‘Downstate’ is a play about pedophiles. It’s also brilliant.

Take a deep breath and try to ruminate calmly on the position playwright Bruce Norris takes in his scintillating new play, “Downstate”: that the punishments inflicted on some pedophiles are so harsh and unrelenting as to be inhumane.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is no punishment metered out by a state for pedophiles that is harsh and unrelenting enough for me to consider it inhumane.

For me, inhumane punishment for pedophiles is a goal.  It’s a feature, not a bug.  Anything less excruciating than a torture like breaking on the wheel or flaying alive is more merciful than pedophiles deserve.

It’s almost impossible to broad-brush the perspective at the heart of this impeccably acted drama without sounding as if one is advocating some extraordinary level of consideration for individuals who have committed unspeakable crimes. And yet Norris proposes a variation on this proposition at off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons: He is questioning what degree of compassion should society fairly hold out to those who have served their time for sexual abuse, assault or rape.

None.  None whatsoever.

Norris, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Clybourne Park,” a bracingly funny play about race and gentrification inspired by “A Raisin in the Sun,” goes here for another societal jugular. And his provocative efforts result in one of the best theater evenings of the year. (Its pre-covid premiere occurred in 2018 at Steppenwolf Theatre in Norris’s hometown, Chicago.)

He’s loaded the dice to some degree in “Downstate,” as the predators who’ve completed their prison terms are depicted not as monsters but rather as complicated, troubled souls. Felix (Eddie Torres) is a taciturn loner, keeping to himself in a screened-off alcove. Gio (Glenn Davis) is a smarmy operator with a job at a local office supply superstore. Dee (K. Todd Freeman) is a clearheaded ex-stage performer who is fiercely protective of the oldest resident, wheelchair-bound Fred (Francis Guinan), a onetime piano teacher of serene disposition.

There’s no sweeping under the threadbare rug in “Downstate” of the heinous offenses for which the men have been severely punished. We learn about what each of them has done, and we are in effect asked to judge for ourselves what magnitude of ongoing torment each deserves. It develops here as an agonizing moral question, one that our retributive correctional culture would rather not have to debate.

Some theatergoers no doubt will resent that Norris chose to illuminate this delicate subject in a nuanced way that doesn’t jibe with their own undiluted revulsion. If you suspect you are one of these people, “Downstate” is not for you. For many others, it will be a stunning demonstration of the power of narrative art to tackle a taboo, to compel us to look at a controversial topic from novel perspectives.

It helps that Norris has written plum parts for a cadre of actors so sensitively directed that you might fool yourself into thinking a documentary is being recorded. Guinan and Freeman are astonishing as Fred and Dee, deeply flawed human beings who convince us that — even given our sorrow for their victims — there may be a fate for them other than unending purgatory. Guzmán gives a splendid account of the impossible burden placed on a civil servant, to provide some measure of humane guidance to a group of reviled pariahs. And Hopper superbly manages the assignment of a character who seems both entitled to sympathy and unsympathetically entitled.

“Downstate” is proof positive that you can love a play that turns you inside out.

You will not make me try to emphasize with pedophiles.  Even the attempt to do engender compassion for pedophiles is an affront to all that is good and decent.

This playwright and the Washington Post will not normalize sympathy abd compassion for pedophiles.

We need to normalize the grotesque execution of pedophiles.

We are watching as the Bruen decision is slowly unraveling may issue in that last may issue states and forcing shall issue across the country.

The logical next step is foll 50 state concealed carry reciprocity.

Of course I completely support that.

However, there is another step, either sequentially or concurrently that I would like Bruen to accomplish.

I want to expand the right to concealed carry beyond that of firearms.

The Second Amendment says “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The term arms should apply to all weapons for personal defense.

In the past there have been fringe opinions that say the Second Amendment applies to knives.

The Washington State Court of Appeals said that knives and clubs do count as arms.  The irony is thst they made this argument to uphold the conviction of a man carrying a concealed paring knife, using the logic that a knife explicitly intended for kitchen use was not a weapon and therefore protected as arms.

