Category: Uncategorized

Freedom and Personal Pronouns

Recently I saw a desk sign that said “my personal pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her.’” When I asked the woman why in the world she would feel compelled to state what was readily obvious, she said that a supervisor had insisted on these signs in order to ensure that a person with gender dysphoria was not “disrespected.”  Stop shaking your head, this is real.

In this country, within certain limits, you can feel free to express yourself openly on almost any subject (unless you’re a conservative, and then you’re just a nazi). If you want to paint your body green and stand in the public square and tell people you identify as an evergreen, as fir as I can tell that’s permitted. You can’t be obsence, you can’t put public safety at risk, but within the borders of those boundaries public discourse is pretty open.  It means we have to tolerate certain unwelcome ideas, but by and large its a good deal for everyone.

So, while I think it’s just fine that a person who is confused about what’s in their shorts has every right to use personal pronounds like xe, xer, xim, and the like, and for people of Hispanic heritage to refer to themselves as Latinx (or Latiny, or Latinz), the really great thing about freedom is that I don’t have to care.  I don’t have to call you by your preferred label: I’d rather call you by your name.

The Buy In

Essentially what the left wants normal people like you and me to do is buy into their craziness. They want you to care about their personal mental disease that says that even though they have an “innie” and were named Kate at birth, they can by force of will grow an “outie” and call themselves Jake.  If they can normalize their sickness, then they can demand special rights.  People often think that gender determines hiring decisions.  Rarely is that the case.  It’s more likely you didn’t get hired because you have pieces of metal sticking out of your face that make it look like you were standing in front of the jewelry counter when it exploded, and ink up and down your arms making you look like a a scratch-pad for a tattoo artist.  Yep.  That could be the reason!

Gays & Lesbians Are Not Gender-Confused

Now, let me step back a moment and suggest that there are people who, whether it is a matter of personal preference or a predisposition from birth, like having sex with the person of the same gender. In an older, darker time, we referred to these folks as “queer” and that was indeed a hateful term. I know of no one who actually uses that term commonly today. What turned the tables for the gay community in gaining acceptance and the right to marry a person of the same gender was the dignified and lawful approach they took to gaining the rights they sought to achieve. One of my doctors is gay. I have a pair of friends who live on the coast who are gay. I could call any of these guys and say I had a problem, and help would be on the way in an instant, because irrespective of whom they choose to have sex with, they are great people. The same goes for a former sister-in-law who is lesbian. She’s a terrific person, and a great nurse. Her whole life is about helping people. They don’t worry about personal pronouns, they instead worry about personal relationships. I am not suggesting any animus in any way toward people who honestly and openly declare that this is their lifestyle. I say more power to them.  And, I think the Supreme Court got the marriage issue absolutely right.

Look in Your Shorts, Dude

But, honestly, I can’t understand the whole idea of gender identity. To me it’s pretty simple. You look down in your underwear and if you’re carrying a load out front that swings when you walk, it’s pretty clear your gender identity is “male.” The idea that you could choose to be anything else, is like water believing it could choose to be air. If you believe this is possible, let me suggest you don’t stick your head in a bucket of water and try taking a breath.

Moreover, if you believe that you should in some way attempt to self-mutilate your genetalia to “become” a woman (and here I’m thinking of Wheaties-boy Jenner) then pay attention: no matter how much you want it, you are still going to be a man. You may have certain organs carved into different shapes by charlatans masquerading as physicians, but at the end of the day you’re still a guy. Likewise, if you have a piece of rubber transplanted to where your vagina used to be, your slipadictomy surgery doesn’t make you a man, it just means you’ll bounce if you fall forward.

But, hey, if that’s your thing, freedom means you can do it. You can do it here. You can’t do it in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Malaysia and in certain parts of the Philippines because in those places you’d take a long fall off a tall building. But here in America you can do it.

You Can’t Make Me..

Here’s what you can’t do. You can’t make me care. You cannot force me to respect your craziness because craziness is not something I respect. You can’t make me endorse your craziness; hell, I don’t even endorse my own craziness! You can’t demand under pain of imprisonment that I use your preferred pronoun. You see, while you have every right to claim to be Xerxes from planet Gombo and insist on the pronoun “Uytr,” I have every right to think you’re a nutcase who needs to get his meds refilled. You cannot legislate morality, and you cannot criminalize “misgendering” a person because about half the time fools dress in a way to make it unclear what they are (because let’s face it, they don’t know themselves or so they say).  Back when judges used to enforce the constitution  and the rule of law instead of sticking up for liberal ideas, the First Amendment protected my ability to choose what to call you.

So, when someone tells me their preferred pronoun is Xe, my response is going to be I don’t care what you prefer, I will call you what you are: crazy.

Now, that’s fairly simple, isn’t it?

 

Sometimes I am amazed by what I don’t know. Until I read the excellent book Indian Country, by Kurt Schlichter (get it here for your Kindle), I had not really heard the terms “cisnormative, cisgendered, and cis-het.”

