Pete:

A couple of years ago, I was talking to a former math professor in his early 70s. He said “I don’t know if there is an afterlife, but I hope not because I don’t want to run into my exwife.” The mentality we should have instead: We want to treat the people around us, we want to be doing things, so that every day is such that you want it to go on forever. If you have a 5 year old kid around you who is bored, you don’t say: Hopefully you will die soon. You say: There are a lot of things to do. So there is no reason to be bored.

Well, how 'bout that!

Any Phil Collins fans out there?

Meanwhile, Stateside....

"He's a fighter," right? Bunnysnoop? Is that right?

Presumption.

Via Colby Cosh, who's never had an abortion.

I love this line and will use it often.

It reminds me of this for some reason, maybe the uselessness of imaginary outcomes.

The other side of presumption.

BREAKING: Seoul says generals from the rival Koreas have begun meeting at the border to discuss how to ease military tension

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1024102520787005441

A letter says federal ICE employees called 911 while being harassed by protesters—but the Portland police did not show up, because the mayor had ordered them not to intervene.

https://twitter.com/wweek/status/1023983185292455936

Now lawns are racist -

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjZyH1sVsAAnikW.jpg

> Well, how 'bout that!

Wow, North Korea didn't totally abolish its military? Astonishing.

Over $1 Billion profit in 90 days!

http://fortune.com/2018/07/30/bitmain-valuation-profits/

A highly respected Federal judge today stated that the “Trump Administration gets great credit” for reuniting illegal families. Thank you, and please look at the previous administrations record - not good!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1024096373917016064

> Wow, North Korea didn't totally
> abolish its military?

Anyone who listened to what he said would find your sarcasm misplaced.

Forgiveness versus permission: still crunching the numbers.

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2018-07-31

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/303466/

Huh.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/376352.php

> You guys love the man more than any policy (or
> than any policy failure. You're old enough to be
> licensed to drive, and you sit around calculating
> his "attractions."

Not just me -

https://twitter.com/krobinson_3232/status/1024155904533573634

$1500 is cheaper than either 18 years of alimony and/or a life/career-ruining accusation of sexual assault

https://twitter.com/mombot/status/1024274430128664577

Is anti-Trump rage a logical response to having an ethically-challenged narcissist in the White House, or is it something else? In an interesting, if somewhat biased, Front Page Magazine article, Daniel Greenfield postulates that the Democrats have gone crazy raging over Trump and postulates the future that rage portends:

The House Dems have switched their slogan twice and no one cares. Legislative visionaries like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have never had an idea that didn’t involve their own careers. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton hollowed out the DNC and left behind a bankrupt dysfunctional shambles.

And they’re blaming that on the Russians instead of on their own self-serving shenanigans.

Trump’s victory tore the mask from the Democrats leaving them nothing but rage. Formerly mainstream Democrats are quick to embrace every insane lefty position from abolishing borders to supporting Hamas, not because they understand or believe in them, but because they’re “resisting” Trump.

The socialists think they’re winning. But they’re just the guys shouting things at a crazy mob. And the mob is not really for anything, it’s just enraged. It doesn’t want to build, it wants to tear down.

Tweak a normal person’s sense of outrage and they’re moved. Keep doing it a bunch of times and you can enlist them in a movement. Do it every 5 seconds and you drive them as crazy as rats in a Skinner Box.

Peak Outrage induces feelings of frustrations, fury, helplessness and despair.

He goes on to speculate that those feelings of helpless rage will lead to violence:

That’s why you have lefties gathering together to scream at the sky. That’s not the behavior of committed activists building a socialist future. It’s what happens when leaders drive people crazy. Everyone has emotional limits, just as they have physical limits. The madness of Germans at a Hitler rally or Russians mourning Stalin is the end result of people reaching the limits of their emotional sanity.

Madness ensues.

Uncontrolled displays of love and hate, riots, violence, suicide, murder, depression and psychosis.

The ultimate beneficiaries of Peak Outrage won’t be the socialists. Crazy people who have been mainlining hate and fear for a decade aren’t really interested in nationalizing health care. They’ll cheer socialism if there’s nothing else on the table and convince themselves briefly that they care. But what they really want is someone to liberate them from their rage and helplessness by destroying the two sources of those emotions, the reviled Republicans and their own failed Democrat leaders.

They don’t want Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They want to be freed of their sense of helplessness.

The Russia narrative, the accusations of treason and the daily promises that Mueller will lead Trump in chains to the guillotine, are far more seductive than collectivized farming or abolishing borders.

The Democrats have become a mob looking for a leader who will make them feel strong and sure. That leader wasn’t Hillary Clinton. But it won’t be the socialist opposition either. Antifa or Black Lives Matter may be more like it. Hitting the outrage button is also all they know, but they offer a better release for that helplessness and rage than making campaign contributions to lefty candidates through ActBlue.

Democrats have embraced eliminationist rhetoric toward Republicans that teases the desires of the base, but is incapable of satisfying them short of a socialist revolution with firing squads and gulags.

And that’s just more outrage button pushing which builds up the howling rage of Peak Outrage.

A political environment defined by craziness doesn’t favor socialists, it favors crazies. Some of those crazies may masquerade as socialists. And usually do. It’s why Communist revolutions climax with comrades killing comrades until all that’s left is the forties USSR or oughts China, Communist regimes where no one believed in socialism, just greed, power and murder.

The socialist future isn’t Sweden. It’s Cambodians being killed for wearing glasses.

Perhaps feelings of rage and helplessness are as much a driver of the Democrats' irrational Trump hatred as they are the reason Trump won in the first place. When the mob feels helpless and wants to burn the place down, the person holding the match is king.

Be wary of weaponized rage. That way lies madness; and totalitarianism - whether imposed by the rampaging party or the one promising that it can re-establish order and that it will take the chains off once order is restored.

"I'm Confused": ICE official has to explain to Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono that illegal immigrants break the law.

https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1024362244333682688

Those the gods choose to destroy, the first drive mad. Probably written down by some long-dead Greek.

Homophobia?

https://twitter.com/jtLOL/status/1024320475093192709

So that's what happens to those who fail the NBA draft

https://twitter.com/glanderco/status/1024103665265770496

"The mentality we should have instead:"

Thank heavens someone knows exactly what our mentality should be and, astonishingly, it's just like his own.

Okay okay okay.

You didn't like Calexit and six Californias. Got it.

Now you don't like Calexit and three Californias. Got it.

So let's give away half of California to the native Americans just to put some distance between us and "Trump's America".

Too soon?