One way or another, the end of freedom as we’ve known it is coming – the only question before us is what sort of tyranny will replace the freedom we used to enjoy. And I mean “used to” in the sense that what you think of as freedom – what older folks, especially, grew up understanding as freedom – is already gone. You already can’t say or do quite a lot of things that you or our parents and grandparents used to do.
This is in the nature of things, after all: freedom always breeds license and license creates a chaos which begs an end to liberty. Human being are very bad at keeping an even keel over the long term. It isn’t that most of us tend to an extreme but that enough of us do that a corrective has to be applied to everyone. This time is a little different from the historical precedent, though, in that some of the chaos-generators are doing it precisely to make freedom intolerable as preparation for the imposition of the tyranny they prefer. These are the people of the Left.
And our choices will be a Left tyranny, or a Right tyranny. The possibility of returning to the level of freedom we had in, say, 1960, is extremely low. I actually believe it is impossible – mostly because that level of liberty was only possible because most people alive in 1960 were still keeping to the old moral code: they tolerated those pushing the boundaries in 1960. They shouldn’t have, as it turns out – but, there you go: it happened. Because in the 60 years since the old moral code has been discarded by nearly everyone (most especially those charged with maintaining it), we simply can’t get back to that level of liberty. There’s no basis for it: there is, that is, no stable, moral society as a base from which the experimenters can dare to stretch out.
Naturally, I prefer a Right tyranny. Not least because Right tyranny normally develops into ordered liberty. Left tyranny, especially now, looks to be both permanent and increasingly insane in it’s demands. We’ve seen the rapid trajectory these past ten years where what was completely out-there stuff is now being enforced in our institutions as the most ancient and settled dogma. They won’t stop: the whole thing of the Left is that it must always go further Left, mostly because the Left always fails and the Leftist cannot conceive of any reason for failure other than they didn’t go far enough. Attached to this – and sometimes dominating it – is the need for enemies. You have to go ever further Left so that you can have someone around who didn’t go there fast enough and so can now be built up as an enemy to be destroyed. So, I want a Right tyranny not because it is better than freedom, but because I can’t have freedom and so I’ll pick the least offensive poison.
And part of the reason we can’t have freedom (for a while: a right tyranny will eventually produce freedom, though it may take a while) is because we made one very crucial mistake, as a civilization: we presumed that liberty was an end. It isn’t. It is a means to an end: the end being a just society. Our trouble on the right has been our assumption that if we just defend liberty and give people an example of the happiness and prosperity that freedom generates, they would naturally drop their non-liberty ideologies and join us. It didn’t work out that way because we didn’t realize the most crucial aspect of human nature: we are Fallen. Rather astounding that those on the Right could forget this, but it was forgotten. I mostly put it down to those on the Right since, say, WWII, not being true Rightists. They were really Liberals who were in a rearguard defense of the 19th century. Be that as it may, the fact that humanity is Fallen was forgotten and left out of all calculations and so we weren’t prepared for people who can see, with their own eyes, the happiness and prosperity and reject it in favor of something else. Not because the something else was superior, but simply because it was something else…and most importantly, something else that they would be in charge of.
We always needed a corrective to unfettered liberty. We needed a way of stopping those with an evil idea from suckering the ill-informed into joining their evil idea. We needed, in the end, something like the Inquisition to root out heresy (in this case, political heresy) to simply make sure that when a Maoist came to town, he was run out of town on a rail before he could use slick marketing to convince the citizen of a free and prosperous Republic that what was needed was a bit of murderous Cultural Revolution. If we get a Right tyranny, this will be the main mark of it: a complete assault on all Left ideas to expunge them from the public square. That is what will actually justify the Right tyranny and what will cause it to cling to power beyond it’s time: the necessity of excising from the polity the idea that the ideas of a 19th century lunatic German are superior to 2,000 years of Western, Christian civilization.
We’ll see how this comes out. I will still work as if we can preserve freedom and maybe by some miracle we are able to do so…but the most likely outcome is one side or the other scoring a big victory, and then simply imposing itself on the other side. Both sides will be forced to this: because they cannot coexist. One or the other will eventually have to go.