Apparently when we assume cisnormativity (i.e., that girl looks good in that dress) and we “assume” someone is male or female based on their job, their looks, or the appearance of secondary sex characteristics like beards and boobs, that is somehow “hurtful to the trans community.”  Does that make your head hurt a little?

It is amazing to me that when liberals talk about how we all have to listen to what science says about climate change (which, truthfully, is not real science), we are then told to ignore science when it tells us that there are two genders: male and female. While a scientist would make an exception for a genuine hermaphrodite, the vast majority of the world’s population is either male or female.  Really, there is no confusion on biology.  It’s binary.

In order to normalize abnormal behavior (women behaving like men, men dressing and behaving like women), the “trans community” tells us to quit assuming gender identity because in spite of being able to tell precisely what you are by looking in your shorts (or panties), they believe that by dint of will they can assume a different “gender identity.”  I’ve tried this with my checkbook.  If I had assumed I was a millionaire and I wrote bad checks, my guess is that the law would tell me that mathematics is a field with right and wrong answers, and ask me to visit a nice correctional institution for re-education in the basics.

Now, this is not to say that there are not people who, rightly or wrongly depending on your religious views, like to have sex with members of their own gender, or to somehow label that behavior as abnormal. Since at least the time of Sodom and Gomorrah such behavior has been existent and although likely a dominant factor in the spread of HIV, has not really hurt anyone yet. It’s not abnormal.  It may be a choice, or it may be a genetic factor, or it may just be the way God made people.  My view is that we are to live and let live. I accept that people may want to engage in a homosexual relationship, and that’s fine with me.  Just leave me out of it.  Don’t want to see it, and don’t want to be it.

Similarly, I understand that men may want to shave very close, put on lipstick and a wig, and speak an octave or two higher than they would normally in order to be seen as a woman.  I think it’s kind of dumb, but, hey, what do I know?  Just leave me out of it. I am cisgendered, and I like it. I sleep with a woman. That’s the way God intended it for me, but hey, maybe not for you. Jesus said judge not lest you be judged. Live and let live is a good motto for me. And truthfully, no one should care what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom. And that goes double for the government.

Unfortunately, not everyone has that “judge not” mentality. I get it. I imagine it could be hurtful in a very real physical sense if someone bigoted beat up someone who had made different choices with respect to how they wish to express their gender. I’m against that. But I’m also against being verbally slapped around because I “assumed someone’s gender.” I don’t care what you think you are. Just don’t try to foist off your world view on me.  I’m not going to pretend that what you’re doing is normal in my world.  If I look at you funny because you are dressed like a woman and use the urinal in Target (yes, that happened to me), I do not need a lecture.  I need you to leave.  And, no, I don’t care if that’s hurtful to you.  Sorry (but not really).

It’s not my world view that men should act as women. And I don’t care if I hurt your feelings by assuming your gender. Your gender is what nature provided. If that’s an uncomfortable truth for you, then I suggest you learn to live with disappointment.

There is a school of thought that says when you’re in a hole the first step out is to stop digging. Yet, in spite of this, everyone from politicians to airline CEOs seem committed to the idea that if bad communication can create a problem, it can also make it worse.

Take the recent kerfuffle over the doctor thrown off the plane by United Airlines. Airlines, particularly legacy airline operations that have taken it in the shorts the last dozen years or so, have strugged for profit margins, and they have tried diligently to improve their images and their bottom line while at the same time reducing their costs (by cramming more seats in small planes). Whereas you used to get a meal fit for a toothless nursing home resident on aircraft, now, if you get a meal at all, you pay for it and it comes with plastic utensils that usually won’t cut the plastic housing your 100% inorganic protein source. Meals are gone, comfortable seats are gone, and attractive flight attendants are gone. Now we have so loosened the rules as to who can be a flight attendant that 60 year old 60 pound overweight males serve something resembling coffee on aircraft that used to be considered the Friendly Skies.

Flight Attendant:  Whatchu want?

Me:  Uh, Coke please.

F.A.   You too fat, boy, here’s a Diet Coke.

Dumbing down the personnel requirements, however, has not done much for improving the IQ of the people operating the airlines. United had to get its affiliated aircrew of four people to Louisville. Instead of putting them on the next flight, or using a different airline, they decided to bump passengers that had already boarded. In other words, it created the need to deplane the passengers, and then acted as though the aircraft had been oversold. Instead of ratcheting up the money offered to get someone off the aircraft it instead resorted to throwing the passengers off the aircraft that had already boarded.

One guy didn’t want to go. He’d been seated. He had a reasonable expectation of getting to where he was going. But instead, he was forcibly deplaned using techniques usually reserved for getting feces-slinging prisoners out of prison cells. And in the age of “everyone has an Iphone” the entire debacle was captured in living color for all the world to see.  Apparently the Chicago Aviation cops thought this would be a good time to go Rodney King on the poor guy.  This has spawned so many funny memes that you can hardly keep up!

