They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means “The Ultimate Argument of Kings,” and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. “We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it’s about: You’ll do as I say or I’ll send my goons to kill you.”
I thought about that for a long time. If there’s an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I’ve got bullets – he’s got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that’s not going to happen. So if there’s an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain’t bullets.
It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.
I dunno, Joel. Seems to me I’ve heard that the eye of Sauron watches all those social media things closely… Probably a trap for hermits…
No, I was joking. I’d buy a Playstation before I’d ever have a facebook or twitter account. Just as pointless a time sink, probably more enjoyable, and far more private as far as I know.
Wait, I’m confused. Are we mocking Guy #2 for thinking that semi-autos are only semantically different from machine guns? Or mocking Guy #1 for implying that you can’t legally buy machine guns at all? Can I mock both?
(although to be fair to Guy #1, it’s true you can’t buy a machine gun in an afternoon…)
Been on twitter a while as anonymously as I can be (disposable email address from a European country & a paid VPN that says I’m in Europe) with nothing (I hope) leading back to who or where I am and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Highly recommended with the right precautions of course. As for the the eye of Sauron, with 310 million active users, unless one does something really stupid to draw attention I think the risks are about the same as posting here, minimal. No matter how good the computers are there are only so many people employed to look at the aggregate results.
I’m with Landlady, I’m confused, they both sound like morons.
This is America, Landlady. We can mock anybody we please*. But I was going for Guy #2, who was being an asshat and didn’t just misspeak. 🙂
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*Except military, police, politicians, bureaucratic functionaries and any protected classes, races, religions, genders or proclivities. Do you have a dog? You can criticize your dog all you want. Unless it’s black.
Indeed, MJR… when I first got PGP encryption, some friends and I used it all the time, often just exchanging recipes and stuff… to overload the snoopers. But it got old and we’ve not done that for a while, especially since we now use Enigmail and that has insane long keys.. The PTB can’t really deal with all the data they suck up now, in any meaningful way. Random hits, sure, but I’ve said enough seditious and anti-government things over the last 50 years that I’d be in a deep dungeon somewhere if any of them really gave a damn. 🙂
Oh, PS… if you don’t hear from me again, consider I became a random hit. LOL
Twitter is a brain deleting moronics generator. It just forces idiocy to happen. I don’t know how, but it does.
I have managed to steer well clear of that, Reddit and Tumblr.
The great thing about technology these days is that dumb people are so quick to make statements showing how stupid they are. It makes them much easier to spot and ridicule.