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I’m having trouble visualizing a “Right Tyranny.” Conservatives are, by our very nature, not tyrannical beings. We generally just want government to leave us alone to work, raise families (or not) and worship (or not) as we see fit. I’ve often said that I believe the yearning for freedom is an integral part of the human spirit, and that goes double for true Conservatives. Trump was accused by his detractors of being a right-wing tyrant, but that was just meaningless rhetoric. Trump did more to advance the cause of freedom than any president since Reagan.
So, what do you think a “Right Tyranny” would look like. How would it come about?
Pinochet if we’re lucky, Franco a little less lucky…Ceasar/Napoleon if we are unlucky. How it comes about is that as the Democrats have pretty much dispensed with all law and simply do whatever they have the physical power to do so, too, will a Republican eventually do that, fully backed by a GOP which is simply not interested in sitting and taking it. As for the tyranny part – it is true that we of the Right are not tyrants by nature, but when faced with our destruction, we will go along with simply prohibiting people from making efforts at our destruction. This will spill over into other aspects of life, but since it is still a Right tyranny, it would largely leave everyone alone outside the political sphere…as long as you don’t try to actually undermine the regime, you’ll be left alone.
That is a deeply cynical and “the best of the worst outcome” outlook.
Maybe if we, as Republicans/Conservatives, could step back from the Identity Politics we have allowed to define us and our movement and get back to the most basic structure of our original movement—-the refusal to allow the consolidation of power in the hands of a few—-we could avoid the prospect of a benign tyranny such as you describe.
Because that is it, in a nutshell. Don’t allow a few elites to latch onto power and then impose tyranny to try to retain it, keep authority dispersed among the citizenry, and I believe the human nature Spook mentioned will keep tyranny at bay.
The thing is, no matter how many right-wing pundits I listen to or read, I never hear that simple basic concept mentioned—-the definition of Leftism as the consolidation of power in the hands of a few, and of conservatism as dedication to keeping that from happening.
It’s clean, it’s simple, it has broad appeal, it is not in any way related to personality or those dread ISSUES that drive us away from thinking and analyzing. But we ignore it, because we, like the Left, are so hooked on issues and personalities and identity concepts we can’t strip it all down to the basics.
I wouldn’t call it cynical – just resigned. I see what you’re saying and I agree with it, but my fear is that its gone too far. The poison is deep inside America now. We’ve seen it most starkly in the mask issue. I think we were all prepared for some restrictions as the pandemic came in, mostly because we didn’t know what was coming and it seemed a good idea (and it was) to sort of pull back and see how things went. And then we saw how things went and it was clear that with a few common sense precautions life could resume pretty much normal until a vaccine allowed us to get fully back to normal. But, look what happened! Look what’s happening! I’ve seen videos of people swimming while wearing a mask. Fit, young adults who were always at extreme low risk acting like they’ll die if someone sneezes near them. That level of ignorance and cowardice didn’t come about overnight…that took a couple generations to inculcate. And I don’t think we’ll get it back out easy – the only thing we can rely on is that someone stupid enough to swim wearing a mask is not someone who will ever listen to reason. They’re only going to listen to what the TV tells them and act accordingly, even if it is contradictory. This means the Democrats, as long as the MSM is allowed unfettered ability to spew propaganda, will have a handle on power. How do we get it to stop? Asking nicely won’t do it.
Mark, I do understand and to a great degree I agree with your observations. But I also think that there is a dynamic at work that got us here, which is the reaching of a tipping point after which it seems like lots of people just slide into whatever has been presented to them.
We know that those people are not wearing masks because they have sat down, evaluated the data and thought it through. People who have done that are not wearing masks. They are caught up in an unthinking hysteria, and the thing about people like that is that they are equally easily swayed by the next shiny thing that comes along. The masks are now relegated to fad status, and fads die out.
So we have to remember that these mindless puppets don’t represent a very large segment of our population, and what they do represent isn’t very significant as far as influence.