Now, at this point, if the CEO had simply gone on TV and said “we really screwed this up,” they would be in better shape. Instead, he reveals the crew-routing rationale and tries to reassure not his customers but his employees. This is the really stupid.  Do CEOs get screened for their ability to communicate?

But even more stupid is the idea that you can’t empower employees to create a solution to this kind of mess. I recognize that it might have been easier to just say “well, no one took the $1000, so we had to kick someone off,” but until you’ve offered up to the maximum (roughly $1400) you don’t know. There are very few people who would not have taken the $1400 and a later flight. You can’t tell me the entire airplane was filled with people who wouldn’t have snapped up that deal like a hungry alligator. And even if you had to offer $2,000 to get people off, that’s a lot cheaper than the cost of this public relations debacle which at present is almost $1,000,000,000 in lost shareholder value. If I owned United stock right now, I’d be gunning for the CEO’s head on a platter.

Most people in business have a really dumb idea of what good customer service looks like. They look at the absence of complaints as the presence of satisfaction, when the two are not even close to the same thing.  There is one airline, however, that understands customer service perfectly.  They do their best everyday, but they don’t take any shit from people who simply refuse to be pleased either.  I like that!  You know who this is, right?

I hate flying Southwest. I hate not having an assigned seat. I hate the way the great unwashed use Southwest as the Greyhound Bus of the Air.  This is not SWA’s fault; their prices are the lowest going.  But still there is no more odious experience than being seated next to someone who is unfamiliar with soap and has no experience washing their nasty body odor off.  Or my other favorite, sandwiched between two Sumo wrestlers (or people who could BE Sumo wrestlers).

But the fact is, I fly SWA in large measure for these reasons: (1) if you have a boarding pass, you’re flying; (2) they get where they’re going; (3) usually they’re on time; and (4) they have great customer service.

Go to any airline in Atlanta to check a firearm and you immediately get crap about why you’re flying with a gun. For heaven’s sake don’t try to soft-pedal it and call it a firearm. They just look at you. Then they practically yell “You’ve got a GUN?” Yeah, thanks for that sweetheart now the TSA think I’m freaking Abdul the Butcher.

Go to the SWA counter, declare your firearm, sign their little form, take your bag to TSA, all in a days work. The SWA people are friendly, helpful, and they move you along. They do not act like they’ve never seen a firearm before. In short, they know what they’re doing. You can’t say that about many of the other airlines. In fact, some go to great lengths to suggest you can never travel with a firearm (Frontier, I’m talking to you!).

So even though I don’t much like the on-aircraft experience, I fly SWA because they offer good value and they get where they’re going. That’s a lesson that the legacy airlines need to learn. Because right now, SWA is kicking their ass, while they’re busy kicking the customers.

Every four to eight years, depending on whether parties change position, the United States Attorneys in every state get replaced. The normal process is that attorneys who have helped their party retake power and donated substantial sums of labor or money are rewarded with assignments to be the chief federal prosecutor in their state.  These are, with few exceptions, noble, honorable men and women who understand they have a serious job to do.

They are appointed by the president, usually with home-state senatorial approbation, and then quietly confirmed by the Senate. Rarely is such an appointment ever controversial. Richard Callahan was the appointed US Attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri under Obama. He was a former circuit judge and he did the job well.

He replaced Catherine Hanaway, a Republican who held the job under George Bush. Hanaway was a political appointee and she spent her eight years going after people who put the most vulnerable in our society – the elderly – in danger. The difference in the quality of the two attorneys: almost none. The effects of having 8 years of a Republican and then 8 years of a Democrat: the same. Laws enforced, prosecutions mounted, justice done.

So, if Catherine Hanaway had done such a great job, why was she asked to resign? Not because she wasn’t good.  Not because she wasn’t effective.  She was both of those things.  Rather, it was because her party lost the election and she serves at the pleasure of the President. The same for Mr. Callahan. Both of these professionals – and I use the term advisedly – understood the rules going in. These are not lifetime appointments. No one expects them to be.  You serve, and you move on.

Now we have the Great Preet-ender, Preet Baharara, who has the audacity to suggest that he was removed because of on-going investigations. There is never a time when any US Attorney’s office doesn’t have an active investigation. That has been true in every US Attorney’s office in the last 30 years. Yet on change of administration each attorney gives up their office and walks away because that is what is expected. Except for the Great Preet-ender who suggests that he was fired for political reasons. Of course he was fired for political reasons. That’s the whole point! Trump wants to install someone in whom he has confidence and reward someone who played for his team. It is the way the world works.

Lest anyone think a saint is having his halo removed, it’s worth noting that Preet was not exactly Mr. Nice Guy when it came to how he did his job. He slapped a gag order on Reason magazine, ostensibly to preserve the confidentiality of an investigation, and then forbade them from publishing anything about the gag order until it was lifted. This is called “prior restraint.” Generally prior restraint is forbidden under the Constitution because while penalties for publishing false information only become effective after all appeals are final, a prior restraint becomes effective immediately and without any avenue to appeal it. It is thought to be the most intolerable of actions in violation of the First Amendment.

