"When I Was Young." (opens in separate window)

a trans action

friday, october 3rd, 2024

What have we learned since the murder of poor Charlie Kirk two (3) weeks ago?

First, it’s an open-and-shut case. Tyler Robinson’s own parents turned him in.

Perhaps some other young creeps were involved, but, obviously, the assassination didn’t require a vast conspiracy utilizing the extraordinary talents of the Impossible Mission Force. Since rifles became common just before the Civil War, it’s never been terribly hard to shoot a man giving a speech. (What’s gotten harder lately is getting away with it, due to all the cameras.)

Your ability to put-up with leftist societal problems is in direct proportion to your distance from it.

Second, this was another example of the recent but now growing phenomena of Trans-Related Terrorism. In decades past, transgenderism was correlated with sex offender serial killers, but not with school shooters, murder cults like the Zizians, or political assassins. But lately…

The murderer shot Charlie while he was answering a question about the growth in Trans Terrorism. Why? Presumably because he loved his trans boyfriend/girlfriend and thus hated Charlie, who therefore was guilty of hate for being hated by an assassin.

Less hate-driven Establishment voices are trying to obfuscate Kirk’s killing by claiming it was driven by “nihilism.” Echoing Walter Sobchak’s observation about nihilism in The Big Lebowski, “Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos,” a New York Times reporter argued:

But if previous periods of violence could be understood as clashes of grand visions for the nation, today’s ideologies are just as likely to be nihilism and despair.

But nah, it’s not nihilism, it’s the transgender mania of the past dozen years.

If anything, the transgender dogmas that have been ascendant from twelve years ago to ten months ago are not nihilist, but gnostic. Transgenderism enthusiasts believe that while it may appear to you or me that their sex is plain for all to see, but in the true reality, not this horrible simulacrum that we see with our eyes, they, personally, are entitled to know a secret reality in which they are actually the opposite sex.

The transgender movement tends to attract support from smart nasty people and dumb nice people. The latter tend to assume that they are saving gentle victims from bullies, and thus are clueless that they are empowering some of the worst people in the world.

My guess is that a declining fear of going to hell plays a role in these kinds of suicidal shootings, along with a declining dread during the Internet Age of being sentenced to life in prison and thus stuck in a small room for the rest of your life. One way to discourage the handful of young men who commit these kinds of crimes would be to make clear that if convicted to life in prison they won’t get access to their phones for the next sixty years.

On the other hand, after two weeks, there still isn’t much evidence that Charlie’s killing had much to do with left-wing movements besides transgenderism.

As I’ve often noted, you don’t even have to be terribly left-wing to be into trans. For example, a couple of decades ago, I was plagued by cancellation attempts by the famous free-market economic historian Donald/Deirdre McCloskey. Among the high IQ, the transgender ideology tends to appeal to folks who are extremely self-interested.

On the other hand, there is only vague evidence at present that the shooter was motivated by broader left-wing concerns, much less that he was tied into left-wing activist organizations.

The Trump administration has announced a crackdown on Antifa, which, in general, is well overdue. Antifa originated in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s as Stalin’s bullyboys who fought in the streets his chief enemies, the leftist Social Democrats, whom the Soviet supremo denounced as “social fascists.” As a student of Marxist historical science, Stalin was convinced that the main enemy of his Communists were Socialists, while rightists like Hitler were merely a doomed distraction.

Not surprisingly, German Antifa were a failure at stopping the Nazis because they were so focused on overthrowing Stalin’s foes, such as elected Social Democrats like Hermann Müller.

Something we saw over and over in 2020 was that the first night of rioting in most cities would begin with local black kids using Black Lives Matter marches as cover for their lowbrow looting of the local Target store or similar. But the next morning, trained white rioting hobbyists would pour into town from the rest of the country, and the anarchy would get a lot heavier from then on, such as burning down the 3rd Precinct police station in Minneapolis.

Antifa is by no means as centralized of an organization as was, say, the Communist Party USA in 1939, when on Aug. 23 vast numbers of American Communists switched on a dime from being anti-Nazi to being anti-anti-Nazi on Stalin’s orders to promote his Hitler-Stalin pact.