How many people do we need to influence to bring about change? Let’s pretend that 80 million people really did vote for Joe Biden. About 15% of those people have said if they had been given more information about his relationship with China and/or the Hunter laptop they would not have voted for him. That’s 12 million people right there, indicating a willingness to change even given only partial information. We know that a lot of Dem voters voted against Trump much more than they voted for Biden, so let’s factor in another 15%, another 12 million people—-and remember, they were convinced not by facts but by lies, which means they have some vulnerability regarding ability to see things differently if presented with the truth. That is approaching the number needed to shift government in a pretty big way.
That leaves propaganda, which we have to learn how to use. When your opponent has a weapon, and he is really really good at using it, and he is kicking your ass day in and day out because he is so good at it, it takes a certain level of determined obtuseness to not try to learn how to use it yourself. When your opponent has to, metaphorically speaking, push its propaganda up a hill—that is, invent lies and then promote them and then defend them —-and you have facts and the truth on your side, you will be metaphorically speaking rolling your presentation down that hill. It’s a lot easier to present the truth than to depend on the creation and then the defense of lies. We just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
Donald Trump was a fascinating blend of weaknesses and strengths, and he managed to win the presidency and accomplish amazing levels of success even while under the burden of those weaknesses. I personally don’t think they were all that bad, but they lent themselves to elaboration and exaggeration by the opposition, making them worse than they really were when it came to public perception. We can be upset about that, we can cry foul, but it’s a fact. So what do we need to do? First we need to channel his strengths to make the most of them while making it harder for the Left to play upon his weaknesses. Then we need to find someone with the strengths and without the baggage. That’s for public consumption to win votes. But we also need strong leadership within the party, leadership that has an actual vision, that can and will take the goofballs to the woodshed and make it clear that if they are going to be detrimental to the cause they will be thrown overboard. (I think Liz Cheney is learning that now, and I hope the TDS Rinos are paying attention.)
And we need coordination. I haven’t seen anyone but me comment on the national coordination of the Dem candidates, who all had the same messages and repeated them all the time. I think we’re missing the boat on this. Instead of 250+ House campaigns we should have a unifying theme for all of them, and skip the issues and the same old same old complaining about the Other Guy. Let the Left do the smearing and personal attacks, and run on simplicity—-it’s not good to have power consolidated in the hands of a few, the country runs better when authority is kept closer to home. Run on the 10th Amendment. Run on the idea that when power is distributed, corruption has a harder time getting established. If we have to go negative, do it in a coordinated way, focusing on the abuses of power we see on the Left, and mostly on the tyranny of the Agenda Media. If we have to go negative, do it by asking people why they passively accept being lied to, and if we have to go after individuals go after media names, call them out on their lies.
EXPLAIN THINGS. How many people know Trump moved the BLM to Colorado, much less why? How many people know what the new BLM stands for? Don’t just use the word “Marxist” but tie it in to violent overthrow of governments—and get in the faces of Corporate America for supporting that. It’s doable, but we act like people building a house without a blueprint, so one day we guess at where to put the walls and the next day realize we forgot about doors. Or we obsess about the curtains and the wallpaper without considering the foundation.
Why are we behind? Because the Left HAS a blueprint. Its rank and file have no idea what it is, and are just drawn in by the noise and the emotion and the opportunity to feel morally superior without actually having to DO anything, but the leaders know what they want to accomplish and the steps it will take to do it. They have a vision and they have a plan. We have a better vision, but few know what it is, so all we have is Curly Mo and Larry running around bumping into each other.
This means the Democrats, as long as the MSM is allowed unfettered ability to spew propaganda, will have a handle on power. How do we get it to stop? Asking nicely won’t do it.
Why even try to get it to stop? Just have a louder voice. First, stop calling it the Mainstream Media—that gives it authority, that says it represents mainstream America. It doesn’t. Second, get a platform. Not just Fox, not just some podcasts, not some online blogs and news sites, but a real mainstream platform. There is enough money on the Right to buy a network—every now and then we hear that ABC or NBC or CBS is hurting. So buy one of them. We’ve got money, we’ve got talent, we’ve got drive, but we don’t have anyone coordinating any of it.