It is also noteworthy that The Great Preet-ender never went after the Clintons for the Clinton Fraudation, never hauled in the Wiener-mobile to discuss those naked selfies that went out across federally-regulated wires, and similarly never actually jailed anyone on Wall Street for the great crash of 2008. There are some legitimate questions to ask about these failures, but it is amazing that more wasn’t done.  That’s particularly true when a supposedly pro-consumer US Attorney was in place to take those actions. Instead he went after people who criticized his office and the Courts.  As one pundit put it, he either went after Reason magazine’s commenters as a means of chilling the First Amendment, or he did it as a favor to a judge who was insulted.  Either of these reasons is a corrupt one.  That seems less like someone interested in justice, and more like someone interested in good press.  He is ambitious and apparently unrestrained by the ethics of his office.  I worry about men like this enforcing the law in America.

In his “honor” I have re-written the lyrics to The Great Preet-ender as follows:

 

Oh, yes, I’m the Great Preet-ender

Pretending that I’m doing grand.

I gag the press,

I’m a freaking mess,

My firing, I don’t understand!

There is a difference between civil disobedience – which normally involves a protest against an unfair or unlawful practice, and civil unrest which is meant to undermine the foundations of our republic. When Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, she was engaging in civil disobedience. Her actions hurt no one, and put no one at risk.  In other words, she didn’t wreck the damned bus.

When students during the Vietnam war held sit-ins in administration buildings to protest the war, they were disobedient, and they were protesting in a way that caused harm to no one. No one’s life was endangered. No one was hurt. They were arrested, likely paid fines, and made their points. Rosa Parks, the Vietnam War protesters, and their like all made a difference, even though their actions did not move the needle violently, it did set into motion an unstoppable force that eventually drove change.

Recently in response to the Trump inauguration, protesters set up a profanity-laced operation to disrupt the festivities:

The first part of the plan involves blocking “all of the major ingresses into the city especially from the south,” meaning that the protesters intend to make entering the District from Virginia an “absolute nightmare” by closing highways and stopping trains headed into the city.

“You have to start looking at the idea of the metropolis is what actually furthers and enables global capitalism and the modern state,” Carrefour said. “The reason why Black Lives Matter started blocking highways was because highways and the normal functioning of the city is actually intrinsic to things like racism.”

It is impossible to unpack all the stupidity in these statements. Making ingress and egress an “absolute nightmare” will not stop Trump from being sworn in. All it will do is put the protesters lives at risk, along with putting at risk all the people who regularly use those roadways. To put the lives of innocents at risk because you’re angry that your side lost an election is just plain stupid.

More importantly, the idea that the normal functioning of a city can be intrinsic to racism is an especially stupid construct. It requires a person to believe that everyone who works in a city, or lives in one, is engaged in the business of racism. Think about that. The District of Columbia, where 95% of the population voted for Hillary Clinton, is not now nor has it ever been lilly-white. According to the Census, in 2010 the population distribution was 50.7% black, 40.6% white, 9.1% Hispanic (of any race), 4.4% other (including Native Americans, Alaskans, Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders), 3.5% Asian, and 1.6% mixed.   If over half the city are persons of color or mixed race, then that means that those people are engaged in the business of racism if you assert that the ability of those folks to come and go is somehow intrinsic to racism.   This makes no sense.  But little of liberal thought does.

But if you actually examine the language above carefully, here’s what you’ll find. The protesters actually believe that capitalism is racism, and that some fairer socialist order would improve the lives of people of color. Nothing could be further from the truth. Socialism is a constant game of musical chairs, where one group is always busy trying to steal resources from another. Freedom and socialism are at odds with one another. Ordered liberty is far preferred to rampant socialism as a means of improving the lives of all Americans.

Since you cannot reason with stupid, you have to teach stupid a lesson.  You can have peaceful protest without having to get arrested.  You can make your voice heard without throwing rocks through windows, beating people you don’t agree with, and setting cars on fire.  You can be a citizen and — I know this is hard to imagine — you can write a letter, or make a phone call to your elected representative.  I have no problem with protesters; it’s in our DNA to protest.  But I have a problem with protests that place lives at risk and destroy property.  These must be met with swift law enforcement response, and with judicial impatience.  Do not grant bail.  Do not let these people out until they’re prosecuted or plead guilty.  And anyone who pleads guilty and destroyed property makes restitution and serves jail time.

It now appears that the US Attorney understands this.  He has said that rioters who burned cars and looted (and there were 230 arrested) will now face a 10 year felony rioting charge.  Thankfully, Obama threw out all the drug users from the prisons, so there’s plenty of space in Club Fed for these thugs and asshats.

If you make stupidity too painful for people, eventually they get the message.