On the other hand, Antifa appears to be vastly better organized nationally than, say, the Ku Klux Klan has been in recent decades. Yet that doesn’t stop the feds or the public from acting like the KKK is a going concern.

As far as I can tell from Andy Ngo’s book Unmasked, Antifa tend to be organized primarily locally. For example, Rose City Antifa are the notorious Portland branch.

But they have enough national ties that when leftist rioting aficionados fly in from out of town, they have local rioters to crash with. And when they get arrested, national networks mobilize to pay their bail over Venmo and GoFundMe, and old-time Stalinist members of the National Lawyers Guild handle their paperwork to bail them out of jail so they can be back rioting again the next night.

But the Trump administration will likely need to justify its crackdown by all the bad things that Antifa have been up to over the past ten years or so, rather than by this particular assassination case.

Granted, the endless Antifa/Black Bloc rioting in Portland in 2020 was tied into the state of Oregon deciding a few years before to provide free “gender-affirming care” to any mutant who showed up, which is why Portland rioters’ mug shots are so horrifying.

Still, at present, there’s only faint evidence that the clean-cut Utah killer had much contact with Antifa, much less with so many other leftist movements that it would be convenient to tie to him.

As New York Times opinion columnist M. Gessen (formerly an angry homely woman named Masha Gessen who recently declared itself nonbinary) explained in the Old Grey Lady, Charlie, like a Nazi official, just had it coming:

I have been thinking of historical, rather than fictional, antecedents, in particular the assassination in 1938 of a Nazi diplomat in Paris by a Polish-German Jewish teenager named Herschel Grynszpan…. He decided to kill someone he saw as a representative of the force that was immiserating his loved ones. If the information released by the Utah investigators so far proves accurate, Tyler Robinson might have felt a similar desperate fury….

The comparison seems straightforward: The person who was murdered was a representative of a hateful ideology, the person thought to have killed him was a deluded young man who may have tried to oppose that hatred in the most destructive manner imaginable. And yet something in the transformed landscape of this country tells me I’m not supposed to say so.

So, M. took to her column in The New York Times to say that Charlie was a veritable Nazi, in the sense that M. is full of murderous Nazi-like hate for the murdered man.

And because, as we all know, M. must be a Good Guy/Good Gal/Good Thing to be a Times opinionist, therefore the murdered man must be hateful, in the sense that M. is hate-filled toward him.

Granted, M. can’t find any evidence that Charlie, who might well have been President around 2050, was any more of a hater than, say, Ronald Reagan was.

But that, by all evidence, Charlie was a great guy while M. is a not-so-great whatever is not the point. The point is that M. is hate-filled toward Charlie, and therefore the murdered man had to be hateful.

After all, what else could possibly be true? That a New York Times transgender opinion columnist is not a good person?

© 9.24.2025 by Steve Sailer, "TAKI'S MAGAZINE".

A Day In The Life.

Up at 8:15a on Friday, a nice 65°F day ahead, I made the new coffee, tried to shake the cobwebs from my brain, and tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", scanned the news headlines and weather forecast. Coffee was great, and I got ready for the day. Sherry would be here around 1p.

I had breakfast, answered some email, returned selected voicemails, and got ready for the day. About 15-20mins before Sherry arriving, I got a call from a fake Wells Fargo "advisor", alerting me to a crypto scam for $200,000 against one of my several investment accounts, and he had almost all of my into. I was on the phone for 2+hrs, and with Sherry, wound-up at one of the York branches, with alias info to give the teller, to get a wire transfer done. It's a federal offense (felony) and I backed out of it quickly, and went inside with her to alert a senior branch officer to the scam. Stay away from https://www.spritz.finance, who they wanted to quickly do the illegal transfer of my money. I don't know if they are complicit, but beware of anyone calling from your bank, trying to make you transfer money quickly. IT'S ALL A SCAM!

Sherry left after 4p, to get some errands done, I changed bank passwords, and unwound on the back patio. I was still a little unnerved that the callers had so much financial/personal info about me. By 6p, I'd made some dinner, watched the evening news, and switched to History';s "The unXplained" until 1a. Lights out.