Imagine, if you will, a network run by conservatives. It would have entertainment, like Last Man Standing and other sitcoms and dramas. There would be room on it for the NCIS series, but not for the violence porn of CSI or Criminal Minds. Plenty of talented sitcoms or dramas could be cleaned up enough to fit into a prime time family oriented time slot. Imagine a one hour show every Wednesday night called something like The Lie Of The Week where a media lie is presented, dissected and shredded—an example might be the claim that January 6 was “an insurrection” with the goal of overturning the government—-and/or overturning the election. Get tough, and call names. Ask Lefty talking heads why they lied, when the intent of the crowd was so clearly stated, yet covered up by them. OK, that might have to be nightly show. Get someone with gravitas, like Jon Voight or Tom Selleck to narrate. Have real, objective, news, but contrast it with the efforts of the Agenda Media to spin it, showing things like chyrons claiming that something is “baseless” when that is editorial opinion and not fact. Make it fun, make it energetic. Have a history show, about the founding of the nation and the writing of the Constitution—-one thing I NEVER hear is the comment that our Constitution is at its heart a remarkably libertarian document, as it allows citizens to do pretty much anything they want to do if they vote that they want to do it. It wouldn’t have to be dry or boring, it could be funny and entertaining. There’s a lot of drama there, with people risking their lives and fortunes, with spies and betrayals and conflicts.
Let the current Agenda Media spout all the lies and nonsense they want, and don’t even bother with trying to stop them—because when they have to go up against facts and truth they will wither on the vine. Make fun of them—–an hour a week could be about Joe Scarborough’s hysterical meltdowns, or Don Lemon’s utter inanity.
I would not be surprised to see a Fauci response to my admittedly verbose posts: “Too long to read”. It’s just that this is my thought process, and when I don’t have time to engage in it in a Word document or something so I can go back later and distill it, this is what you get.
My distillation of both of my posts comes down to this: They are successful because they have a plan, and they execute their plan. We struggle because we don’t have a plan, we just have a lot of disconnected and chaotic ideas and emotions, and we are sometimes intimidated into near-paralysis because we not only don’t have a plan we don’t understand why we need one.
They have an almost military-like chain of command, while we have a few hundred Indians who want to be chiefs and are focused on personal advancement in the ranks more than on developing and adhering to a chain of command. We need a general, who will call all the Congresscritters together and whip them into shape, who will tell them that their “strategy” of sniping and griping might feel good, but it isn’t effective.
The opposition playbook is ONLINE ! It is literally an open book. We can read it, and then we can look from the page to the news to see how it is being implemented. And all we can do is complain that they are so good at this, we are helpless.
we are sometimes intimidated into near-paralysis because we not only don’t have a plan we don’t understand why we need one.
A lot of that has to do with who we are vs. who they are. The Left embodies the busybody mindset. We are generally people who just want to be left alone to live life as we see fit. Most conservatives, at least the ones I know, can’t fathom why someone would want to interfere with that.
Now, I might have a completely different perspective if I lived in a state or city controlled by Leftists. Then I would have a plan, and that plan would be to move somewhere like where I actually do live. And I see that as something that is likely to happen before Conservatives coordinate and come up with a plan to actually defeat the Left.
And all we can do is complain that they are so good at this, we are helpless.
We may be helpless to play their game, or even to use their rules against them, but we’re not “helpless.” I tend to agree with Cluster that Conservatives in 2021 are not dissimilar from the patriots in 1775. The vast majority are just go-along-to-get-along, roll-with-the-punches type people, and a small percentage will actually lay their lives on the line when the Leftist tyranny gets too oppressive.
Then I would have a plan, and that plan would be to move somewhere like where I actually do live.
You live in a great State Spook, and this line of reasoning is why I bought a second home in Montana last year. Yesterday, just 21 miles south of me in AZ, 27 illegal immigrants were found starving to death in the desert, a few of them now in critical condition in the hospital at tax payer expense. And this is a direct result of the inhuman policies of the Left. Women are being raped, men are being killed and children are being abandoned all for the sake of power by truly evil people.