 

You love your spouse. You are sometimes away on business, so you know your wife needs a firearm at home for protection. So you choose a nice .22 pistol for her and take her through the process of loading and shooting it. Then you put it in the nightstand drawer confident your spouse is protected.

Except, your spouse is now in more danger than if you hadn’t purchased a gun at all. Let me see if I can explain.

I started my career as a respiratory therapist. In spite of knowing a lot about medical practices, I go to a doctor when I’m sick. I tell them what’s hurting, listen, and generally do what I’m told. I do not go to the doctor to tell him what’s wrong with me, and demand that he perform certain tests or give me certain meds. I figure if I am paying for a service, I should get it.

Similarly, being a lawyer, I do not draft trusts and wills. I leave this to lawyers who make it their practice to do this kind of thing. I believe clients are best served by experts who can give the exact advice that is necessary in a given situation.  You hire the best people if you want the best results.

When I took my CCW training I went to an instructor who had actually been in a gunfight as a concealed carrier, and who actually had some strong opinions about what people who carry concealed should do in a defensive handgun situation.

I point all this out because every one of us has things that we’re good at, and things that we’re not good at. For example, I am very good at appellate legal work, and I can hold my own in most medical emergencies until help arrives. I am a good target shooter, and I train with my firearms at least once every month, putting a minimum of 100 rounds down range each time I train. I train with pistols and rifles. I can hit where I aim. But I cannot teach firearms.  At least, not yet.  That NRA Instructor Course is in my future.

I am not a firearms instructor. I am also not a tactical firearms instructor. I have not made a habit of learning and practicing force-on-force drills so that I can teach someone else how to respond in a force-on-force encounter. I know nothing other than what I’ve read of the psychology of combat or the effects of stress on shooting. So, for me to teach someone about what to do when confronted with an armed intruder in a given situation is basic firearms malpractice. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me how it happens on a regular basis with people who believe that a handgun is the same thing as a home security system, or perhaps, a magic wand.

Today I was at a firearms range in Florida, and in the lane next to me was a 70-year-old woman with absolutely zero time with a firearm. Observing her body language and demeanor, it was obvious that she was frightened of the gun and intimidated by what it could do. But this did not deter her husband from teaching her all the wrong things to do in terms of personal defense.

First, I have to say, he gave her the standard lecture on where to point the gun, and how to aim it. This was done well. Then he ran the target out four feet from the bench. I heard him say “this is the range where an attacker is going to be, and this is where you need to learn to shoot. Handing her a .22 pistol he had her shoot five rounds. If the target had been a man, he would have had a couple of rounds in his abdomen, and she would have hit absolutely nothing vital. He never discussed combat anatomy, the reason why bullets tend to kill people, or any of the other things necessary to help her understand what she was doing. He taught her a set of muscle-memory movements. That’s all he did. And he put her life in danger because she now thinks she’s qualified to take on a home intruder.

I can hardly list all the things this man did that did his wife a disservice. First, teaching her that she only needs to be able to shoot close up is a bad idea. The Tueller information suggests that there is a 21-foot zone of danger with an attacker. At a minimum, every person who uses a handgun for self-protection must be able to shoot from 21 feet through 3 feet. They must be able to hit where they’re aiming. That’s especially true with a .22 caliber handgun because the bullets are small and it takes a lot of them (or a lot of very critical hits) to stop an attacker.

Second, and I don’t mean to sound condescending here, but women tend to be gentler souls and generally unwilling to harm others. Burglars, rapists, robbers, and criminals in general lack this depth of empathy, and so focusing on the mechanical skills without consideration of the psychological or emotional setting is also malpractice. Before any woman can defend herself she must be committed to the idea that if she pulls out her pistol she is likely to kill someone, and she must be ready to do that. More importantly, she must understand that it is her or her attacker. One of the two is not going to go home, and it needs to be the bad guy. Being able to pull the trigger is more than just muscle memory – its an acknowledgment of the severe emotional consequences that are sure to flow from that trauma.

Finally, as the husband was running out of ammunition to show her the combat handgun ropes, he hung a new target, loaded the pistol with 10 rounds, and told her to just rapid fire and shoot the heck out of the target. It took her 20 seconds to “rapid fire” the rounds and at 4 feet almost 7 of them hit the target. 8 were on the paper. Two missed completely. At four feet.

“See,” he said, “you did fine.” You could see the relief on her face. My guess: she’ll never touch the pistol again, and he’ll never take her shooting again. That’s also a crime.

At this point I asked him if he was planning on taking her to a concealed carry class. “No,” he said confidently, “she just wants this for the house.” When I explained that a CCW class carried with it an understanding of the laws regarding defensive handgun use, as well as some information on tactics, psychology, and other useful information, he shrugged. “She doesn’t need that.” This is the equivalent to teaching someone to drive by saying “turn this key in the ignition, put it in gear, and drive.” All the information is accurate, but it’s terribly incomplete.

