Davel Gazing

Random musings for my beloved subscribers

I’ve neglected this Substack for three weeks now, and that foolishness stops here. I’ve just been distracted by a lot of petty personal stuff...home repairs, a bout of dysentery, residual paperwork from my ugly divorce from Judi Dench (we tried to keep it amicable for the kids, but when I found out she was seeing Pete Davidson, I hit the roof).

So for those weeks in which I have nothing of substance to write, I’m just gonna jot down some random musings, things not substantial enough for a full column.

Capsules!

Everyone loves capsules, right?

Right???

Also, I’m not gonna break my ass proofing these. It’s more fun for me that way.

Auction Coming!

One of my good European friends located a pristine – as in, factory-direct quality – copy of my book. Those things are as rare as an infertile Mexican, so I plan to auction it off, signed, in an upcoming video.

Remember – Unsigned new copies start at $500 on Ebay, so serious bids only! And of course I’ll more than sign it – I’ll write whatever you damn-well want on the title page or inside cover.

(phone rings)

Hello? Oh, hey there Ye. Uh-huh.....uh-huh.....uh-huh.....no, sorry, I can’t write that. You can’t expect me to write THAT! That’ll be used against me for the rest of my LIFE. …. How much? And that can be wired to my account? Okay, you got it. I can write it in German for full authenticity if you’d like. Pleasure doing business with you.

Mayors eat votes and hoes eat votes

For months now at Takimag I’ve been promising a breakdown of the L.A. mayoral race from November, because a bunch of you asked for it. But jeez, I just can’t get into it. So here, for my beloved subscribers, is the short, short version:

Karen Bass is a smart politician who was against “defund the police” in 2020 so she had nothing Rick Caruso could sink his teeth into in terms of attacking her on crime. But he still could’ve attacked CRIME by going after the Soros DA. But Caruso, being a pansy, refused to say the “C” word, campaigning strictly on abortion rights, a retarded path as any single-issue abortion voter would never vote for the Republican on principle (Caruso changed to Independent before the race, but we all knew he’s the Republican).

Caruso leafleted Beverlywood and Cheviot Hills (two pricey areas just on the L.A. side of Beverly Hills) with pro-abortion fliers, instead of fliers that said “I know you’ve all had your catalytic converters stolen over the past three years; I’ll make that a prosecutable crime again.”

That would’ve resonated. Anyone abortion-obsessed was already voting for Bass. Caruso could’ve taken a different route, but he was too dense.

Neither candidate campaigned hard for bean votes, but Bass helped herself by avoiding BLM rhetoric, calculating (correctly) that all remaining L.A. blacks would vote for her regardless, but beans would be put off by “black talk.”

She was smarter, and she outclassed the white guy.

Steve Sailer’s been trying for six months now to measure her skull with his calipers, but he can’t get past security.

And to be fair to Bass, it wasn’t all rhetoric. Her first act as mayor was to increase the LAPD budget. Caruso, a Romney Republican white-guilt pussy, probably would’ve done the opposite.

So I’m not that upset by the results.

I’ve often been asked why L.A. never went all-in for police defunding like NYC, Chicago, St. Louis, etc. Best I can muster is a twofold answer: our police force is 50% bean, meaning mass police layoffs would risk hitting bean families in the pocketbook and maybe jolting them out of their apathy. Also, in contrast to Manhattan, our wealthies live in street-level houses not highrises. There’s a vulnerability when you know that even if you’re a millionaire, you’re still just one gate and one window separated from a maniac. Manhattan’s wealthy are above it all looking down a hundred stories; ours are at ground-level - crime’s a little more “real” to them.

Anyway, that’s just a theory.

Okay, I did my bit; enough with the mayors.

Good? Bad? Whatever works

The notion of good/bad vs. effective is a difficult one to communicate to ideologues, because the nature of the ideologue is to see everything in terms of good and bad. “If it helps my cause it’s good; if it hurts my cause it’s bad.”

“When I do it it’s good because my cause is just; when he does it it’s bad because his cause is unjust.”

But I’m much more interested in gauging things by what works and what doesn’t.

For example, the pummeling of the American Injuns. There was a period during the Indian Wars in which both sides were evenly matched. The Injuns knew the terrain, they’d learned to use guns, they were master horsemen, and some of the tribes were downright ruthless. But eventually the wars got to a point where the Injuns were broken and we just kept pummeling them until they were so finished off there was no chance the conflict would extend into the 20^th Century. We didn’t sacrifice anything for peace. If we wanted the land, we took it. No sentimentality, no “okay, you keep Oklahoma; that can be your state!” And as a result, America expanded and pretty much became the world.

At least last century.

Was what we did to the Injuns ethical? Moral? That’s not my concern. It worked for what we wanted. It was effective for the winners.

On that note, the continued, dogged pursuit of January 6ers by the Biden Justice Department is proving extraordinarily effective. You’re gonna want to argue good vs. bad. “They’re throwing GRANDMAS in prison! Everyone’s getting max sentences! It’s unfair!”