I slept-in until 10a on Saturday, a partly sunny, cool 72° morning, I made coffee, and had a few smokes in the garage, while the Ol' HP desktop and large 27" screen, warmed-up and loaded all the lines of code. I scanned the news headlines and checked the weather radar maps, had breakfast, and spent the next 3hrs listening to local WSBA-910AM's every Saturday rebroadcast of an earlier "CP Show", and finally got ready for the day around 2:30p. T-storms were moving up from the south-southwest, and while sitting on the back patio, having a smoke, amidst all the mowers, power tool etc noise, I could feel drops.

No real rain all day, despite the ominous system and clouds moving thru, until late evening; then we got some moisture. I made dinner, watched the evening news, and switched to History "Greatest Mysteries" and Discovery's "Expedition X", until 1a. Good night., Irene.

Up at 8a on Sunday, a sunny, blue sky, a very nice 64° start to the morning. I made "Blue Batavia" Coffee, fired-up the dekstop, scanned the news and weather, and planned the day ahead. I started a load of laundry on my way down from the morning shave and shower, wasn't hungry yet, so just had more coffee. Nice and quiet today, in the complex.

Another day, another nutcase's shooting in NC, at a waterfront bar, which I'd heard about last night. And yet another church shooting in Michigan. People shot, injured and killed senselessly. Charlie Kirk publicly assassinated. ICE Agents under attack everywhere. The Nation's in a bad place and time, now, thanks to the leftists-communists-Marxists-socialists and anarchists.

Have you ever heard this story?

Sis stopped by after her haircut app't in Lancaster, and her stop at Wegman's, with Chinese food and her homemade chili, and we had a nice 2hr visit. I watched some news about another shooter event unfolding from the morning and follow-ups on several others, switched to History's "American Pickers, so my anger didn't ruin the day. After dinner, I continued with "AP" and switched to Discovery's "Homestead Rescue", for the new season, until 11p. Lights out.

Up at 7a on Monday, a high cloud, partly sunny 61°, forecast to reach 80°, morning. I tuned into the "CS Show LIVE", until 9a, and switched to the "CP Show LIVE" until 12 noon. After breakfast, I got ready for the day, I left for 3 points south of York, at 12:30p. Traffic was light, and I made good time; back by 1:30. I unpacked, made a Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup, and went thru a pile of snail mail.

I skipped dinner, checked The Weather Channel's coverage of the 2 active, Caribbean/Atlantic hurricanes, watched the evening news, and switched to History's "Ancient Aliens" MotorTrend's "Iron Resurrection" until 11p. My friend and cleaning lady, is in at 8:30, so it's an early night, as I'm up at 6a.

Awake at 4a, I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't get there. So I got up -- hello, 0-DARK-THIRTY -- made coffee, and tried to shake the dust from my brain. After firing-up the desktop, I scanned the weather and news, had breakfast before JoAnne arrived at 8:30, and decided to take a short nap after feeling tired, while JoAnne finished and left. I had a couple things to do in the afternoon, and soon it was time for the evening news: the government shutdown dominated all news everywhere, with each side blaming the other. Meh. This crap should have been resolved weeks ago.

After the news, I watched the new season of Discovery's "Homestead Rescue" until 12 midnight, and unplugged.

Up at 7:30a on Wednesday, a very cool and dry 61° -- the 80s will be back in a few days -- sunny with some high clouds, I made coffee, skipped breakfast, scanned the weather and news, and tuned into the "CP Show LIVE" from 8-12. Day 1 of The Shutdown.

Several million worthless gov't employees are "furloughed" with retroactive back-pay. Useless lawmakers furloughed with retroactive back-pay. US Military, National Security apparatus still working and ALL benefit checks will go out on time. Heh. What's really changed? Here's a detailed list of what stays open, and what closes.