The quickest way to get someone killed with their own handgun is not to prepare them for that frightening and violent encounter that will require its use. Someone is going to kick open a door. They’re going to have either a gun or a knife, or maybe just a claw hammer. They’re going to close that 21 foot distance in less than 1.5 seconds. Then they’re going to strike.   Only someone trained under the right conditions can respond in a manner that is effective. A gun is not a magic wand. Few criminals are scared of a woman with a gun because most know a woman is not likely to use it. So they advance within range and take the weapon. So a woman who uses a gun has to be both extremely confident and assertive in order to project the kind of authority necessary to stop an intruder.

“Please don’t come closer,” said in a plaintive voice, is no substitute for shouting “Get on the ground, now!” Similarly, holding the weapon like a live snake while your hands shake is not likely to convince anyone you mean to use it. These are the reasons that women taught to use a firearm need to be taught what they need to know by someone who has been trained and certified by the NRA on how to do it.

This means you need a basic handgun course (to qualify for CCW) and then a second, more in-depth class on combat handgun techniques that will enable you to deploy the firearm in a defensive manner.

In so doing, the class needs to teach the law for your jurisdiction, and to give you all the things you’ll need to know about what happens after the last ejected cartridge hits the ground.

In Army basic training there was a great poster that showed the rows of tombstones at a military cemetery. It said: “Let no man’s soul cry out ‘if only I’d been better trained.’” It was a reminder to our basic training instructors that they were teaching us how to stay alive. When you teach your spouse to use a handgun, you’re doing the same thing. And if you teach her just enough to get killed, that will be something you have to live with.

Can we talk?

I’ve been listening to you now for, the last three years, and I have to tell you, as difficult as this is to hear, that you lost the election. And by that, I do not mean to just state a fact, I mean to lay the blame for the loss, and for the subtotal destruction of the Democratic party, at your feet. You. You lost the election.

When Alabama’s football team loses, Nick Saban doesn’t blame the players, or the referees, or the sportscasters on the SEC Network. He shoulders the responsibility. It’s that way with every coach, because, at the end of the day, the buck stops with them.

You were the captain of the ship, and you ran it aground early and often on the shoals of Corruption Island. And, Hillary, this is the important thing: I voted for you in 2008, and I voted for Obama in 2012. I’m a “liberal trial lawyer” and when you lose me, well, you’ve lost a lot more than just your base. You’ve lost any chance of winning.

So, let’s go back to why you lost in 2008. You lost because you expected name recognition and your history as first lady (and, albeit minimal, your experience as a senator) to carry the day. Your message was “I’m ready.” You lost because a better message came along: hope and change.

So, if you had done any kind of autopsy on your still-born candidacy in 2008 you would have seen that your lack of a message was the key to your defeat. But instead the lesson you took away from 2008 was “I need to cheat to win.” It was exactly the wrong message to take away. But in 2016, you knew that you had to drive a stake through the heart of Sander’s candidacy to win, and you lucked out and had an opposition candidate with an ethical disposition who decided to debate on policy, and not point out your other problems.

But rather than just thanking your lucky stars that you drew Sanders, instead, you colluded with Donna Brazile, your mole-in-residence at CNN, to get debate questions early so that with the help of your polling arm you could craft the least offensive message. You aimed not to offend. By abandoning the most inspiring message, you abandoned the idea of leading. Instead, you served up Shredded Wheat when the cool kids were clamoring for Captain Crunch.

Now, the blue wall states are filled with lots of Union workers. These are people who work hourly jobs, pay taxes, and believe in the companies and country. You’ve always had their vote in the Democratic party, and so you took them for granted. You’ve always had the black vote, but again, you misread the mood of the country and decided to throw your lot in with Black Lives Matter (more). You chose to demonize those factory workers by saying they were racists and homophobes. You called out the police who were doing no more than their job.  Worse, you defamed them.

Ask yourself this, Hillary: would Harry S. Truman ever have thrown his lot in with a thug who committed a strong-arm convenience store robbery and then viciously assaulted a police officer? While tragic that it cost the young man his life, my guess is Harry would have said “serve’s him right.” And while the BLM folks were marching, blocking traffic, and generally chanting “What do we want: dead cops” you were discussing how the white folks had to abandon their “white privilege.”

This is just a bit of rhetorical advice here Hilly, but as a general rule if your outfit costs more than some families make in a calendar year, you probably shouldn’t be lecturing them on “white privilege.”

I don’t know what your messaging consultants get, but it ought to be life without parole. “We’re going to raise taxes on the middle class!” Whose bright idea was that? What, were the lot of you blind drunk and creating a narrative for an alternate universe, or do you just really not understand how tone-deaf that is?

Then there’s the climate-change, global-warming, environmentalist poppycock. Did you walk in one day and say “What can I do to ensure that the entirety of Appalachia will vote for my opponent?” Because I’m pretty sure that’s the only way your insipid “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of work,” speech found its way on to your teleprompter.