The Democrats and the Mexican Cartels have the same goals and they are using brown human pawns to achieve those ends … and our media applauds their “compassion” while WOKE ignorant progressives worry about their next TikTok post. It’s Orwellian to say the least.
Then I would have a plan, and that plan would be to move somewhere like where I actually do live.
But Mark’s question was not “where can we go to hide from what is happening?” It was how CAN WE fight it.
I am merely saying that in any other scenario, when the opposition is kicking your butt you take a look at why he is so successful, try to analyze his playbook and alter your own to defeat it. We know why the Left is so successful: we see it, we talk about it, but then we just fuss about it, as if it is an insurmountable obstacle and there’s just nothing we can do about it.
I say we should analyze what is working for the Left and do the same thing, only better. Their propaganda only flourishes in the silence we give it, so if we continue to be meek and quiet and silent we have no one to blame bur ourselves—and at that point the only option open is retreat.
Or: And for those of you who are “violence hesitant”, keep in mind, the level of violence will depend entirely on how resistant the Left is. If they value their ideology more than their way of life, than it will be violent. You keep talking about needing violence to address the problems we have, but when I ask you how or when this violence would be employed you just call me names.
I get the idea that ACTUAL violence should be met with violence. I think rioters, looters and arsonists should be met with force, even with lethal force. But that is not the same as talking about violence as a response to “ideology”. When you say the level of violence will depend entirely on how resistant the Left is. If they value their ideology more than their way of life, than it will be violent your actual words are about using violence to address ideology and “resistance” to…..well, to something, presumably something in opposition to their ideology. How “resistant the Left is” to WHAT? You always come back to your general theme that violence will be called for, while sounding eager about the prospect, but you skitter around any questions about when, how or why.
Donald Trump was succeeding because he is a builder. That is, he spent his career studying plans and blueprints, discussing the core structures of the buildings he wanted to build. That is why he had the ability to peer beneath the surface of the national turmoil, of the swamp, to its foundational structures, and that is why he started to methodically dismantle them, as much as he could. But what I usually see is lots of angst about what is, basically, the curtains and the wallpaper of the Left—yes, there is all that stuff that gets your panties in a twist, but addressing that level of problem is not going to solve anything. It might have a visceral thrill, though personally I think this is speculative, projected by people who have never been in a physical conflict, ever shot a person or even an animal, who have minimal experience with shooting at all and who have some emotionally glamorized Mittyish concept of what it would be like. But it’s not going to change anything, unless you are talking about a level of institutional violence on the order of the Stasi or the KGB that can use sheer force to control the actions of people.
Like Trump, my life experiences have set me up for a different perspective on things. From the agricultural background of dealing with invasive weeds not just by mowing them down but by analyzing their growth patterns and working to kill them at the root so they don’t reappear all the way to designing and building structures and factoring in all the elements that make them stable or unsound, my background leads me to a certain pattern of analysis of problems. So my personal approach is what I have outlined here—-first, determine the intended goal of the opposition, then analyze its strategies and evaluate them for effectiveness, and then try to determine how to disrupt those strategies while developing better ones of our own. (Some awareness of military strategy also plays into this. For all the people who just wanted to kill Germans, we also had people bombing ball bearing factories and coordinating with resistance groups to sabotage train tracks. Disruption is not only as effective as head to head battle, it is often more so.)
But most of what I see on “our” side is obsession with the superficial aspects of the opposition’s successes, and the conviction that sniping and griping are the best ways to deal with them.
But Mark’s question was not “where can we go to hide from what is happening?” It was how CAN WE fight it.