There is a good argument posted in the WSJ justifying knives as protected arms.

But I want to see it fully expanded to include all weapons.

The club is man’s oldest weapon.

I routinely carry an ASP 12 inch concealable baton.  There are places or situations where it us preferable to or useful in conjunction with a gun.

But many places, the laws on impact weapons is vague.

As Gun Culture 2.0 expands and becomes more common and transforms into Gun Culture 3.0 and beyond, the focus is more and more on personal defense rather than hunting abd target shooting.

All weapons for personal defense fall under our cultural purview.

We need to go on the advance and secure the rights to concealed carry not just for guns but for all weapons of a defensive nature.

I’m not a Christian but I did go to an Episcopalian high school, so I don’t want to get out over my skis, but as an outsider reading the news, the Church needs to bring back some of its Medieval practices.

‘It’s heresy!’: Worshippers left ‘in tears’ as Cambridge dean claims Jesus was TRANSGENDER after row over Christ’s wound having a ‘vaginal appearance’

Church worshippers cried ‘heresy’ at the Dean of Trinity College as they left a sermon claiming Jesus may have been transgender ‘in tears’.

But the view of a transgender Jesus is ‘legitimate’, according to Dr Michael Banner, the Dean who stepped in to defend the claim made at a Sermon last Sunday that Christ had a ‘trans body’.

Dr Michael Banner, the Dean of Trinity College, was backing up junior research fellow Joshua Heath, who displayed Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion depicting a side wound that he likened to a vagina in front of the congregation.

The side wound ‘takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance’, said Heath, whose PhD was supervised by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

I find this to be unintentionally honest, but not how the dean intended.  The takeaway is that a “trans vagina” isn’t a vagina but a gaping flesh wound that is an assault on a healthy human body.

‘In Christ’s simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body,’ claimed the researcher.

In a letter to the Dean, one worshipper said: ‘I left the service in tears. You offered to speak with me afterwards, but I was too distressed. I am contemptuous of the idea that by cutting a hole in a man, through which he can be penetrated, he can become a woman.

‘I am especially contemptuous of such imagery when it is applied to our Lord, from the pulpit, at Evensong. I am contemptuous of the notion that we should be invited to contemplate the martyrdom of a ‘trans Christ’, a new heresy for our age.’

This is heresy.  It’s also blasphemy.

It’s replacing Christian dogma with Woke dogma.

Christ was the son of God, born of virgin.

The presentation of the baby Jesus in the temple to fulfill the Old Covenant was the circumcision, the Brit Milah (Luke, Chapter 2).  Jesus was a boy.

This “Jesus was transgender” bullshit is the attempt destroy the Church and replace it with Woke ideology.

This isn’t a new concept.

The Church uses to do this to other religions.  Adopting peagan traditions like the Yule log at Christmas time (from the Druids) and fertility festivals into Easter was a way of converting peagans to Christians.

So what I’m seeing now is the same tactic used by the religion of Woke Pride against the Church.

First, Jesus is trans.  Then once that lesson has been absorbed, Jesus will be written out and transgenderism will be new diety.

Woke Pride has done this to Native Americans already.  To listen to them, you would get the idea that “Two-Spirit” Natives were revered spiritual leaders and mystical shaman.

I’ve seen this in Judaism, where the Left has called God transgender or non-binary.  The problem is that the word we use in Hebrew for God has no gender or literal translation.  But they try anyway.

The point being, it’s easy to see what Woke Pride is doing and loyal Christians need to stop it.

I’m tired of being peaceful with these people so my suggestion is to bring back the play book of Friar Torquemada.

When someone says from the pulpit that Jesus was transgender and his stab wound was like a vagina, don’t cry.  Waterboard him until he confesses his blasphemy then burn him that the stake.

“May we live long and die out,” says Les Knight, the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement.

He is among those who believe that overpopulation is a main factor in the climate crisis. But that idea can be fraught. https://t.co/YsBcP20riK

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 23, 2022

It should be legal to hunt Malthusians for sport.

If overpopulation is such a concern, the natural predator/prey cycle is a perfectly evolved system for keeping populations in check.