Now, I realize that suburban New York doesn’t have the best broadcast TV service, but surely you and Bubba can afford either Cable or Dish (note: get the Foundation to pay for it). Surely you must have seen all the horror brought to our shores (and the countries of Europe) by terrorists. Perhaps you didn’t do well in Geography, but if you’d employed a few consultants who were not in the Muslim Brotherhood, you might have learned that a lot of those terrorists were, in fact, Muslim. And you might have learned that their holy book, the Quran/Koran in fact urges them to kill “infidels.” For the record, infidels are people who make up about 96% of the United States.

Stop! I know what you’re saying to yourself right now: “not all Muslims are bad!” That’s true, and not all snakes are poisonous, but if I come upon one in the woods the safe bet is to assume that slithering thing on the ground, is, in fact, the single most venomous reptile in the world. You see, when Trump was analogizing Muslims to Skittles, you missed the point. The point isn’t that the majority of the bowl is perfectly safe, the point is that you can’t tell the poison ones from the good ones unless you eat them. And by then, it’s too damned late.

But rather than craft an intelligent message on immigration and terrorism, you relied on your own Muslim Brotherhood Mole and you decided that we needed to bring in half a million Muslims.

Now, I have to tell you, while that played really well on the Left Coast, and the glitterati were throwing roses at your feet, the factory workers, Vietnam and Iraq War vets, and those of us with working brain cells in the middle of the country were going “Did we just hear that right?” We thought that was fake news. But, no, it wasn’t. You were serious. Even though you knew you could not establish their bona fides, you decided you were going to throw open the doors to the migrants and allow them to do to America what they have been doing to Europe over the last eight to ten months. Maybe you missed the stories, Hilly, so here’s a tip: Google “rape and Cologne” and see what you get.   Watch the videos. That’s what you wanted to do to us.

Did you see that? Did you see the way the women were violated? That brings us around to the issue I care the most about. The Second Amendment. The moment you announced that you wanted to consider gun confiscation, you lost the vote of veterans and gun owners. We all believe we have a God-given right to protect ourselves against violence, and your desire to “regulate” gun ownership was simply cover for creating large and tall barriers to lawful ownership and possession of firearms. You were so scary as the anti-gun candidate that the NRA spent a record amount of money to defeat you. And Hilly, girl, let’s be honest. You don’t give a shit about “gun safety.” The Pulse Nightclub was not some poor misbegotten fool who got his finger stuck in the trigger guard! It was a madman who passed all the background checks your husband signed into law (and that have not stopped a single felon who wanted one from possessing a gun). It was a Muslim. It was a terrorist. Crafting law to deal with this kind of madman, and making it fit the millions of lawful gun owners is simply not possible. As the Minnesota shooter confirmed, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. And more to the point, if these draconian gun laws are going to be effective, you need to tell your friend Barrack to stop pardoning people with gun convictions. Either we want to stop gun crime, or we want to let all the deadbeats out of jail: you can’t have it both ways.

Other than pandering to Black Lives Matter (more) you never said a single thing on the stump that might actually have gone toward fixing the problem for Black America. You have not said anything that would have made life better for a single lawful immigrant family. Instead, you took the Hispanic and black votes as a given, and were surprised to learn that a lot of people took Trump’s message about “what have they actually done for you” to heart. You can’t keep drawing on the bank if you don’t have any credit there!

So, let’s be honest. Your people helped you craft your message. You, as the candidate, approved that message. Both of you were so blind to the reality on the ground in the country (particularly in the majority of counties across the country that went for Trump) that you never saw how many people you were alienating.

But then, there was that major faux pas, committed in September, that sealed the deal for a majority of the country: basket of deplorables. Those of us who identified with the vision of Trump, but had not signed on yet, were suddenly told that if we supported Trump we were deplorable. We were irredeemable. If your goal was to drive more people straight into Trump’s embrace, you were fabulously successful. In case you’re not paying attention, that should not have been your goal.

So, if you really want to understand why you lost, the first thing you have to recognize is, you could not convince the Pope he was Catholic if you used your rhetoricians to craft the message. I would also add that your delivery (and especially that hideous “why am I not 50 points ahead” debacle) made you look angry, unapproachable, and you were the mommy who was going to tell the kids to shut up or go to their room. You just looked and sounded mean. Not righteous anger, but contrived anger. Your anger came across as “damn it, I should not have to be campaigning; these people should just vote for me!” Ugh! You made us tired.

Now, the second reason you lost is history. And here, Hollywood can give us some analytical help. Remember Boris Karloff? Bela Lugosi? Vincent Price? These guys always played “villains.” In fact, they were such exceptional villains, they couldn’t get a role doing anything else. If you see a movie with Vincent Price, you know its going to be spooky. How? Because that’s all you have ever seen him in.

Cut now to your “life in review” video. Whitewater. Travelgate. Filegate. Chinagate, The Bimbo Eruptions, your efforts to silence Bill’s critics. Vince Foster. The “gifts” to the American people that you took home (and later were forced to return). And you hadn’t even run for anything yet, and you were already seen as a woman who would do anything to hold on to power. Those of us over forty remember.