Let me play Devil’s advocate a bit. You’ve come up with a lot of great ideas on this blog — better ideas than I’ve seen anywhere else, and I read a lot. I wish I had the resources to implement half of the things you’ve advocated, but you have to ask yourself, why hasn’t someone WITH the resources thought of the same things AND implemented them? Why did it take someone like Trump to come along and show the way? And look at what it got him. A lesser man would have folded like a cheap suit. If we lived in an all-things-being-equal, level-playing-field society where the media was an honest arbiter of the truth, where the judicial system was an honest arbiter of justice, and where people didn’t lose their jobs because they pushed back against injustice, there would be people flocking to implement your ideas, but that’s not the reality we live in.
It’s taken the Left more than a century to get to where it is, and it’s going to take more than one 4-year term for someone like Donald Trump to even get the pendulum swinging the other way. The last time we were this divided we fought a brutal civil way, often pitting brother against brother, leaving over 600,000 dead on the battlefield. Adjusted for population growth that would translate to over 6 million dead today using the same percentage.
Most people don’t like conflict; they don’t like violence. Sun Tzu said “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” So, before we have conflict, I think we’ll have a massive geographic relocation. It’s how it played out in Kurt Schlichter’s novel series about the splt-up of America, and I think he’s spot on. The conflict came later, and I think, regardless of how it plays out, conflict is inevitable. The only way the Left is going to quit is if they are so overwhelmingly beaten that there is no upside to continuing on. And even then, after a couple generations there’ll be new Leftists who will say, “this time it will be different.” Rinse and repeat.
Spook, that was spot on …
The only way the Left is going to quit is if they are so overwhelmingly beaten that there is no upside to continuing on.
I agree. The question to me is the definition of “beaten”—–bloody bodies stacked like cordwood or election results that show the marginalization of the movement as it is increasingly and inexorably delegitimized by being deprived of its lifeblood, which is successful propaganda.
I don’t think a problem can be solved unless it has first been accurately identified. That is, is it a political problem, a cultural problem, a religious or spiritual problem, an economic problem, a military problem, etc.
I think something that is at its heart a political problem has to have a political solution.
…. Our trouble on the right has been our assumption that if we just defend liberty …
I am not convinced we have defended liberty, or at least not very aggressively. Conservatives have long abandoned our role in academia and if we are not teaching future generations of the perils of authoritarian governments and the constructs of the Declaration of Independence than we are in no way protecting or defending our liberty.
America is at time of choosing just like we were 250 years ago, and again 150 years ago and it will most likely come down to the minority of conservatives to defend our independent way of life, just as it did 250 years ago. In fact complacency is even more of an obstacle in 2021 than it was in 1776 so it may even be a smaller group of conservatives.
And for those of you who are “violence hesitant”, keep in mind, the level of violence will depend entirely on how resistant the Left is. If they value their ideology more than their way of life, than it will be violent. If they want to cooperate and help restore the greatest experiment in human governance this world has ever seen, then it won’t be violent. It’s entirely their choice. How committed are they?
How committed are they?
I have no idea, but I think we’re going to find out pretty soon.
In fact complacency is even more of an obstacle in 2021 than it was in 1776 so it may even be a smaller group of conservatives.
I would say, with a great deal of confidence, that there are more Americans who will unhesitatingly risk their lives to preserve this country than there are those who will do the same to destroy it. And, (I feel like I’ve said this before) WE HAVE ALL THE GUNS!
I pray you’re right mi amigo. And if called, I will gladly give my life in defense of this nations liberty. Not to do so would dishonor all those great patriots who came before me.
I’m probably a decade or two closer to the end of my natural life than you are, but I can’t imagine a better way to go than fighting to preserve the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world. I just can’t imagine that there are very many on the other side who feel that way.
So are you talking about being part of an armed militia going out to fight some armed Leftist group of some sort, or about hunkering down to defend your home and family from rampaging hordes after a societal collapse?
Because I’m not quite clear on how the latter (which is a far more likely scenario, given our vulnerabilities to various societal dangers) would amount to “fighting to preserve the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world” and I truly can’t imagine neighborhood militias forming to head off armed incursions of Leftists. Does anyone really envision their local Liberal school board and city council and Prius-driving Biden bumper sticker neighbors posing a physical threat that would have to be met by armed violence, putting you at risk of death?