One for the pantheon of “You Can’t Make This Shit Up.”

Tweets cause myocarditis

Covid 19 vaccines and the misinterpretation of perceived side effects clarity on the safety of vaccines – PubMed (nih.gov)

Every single thing that came with the vaccine, including the side effects that the CDC and “scientist” told we could normally get are now caused by mean tweets an Alex Jones’ podcasts.

The fear of ending up as decorations for telephone poles is increasing.

Caught this over Clayton Cramer’s:

Conclusions. In 2019, about 16 million US adult handgun owners carried handguns in the past month (up from 9 million in 2015), and approximately 6 million did so daily (twice the 3 million who did so in 2015). Proportionally fewer handgun owners carried handguns in states where issuing authorities had substantial discretion in granting permits.

Trend in Loaded Handgun Carrying Among Adult Handgun Owners in the United States, 2015‒2019 | AJPH | Vol. 112 Issue 12 (aphapublications.org)

Six million Americans going about their normal lives carrying a concealed weapon every day and without the foretold massacres that Gun Control groups have been promising us for decades it would occur.  And other than the very occasional negligent discharge or not-so-unusual defensive use, you could not tell it is happening. I don’t believe there is an armed forces in the world with active one million individuals carrying weapons every day. Hell, not even a million I would say.

And according to U.S. law enforcement officers 2021 | Statista

How many police officers are there in the U.S.?
In 2021, there were 660,288 full-time law enforcement officers employed in the United States. The number of full-time law enforcement officers reached a peak in 2008 with 708,569 officers, and hit a low in 2013 with 626,942 officers.

We are ten to one. If we were the violent ones, there would be no amount of funding that could keep a Law Enforcement organization running because there would be no cops or at least not enough with brains.

We are not the threat; we were never the threat.  Violent criminals and those who argue and pass laws to release them without penalties are the threat.

And that is why we carry.

From Pistoleer B.Zh comes the following.

Oral arguments are scheduled for Measure 114 injunction suit Dec 2. in good health from behind enemy lines:

11.25.2022

Things are moving quickly in our suit to put Mz 114 on ice.

While there is a long battle ahead of us, the first job is to get an injunction to prevent it from going into effect while we demonstrate that it is clearly unconstitutional.

Though we had expected others, including large national gun rights groups and representatives of the firearms industry, to take legal action, as of today none, to our knowledge, have.

That makes our case even more critical.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, the Federal Court took the unusual step of acting on a Federal holiday and scheduling oral arguments for Dec 2nd.

While this greatly reduces the time our legal team has for preparation, we are hoping it means the court has recognized the need to act quickly. But only time will tell.

OFF wants to assure you that we recognize the gravity of this case. Not only are the livelihoods of thousands at risk, for too many to count, their very lives could be at risk.

The promoters of this measure were more than happy to crush small businesses across the state and send a message to the most vulnerable Oregonians that their safety and privacy are meaningless. They have callously placed security guards and off duty police at risk of being seriously outgunned by criminals.

They continue to lie about the measure and its impacts.

And people who should know better keep giving out ridiculous advice to gun owners who face jail time for simply being in possession of constitutionally protected magazines they have owned for decades.

“To prove a gun owner had possession of higher-capacity magazines prior to Measure 114 going into effect , the owner could take a photo with a timestamp of the magazines, state police Capt. Stephanie Bigman suggested”

This clearly preposterous suggestion will only serve to mislead and endanger people.

Obviously, magazines cannot be identified in a photograph since they all look exactly the same. And it’s laughable to think a court is going to accept a “time stamped” digital photo when, as you can see, they can be so easily altered.

Once again, we want to thank everyone who has been contributing to this fight. The opening salvo comes on Dec 2nd. But no matter how the court rules, this is just the beginning, and your continued support is critical.

Please share this link with your friends and family as we are going to need all the help we can get.

https://oregonfirearms.ejoinme.org/MyPages/DonationPage/tabid/70447/Default.aspx
Thank you. We will not back down.

You can view this email in a browser here:
https://www.oregonfirearms.org/court-date-set