Millenials, however, knew nothing of this, and they were never interested in history. You thought you’d skate by them. And then you did several things all at the same time that absolutely destroyed your candidacy.  You set up a private email server for your use as Secretary of State, communicated with the President and others on it, and stored classified material on it. You kept it completely secret, except from our country’s enemies. Then, Benghazi fell. Our ambassador was killed, and his body was put on display. You had never seen it coming. Worse, instead of getting it right, and properly attributing the 9/11 terrorist attack in Benghazi to radical Islamic terrorists, you instead said it was “due to a horrible internet video,” when you knew that wasn’t true, or, in the exercise of reasonable caution, you could have learned was not true.

Compounding this, you told the families of the slaughtered that you’d make sure the person who made that video was prosecuted (demonstrating a profound lack of understanding of the First Amendment). Yes, that’s right, you did not say “we’ll find the attackers and kill them,” you wanted to go after the people who made a mostly factual if irreverent portrayal of Mohammed. What were you thinking? Was that Huma’s advice to you? Because, it was bad advice.

Then, because you were running for the presidency, and because you couldn’t be seen as weak, or error-prone, instead of admitting you had screwed this up, you went before Congress and lied. You provided them with only the emails that had been sanitized through the State Department email system. You never volunteered that you had a private server. Then, when questioned about Benghazi, you deflected questions with “What difference, at this point, does it make?” What Americans saw in that moment was a woman who did not give two shits for those combat warriors who fought to save their friends and their embassy from invaders. They were clearly expendable. You could not be bothered to admit the error and fix the problem. Here’s another tip. The visuals of not caring about your overseas staff when they were attacked and killed makes people reticent to appoint you to the position of commander in chief where you might lead their children into future overseas debacles.

Here’s the ultimate irony: if you had admitted your errors, and stood up and been accountable, and promised to fix things, you might have had a chance at the Oval Office.

But, instead, once it was learned you had a private email server, and that you had not provided emails from that private server, Congress issued a subpoena. In case you don’t remember from Civil Procedure Class in Law School, a subpoena commands – it does not “request” production of documents. Emails are documents. You were under a lawful order to provide all your emails. Then, you, or someone in your employ, instructed your server host to delete 33,000 emails.

You are a lawyer. You know the law. You know that you have an ethical obligation as a lawyer to respond to a subpoena. You know you cannot destroy evidence. You know that it’s an ethical violation to do it. But you did it anyway. You explained it by saying all those emails were about yoga and your daughter’s wedding.

Hey, Hilly, I had three girls get married. We didn’t send more than 100 emails for all three weddings. And if you were sending 32,700 emails about yoga, you’re really not getting the whole idea of yoga. But more importantly, you had your people use a program that destroyed the data and made it unrecoverable.

And just like last time, you refused to take responsibility. You refused to stand up and say “we screwed up.” You fogged. You deflected. And just like no one believed the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, no one believed the Blooming Pantsuit of Mendacity when she blamed the vast rightwing conspiracy, right wing zealots in Congress, and the New York Times.

Your election loss was sealed then.

James Comey’s letter may have reminded people you were under investigation, but it didn’t put you there. His letter may have reminded them of your criminal acts, but you committed them. The letter wasn’t why you lost. You lost because you do not understand the truth, and you do not know how to tell the truth.

The Clinton Foundation didn’t help you. You can’t leave the White House flat broke and suddenly have $300,000,000 in the bank and not be doing something underhanded. You couldn’t throw open the books on the Foundation, so you fogged by talking about Trump’s taxes. It didn’t work.

And worse, you made it look like people who donated to the Foundation bought access to you by making sure to give them priority access at the State Department. That’s called “pay-for-play” and it’s unlawful. You managed to skate from prosecution because your buddy Loretta couldn’t find a criminal act in the biography of Bonnie and Clyde. But let’s be honest: no one thought you were innocent. No one. Not. Even. You.

So, what’s the story been? Since the election we’ve heard it was Fake News. We’ve heard it was the Millennials. We heard it was Wikileaks. We heard it was Russian Hackers. We heard it was Comey. We heard it was Putin. Maybe next week it will be Bill?

No.

The buck stops with you. You could have chosen honesty and won. You chose mendacity, and you lost. You are responsible. This falls on no one else. You could have won this. In many respects you almost won it simply because some people cannot be bothered to pay attention and learn the truth.

Even worse, you’ve created a bunch of fragile-ego snowflakes who now want to talk about how you won the popular vote, which is like saying that the team that gets the loudest applause wins the football game, not the team with the most points. They were so upset that they needed puppies and hot cocoa to deal with the fact that the adults are now running the country.

You’ll always have that popular vote – a figure vastly inflated by illegal aliens and all those people in Chicago and Detroit who voted two and three times – but you’ll never hold the reins of power in this country, because you don’t understand it, and you don’t deserve to lead it.

Now please. Shut up. Go back to New York and let the patriots run the country.