I’m fine with the idea of using lethal force in a post-apocalyptic society, but have a hard time imagining just when or how citizens would be called upon to formally defend our foundational principles or goals. I’m fine with the Mayor Daley approach to looters and arsonists and rioters, but when people talk about a “civil war” I just can’t figure out who is going to be armed on the Leftist side or why, other than the anarchists, who are mercenaries anyway and not much of a threat. Even if I lived in a high-rise in San Francisco or New York City, if violence ramped up to represent large numbers of armed thugs I could easily imagine happily mowing them down but not expecting this to have a serious effect on the eventual governance of the nation.
My new home defense Mossberg (that’s a shotgun, for those not familiar with firearms) will be delivered this week, and not long ago I bought one of the last true Remington rifles after the company was sold. I have a pistol range on my ranch and will be building a rifle range. My nightstand gun is a 357. My springtime goal is taking out the mountain lion who keeps sending her adolescent offspring to my place to practice hunting on my horses. I’m ordering a sign for my ranch that says:
SECURITY BY REMINGTON
HOME DEFENSE BY MOSSBERG
FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS BY KUBOTA
So I wouldn’t say I am “violence hesitant”, just that I don’t have anything to prove.
So are you talking about being part of an armed militia going out to fight some armed Leftist group of some sort, or about hunkering down to defend your home and family from rampaging hordes after a societal collapse?
I’m too old to be part of an organized militia, although I fully expect the militia movement to be reinvigorated if we keep heading down the path we’re on. I think there are a great many on the Left who grew up on books/movies like The Hunger Games and Divergence who think a societal collapse would be glamorous and cool. I don’t, but I don’t get to dictate what stupid people do. I only get to react if they threaten me and my family. The Left showed last summer that they’re not averse to using lethal force, and, to the best of my knowledge, they paid no price for it, which certainly opens up the possibility, nay, the probability that we’ll see more of it in the future. Meanwhile, a number of participants in the 1/6/21 storming of the Capitol are still in solitary confinement for trespassing.
You and I have talked about using lethal force to defend ourselves and our loved ones and our property, and I think that would be an entirely reasonable response. Aside from a cataclysmic upheaval resulting in the disintegration of society, though, I just don’t see much of a danger from armed forces. The violence we see on the Left comes from a few distinct sources, none of which is very large or very threatening except to individuals or small groups.
I have to say this: If a violent rioting mob being allowed to run rampant by a disinterested police force were to be suddenly surrounded by a group of fed-up citizens who just blasted them into bits and pieces, I would applaud the effort. If someone poses a real, armed, threat to me in my home, well—my new shotgun will be loaded with two shells of buckshot and the remaining four with slugs, and will be equipped with a red or green dot laser to aid in quick target acquisition. I’m not wimpy about violence, but I think some of us are exaggerating the scope and level of violence that might pose a larger threat than in a few isolated areas. That mob that prompted that couple to merely exhibit firearms got all screechy and indignant about it, but I think having one of them with his head blown apart by a shotgun slug would have scattered the rest in a big hurry—not prompted a gunfight.
Anarchists are bullies, paid to cause trouble but not to get hurt or killed. I remember the tough-guy act put on by one of them until he got arrested—not even hit or hurt, just CAUGHT—when he fell to the ground and curled up, sobbing. The rioters and the arsonists aren’t going to stick around to pick up weapons to defend Leftism. The howling mob screeching for the death of Kyle Rittenhouse freaked out when they actually saw what a gunshot wound looks like, and I think that cooled a lot of the fervor they thought they had. I am simply not worried about the mobs.
I’d not only arrest young recreational rioters, I would sentence them to spend a couple of shifts in the emergency rooms of inner city hospitals. where they can experience the reality of gunshot wounds, the reality of violence.
The other source of violence is the gangs, but I’m not worried about them, either, Until they start to mobilize and move outward into neighborhoods not their own, I see them as predators but with a limited target, which seems to be defined by Other Gangs. Law enforcement knows who they are and where they are, and they can quickly be rounded up if necessary. Until then, they are protected by their own victims, who choose their skin color tribe over the protections of the law, and there isn’t much we can do about that. Any black or Latino neighborhood endangered by gangs could clean up those gangs in a week, if they would decide to work with law enforcement instead of protecting the thugs. Dangerous, yes. Scary, yes. But once an overt effort is made to protect a violent thug, that protector is part of the problem.
