclusion. This list is the result of that research.

Remember, gun control is a religion, a belief system, that because it is created of whole cloth without regard to reality requires faith on the part of its adherents. That faith includes a belief in a Better World In The Misty Future. I've talked to literally hundreds of antigun activists over the years, and it is my sense that the Better World they dream of is not a gun-free paradise, but rather a world in which we gun owners are dragged from our homes and hauled off for "re-education"...or whatever. That is the end game I've had described to me a thousand times.

I suspect what happens in Connecticut over the next few months will be a defining moment for both Armed America and the gun confiscation movement.