Sure sure sure. But boy, is it effective. Every MAGA I know is petrified of answering another of Trump’s calls to action. The ruthlessness exhibited by J6 prosecutors has all but guaranteed that Trump will never again be able to use his army of idiots to storm anything. Even if he’s convicted of one of the many charges he faces. Even if he becomes the nominee in 2024 and loses again.

The J6 prosecutions have flawlessly gone to plan – MAGAs ain’t never gonna pull that shit again. Because they know, it don’t matter if they’re a grandma, or a kooky shaman, or a cancer patient. They’ll be hunted like bin Laden, and they’ll get the maximum possible sentence.

Do I wish that had been done to BLM as well? Of course. But to be fair, even after the devastating riots of 1992, L.A. prosecutors were reluctant to crowd the system with 2,000 petty looting cases. So part of why BLM rioters went unpunished is political, but the other is the simple fact that prosecuting 5,000 blacks for stealing CVS afro-sheen isn’t practical.

So there’ll always be more riots. But I doubt we’ll ever see another J6.

Ukraine, Ikraine, we all kraine

I don’t do foreign policy because it bores me. WWIII is not coming. It just isn’t. Be Greta Thunberg if you like and scream about how the world’s about to end, but it ain’t. It ain’t ending by climate change, it ain’t ending by nukyular holycost.

But here’s something that confuses me. Why are some of the most pro-Putin people I know – the Putin apologists, the Putin excuse-makers – also the most anti-Israel?

These are people who, in the context of Israel, declare that even if your smaller neighbor provokes you, even if it joins a LEAGUE of hostile nations dedicated to your destruction, you STILL should NEVER march in there with an occupying army, period. Mere provocations and international alliances are not enough, NEVER enough, to justify a full-on ground invasion and occupation.

That’s an unbreakable principle...where Israel’s concerned.

Odd how it doesn’t apply to Putin. “He was being provoked! Ukraine joining NATO was the ultimate provocation! Larger nations are using Ukraine as a PROXY! A full-on ground invasion was Putin’s only option!”

I can understand (not agree with, but understand) Putin apologists like Tucker, because he’s consistent; he also supports Israel’s right to crush its neighbors if they “provoke.” But the anti-Israel Putin apologists, I don’t get them. Sure, they’ll say, “but the Palestinians have a historical gripe! Israel took thar lah-yund!” But FFS, Russia committed genocide in Ukraine. There’s a historical gripe there, too.

Either “provocation” and international alliances justify a full-on ground invasion, or they don’t.

Be consistent, dudes. You don’t gotta be right, but be consistent.

And these assholes want a raise?

Hollywood writers are on strike for two reasons: they want more money, and they want a guarantee that they won’t be replaced by AI.

If you want the perfect example of why A) Hollywood writers don’t deserve more money – indeed, they should actually be paid less, and B) AI-written content would be either an improvement over the current standard of mediocrity or at least a continuation of it, but certainly not worse than what we have now, take a look at these two films that are about to open:

The Baker: Ron Perlman plays an old guy living a quiet life as a baker. When his mixed-race granddaughter is dropped off at his store, he learns she's being pursued by the mob. Turns out the Baker used to be an assassin, so he jumps back into action to protect the girl. Many scenes of an old man shooting, stabbing, and karate-chopping younger thugs to save his family. Harvey Keitel plays the mob boss who says "who's this old guy who keeps killing my men?"

The Retirement Plan: Nic Cage plays an old guy living a quiet life as a retiree. When his mixed-race granddaughter is dropped off at his condo, he learns she's being pursued by the mob. Turns out the retiree used to be an assassin, so he jumps back into action to protect the girl. Many scenes of an old man shooting, stabbing, and karate-chopping younger thugs to save his family. Ron Perlman plays the mob boss who says "who's this old guy who keeps killing my men?"

Completely interchangeable. So much so that Ron Perlman simply shifts roles between the two like a utility player.

Watch the trailers, one after the other, and ask yourself, how could AI-generated screenplays possibly make movies suck more?

Remember – the writers responsible for this cookie-cutter crap are currently stomping their feet saying “we don’t get paid enough and no robot could do our job!”

Wrong and wrong.

Choose or die

Holy Stromboli I got angry emails after my column about Covid origins. Readers pissed off that I ended on a note of “the jury’s still out on both theories.”

Dudes, why do some of you so badly want to be lied to? It’s nutty...but explicable. It’s that idiotic “red pill” bullshit, the batty notion that once you’ve taken the “red pill,” everything becomes clear. You see all, know all, the truth of everything revealed. So of course you become angry when someone you kinda trust tells you “the truth of this or that isn’t really known yet, and the people telling you otherwise are wrong.”

Because that means your “pill” isn’t doing its job.

Please, forget the “red pill.” It’s a trope invented by two deranged tranny brothers who have torture dungeons in their home filled with midgets with whips. And these are the freaks who came up with a concept some of you have based your life on.

And that’s just sad.

Okay, that’s this week’s musings. If the comments are lively and my subscriber count grows, I’ll do more. If you jackoffs clam up like Don Knotts in a spookhouse and my subscriber count drops, this will be the debut of this feature...and the finale.

(Remember: Dave’s Substack is free and always will be. But you can show your appreciation via Buy Me a Beer)