The violence on the border is politically created and can be politically mitigated when we get sane governance reinstated.
If society breaks down due to the power being lost, or another pandemic that is a lot worse than this one, or anything that disrupts food and water supplies, the violence will come from a couple of sources—from good people desperate to try to save their lives and their families and from the kind of mentality eager to take advantage of such a situation to control other people. The first category would be heartbreaking, but the second wouldn’t prompt a second thought when it came time to get rid of them.
Back to your observation about the Hunger Games, etc—I have written about the teenaged boys I know whose faces lit up when I said they could be sent to a gulag, because there is a popular online game where the word “gulag” is applied to a level of combat earned by skill. This kind of warping of reality, this kind of pumping poison into the minds of our young, is a lot more dangerous than the prospect of armed conflict. But this is also the kind of thing with a political solution–get rid of the teachers’ unions, open up school vouchers, start parent overwatch groups in public schools, and establish a strong communications platform.
American intelligence officials have found no evidence that aerial phenomena witnessed by Navy pilots in recent years are alien spacecraft.
…………………………….
The report determines that the vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology, the officials said. That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret.
But that is about the only conclusive finding in the classified intelligence report, the officials said.
!. Note the qualifier “vast majority” meaning that depending on who is defining “vast” this still means the government has not determined that “…unexplained aerial phenomena over the past 20 years did not originate from classified American programs.” Just that some of it didn’t.
2. That “determination” WOULD APPEAR TO ELIMINATE THE POSSIBILITY blah blah blah. Could the NYT get any more vague, while not really saying anything? Actually, the entire NTY story says nothing. It’s just word salad with no real content
3. “Conclusive”?
Yeah…..soooo credible
We’ve talked about human trafficking being ignored by the American Left, but now we learn that the American Left is taking money to participate in it.
An increasing number of U.S. citizens—who consider themselves “political activists”—are taking money from Mexican cartels to receive illegal immigrants into the U.S. from the Mexican border and smuggle them into the interior of the United States. They do so believing that President Joe Biden condones their actions, thanks to his administration’s rhetoric and policies on immigration.
“Since the influx of [illegal immigrants] started to pick up … the smugglers driving vehicles [on the U.S. side] are now predominantly U.S. citizens and basically work for the cartels. They are getting very reimbursed for their efforts,” an Arizona rancher, who wished to remain anonymous, told me in an interview.
“The [Santa Cruz County sheriff] said when they are apprehended, the smugglers tell him, ‘We have the support of the president.’
We’ve gone far beyond the Biden T-shirts handed out to migrants approaching the border—we now have American citizens breaking the law, BEING PAID BY DRUG CARTELS TO BREAK THE LAW, and doing so under the pretense that they really just performing humanitarian acts, under the protection of the President of the United States.
And they are probably right about the support of the president. That’s how low this administration has sunk.
On December 13, 2000, the United States signed on to an international agreement, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime
We are now in constant violation of that agreement, under the protection of the same government that signed onto it.
In addition, under United States laws people who engage in smuggling illegal aliens are guilty of conspiracy to commit federal crimes and aiding and abetting the commission of federal and state crimes. Wanna take bets on when SWAT will execute pre-dawn armed raids, documented by Agenda Media cameras, on these criminals?
Excellent essay that dovetails with your post, Mark.
A great and insightful article.
This part is really depressing:
Historically, the generation that is in charge at the time of bondage is never responsible for the eventual rebirth. The bottom must continue long enough for a new generation of adults (who, all their lives have witnessed that “free stuff” is a lie) to create the rebirth.
They understand, only too well, that their only hope to have more, is to develop a work ethic and stick to it. (Their still-whining parents continue to hope that a leader will come along and finally deliver on the free lunch.)