I worked on thinning-out my email's (Thunderbird) Inbox, for both email accounts (gdnctr and Comcast), from over 200 down to under 10. I also checked the day's schedule, and saw that I had 2 10-12' trees to prune for neighbors, but otherwise, nothing pressing, so I'll do that around 1p, when th grass has dried-off, from the morning dew. I did 2 quick, local errands, came home and had a late lunch. Sherry has a 'full plate' this week, so I might not see her. By 4p, I was tired, so I took a short 90min nap, got up to some leftover, Turkish-grind, Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee, and watched the 6p evening news.

After 15mins of the news -- all about the gov't shutdown (yawn) -- I switched to History's "American Pickers", and Discovery's "Ghost Adventures: House Calls" until 1a. Lights out.

Up at 8:15a on Thursday, a blue sky w/ high clouds, very cool 52° -- I turned on the heat for 15-20mins! -- made coffee, and tried to warm-up. I missed the 6-9a "CS Show", so I tuned into the "CP Show LIVE" from 9-12, and attacked the morning's email load, checked the day's schedule, and just relaxed. I made Sausage Gravy and Biscuits and for a late breakfast, around 12:30p.

I ran a couple errands, took a short 90min snooze on the LR couch, called Sherry, returned several voicemails on my phone, and enjoyed the afternoon on the back patio. After the 6p evening news, I switched to History's "Ancient Aliens" and MotorTrend's "Roadworthy Rescues" until the 11p new, and unplugged at 12:30a.

Tomorrow starts a new week, here in the "Journal" and with a Medicare insurance phone conference call on Thursday, the rest of the week is clear. Sherry will be here briefly in the late afternoon tomorrow, after she works a sting for Daughter, Hollie.

Can This Nation Be Saved?

How does America survive when its citizens belong to two divided camps that believe fundamentally incompatible things?

Over the last century, there has been a trend to establish “truth and reconciliation commissions” in countries emerging from periods of political terrorism, totalitarianism, or civil war. The idea is to acknowledge the crimes and atrocities that past governments officially sanctioned and to recognize the harms inflicted upon their victims. As is often the case when governments “disappear” citizens or throw them in gulags for their politically incorrect thoughts, it is the not knowing that haunts society. Survivors bereft of answers are left with inconsolable anguish. The commissions are often used as a first step toward healing grave national trauma.

It is no surprise that these commissions generally reflect the worldviews of the prevailing government that forms them. Communist governments are quick to label past “right-wing” officials as “murderers” while memorializing their own murderers as “patriots,” “civil rights heroes,” or “noble revolutionaries.” Politically correct governments in the West today often describe their countries’ founders and explorers as “racists,” “white supremacists,” “imperialists,” and perpetrators of “genocide.” No doubt the people alive during these consequential periods of history would take exception to the way they are remembered, but descendants — particularly descendants in possession of political power — maintain at least a temporary monopoly over the historical record.

Although Democrat politicians and Antifa terrorists hysterically insist that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are “disappearing” foreign nationals present in the United States illegally, that is not the case. But that lie — reinforced on Wikipedia, news blogs, and on cable news — is one example of an expanding collection of diametrically held beliefs deeply dividing the American people.

American citizens who are opposed to open borders and endless illegal immigration see ICE agents as performing critical tasks. Those agents put their lives on the line every day in order to arrest illegal aliens — many of whom have been convicted or accused of serious crimes — and protect American citizens. Democrat politicians, however, call ICE agents “slave catchers” and “Gestapo thugs.” Antifa-affiliated groups dox officers, physically harass them, and even shoot at them. Anarcho-communists explicitly call for “war against ICE.” Deranged leftists stalk and assault Trump administration officials every day. Half of America sees ICE officers and administration officials as selfless patriots who should be honored for their sacrifices. The other half wishes them death.

Right now, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and MSNBC are all very upset that former FBI director Jim Comey has been indicted for false statements and obstruction of a federal proceeding. Well known political pundits are all repeating some version of this statement: We have never had a situation in which a sitting president has so brazenly used the criminal justice system to go after his political adversaries. This is the consensus opinion of those with institutional power, prestige, credentials, and fame. Yet to ordinary Americans without such accolades, elite talking heads sound delusional, amnesiac, and maliciously deceptive.

How could people at the height of their professions possibly describe the indictment of Jim Comey as “unprecedented”? Americans for the last ten years have witnessed abject weaponization of the Justice Department and Intelligence Community against Donald Trump, his associates, and his supporters. Hillary Clinton’s inner circle and Barack Obama’s trusted lieutenants co-opted the FBI and CIA in an effort to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy, remove him from office, and perhaps even convict him for treason. Jim Comey was instrumental in this nefarious plot. As journalist Matt Taibbi said the other day, “think of the national security implications of implying that your own president is a spy for a foreign country. ... You can’t have an FBI director doing ... these sorts of manipulations and lying to Congress about it and getting away with it.”

Yet the Russia Collusion Hoax was only one part of a decade-long effort to destroy Trump and his MAGA movement. Democrat saboteurs working for the U.S. military and CIA turned a normal conversation with the president of Ukraine into Trump’s first impeachment. Then the FBI and DOJ labeled the January 6, 2021 protest against election fraud an “insurrection” — laying the grounds for Congress to pursue a truly unprecedented post-presidential impeachment. For years, FBI director Chris Wray lied to Congress and the American people about the presence of federal law enforcement officers near the Capitol that day. Only in 2025 have we now learned that nearly three hundred plainclothes FBI agents were on the ground during the protest, along with dozens of informants and an unknown number of other federal and local agents, all possibly stirring up mayhem.

Millions of American have long suspected that agitators created a “false flag” event on January 6 to help justify a subsequent prosecution of Trump and preclude his running for president once again in 2024, but those voices were censored on social media accounts for years. Treating Trump and his supporters as “terrorists” became the order of the day for both Silicon Valley and the federal government.

FBI SWAT teams busted into the homes of ordinary families in predawn raids to make it clear to MAGA Americans that — unlike Antifa and Black Lives Matter members — conservatives enjoy no “privilege” to protest official authorities in the United States. The Biden administration — arguably illegitimate since it secured election “victory” through blatant mail-in-ballot fraud — chose not to cool things down for the sake of the country. Instead, Obama holdovers running Biden’s presidency prosecuted high-profile members of Trump’s team for spurious “crimes”; harassed conservative parents opposed to leftist teachers’ racial and sexual indoctrination of their children; and intimidated pro-life activists, Christians, and just about any group too closely aligned with Trump’s MAGA agenda.

Joe Biden called Trump a “criminal” and the “greatest threat to democracy” and labeled MAGA voters “violent extremists” and “domestic terrorists.” His administration conspired with social media companies to censor Trump and conservatives, generally. The Biden White House created several iterations of a “disinformation” board in order to justify Democrats’ continued ban on political dissent and conservative speech. Lawfare specialists successfully disbarred Trump’s lawyers for simply defending their client’s interests. Then Democrat lawyers orchestrated civil and criminal lawsuits against President Trump in half a dozen jurisdictions while working to remove him from the 2024 ballot in crucial battleground states. And after years of Democrats calling President Trump a “Russian agent,” a “dictator,” a “Nazi,” a “fascist,” and every other kind of vile pejorative that might convince a delusional listener to believe that Trump had no right to live, at least two separate assassins tried to murder him last year — killing one civilian and wounding several others in the process.

At no time in American history has such a large-scale effort gone into utterly destroying a political candidate, his aides, and his voters. Yet when the current DOJ decides enough is enough and that at least one of those anti-Trump conspirators should be prosecuted for perjury and obstruction, the mainstream media lose their collective mind.

We may not be emerging from the aftermath of a terrible civil war, but America is nonetheless desperately in need of a “truth and reconciliation commission.” The problem is that we can’t agree about anything. One side believes in God; the other side largely does not. One side believes men can become women and that a “climate apocalypse” is about to kill us all; the other side refuses to play along with such fantastic delusions. One side believes that government agents provide citizens with certain privileges; the other side knows that rights exist regardless of bureaucratic decree.

It may be impossible to reconcile a nation so divided about basic truths. We must try. Otherwise, the real trouble is just beginning.

© 9.28.2025 by J.B. Shurk, "American Thinker".