Insurrection (Including J6) and the Second American Civil War

[G M]

Whomever wrote this is a well educated dumbass with no real world experience, obviously.

Is the United States on the brink of a new civil war? According to Newsweek magazine's polling, one-third of all Americans think such a conflict could break out within the next five years, with 10 percent thinking it "very likely to happen." Plenty of experts agree. Back in March, State Department official Keith Mines told Foreign Policy magazine, "It is like 1859, everyone is mad about something and everyone has a gun." He rated the odds of a second American Civil War breaking out within the next 10-15 years at 60 percent.

October's awful events — pipe bombs sent to leading Democratic politicians and supporters, the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh — have only amplified these fears. "We are now nearing a point comparable to 1860," my Stanford University colleague Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote in the National Review. The historian Niall Ferguson, another Stanford colleague, suggested in The Sunday Times of London that if someone were to design a "Civil War Clock" comparable to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' "Doomsday Clock," the designer would probably now be announcing that it is "two minutes to Fort Sumter."

Ferguson himself is more upbeat, thinking that "the time on the civil war Doomsday Clock looks more like 11.08 than 11.58." It seems to me, though, that all these speculations are deeply misleading — so much so, in fact, that the main thing they illustrate is how not to use the past to understand the present.

Similarities, Differences and Broad Patterns

There are certainly some striking similarities between the American political scene in the late 2010s and that of the late 1850s. Both periods saw extreme polarization over issues of intense economic and emotional importance. At both times, the country divided geographically, with more urban and educated regions leaning one way and more rural and less educated regions the other. In both periods, highly partisan media inflamed passions, sometimes brazenly peddling "fake news"; and at both stages, the country was recovering from a severe financial crisis.

It is all very alarming — but that does not put us minutes away from Fort Sumter. In the nearly four years that I have been writing columns for Stratfor, I have repeatedly drawn attention to a distinction that logicians like to make between "formal" and "relational" analogies. A formal analogy involves finding similarities between a case about which we know a lot (such as what happened in the United States at the end of the 1850s) and one about which we know less (such as what is just beginning to happen in the United States at the end of the 2010s), and extrapolating from them to variables that cannot be observed in the less well-known case — concluding, here, that if polarization, sectionalism, financial problems and political violence produced civil war in the 1850s, they will have the same result in the 2010s.

The problem with formal analogies is, of course, that no two cases are identical. The modern rage over globalization and its discontents does not come close to the moral intensity of the 19th-century arguments over slavery, while the consequences of the 1857 financial meltdown were nowhere near those of the 2008 collapse. Even more striking, the forms of political violence in the two periods are very different. The 1850s experienced nothing like last month's pipe bombs, the 2017 shooting of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and three others or the 2011 shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others; and the 2010s have seen nothing like U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks' near-fatal 1856 attack on Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate, let alone the "Bleeding Kansas" insurrection of 1855-56 or John Brown's raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry in 1859.

The devil is in the details, which means that differences are just as important as similarities when we try to learn from the past. But how do we weigh up the pros and cons of comparisons? This is where the second kind of analogy comes in. Rather than cherry-picking convenient similarities and either ignoring or arguing away inconvenient differences, relational analogies begin from broad patterns in multiple well-known cases and proceed by understanding how a less well-known case fits into the larger structure. So, rather than wringing our hands over how much 2018 resembles 1860, we should be looking at how civil wars began in a wide range of different contexts, and then asking how well the late 2010s fit into that pattern.

Sufficient and Necessary Causes

The most obvious point is that the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package is not just shared by 1850s and 2010s America. It was also common in many other eras that ended in civil war. The English Civil War of 1642-51, for instance, was preceded by decades of comparable disturbances. The population split into "court" and "country" factions (nowadays more familiar as "Cavaliers" and "Roundheads"). Each had its own geographical base and religious affiliation, with High Church Royalists and Puritan Roundheads literally ready to mutilate and burn each other over their differences. Distrust of institutions was even worse than in 2010s America: Royalists accused Parliamentarians of blasphemy and corruption, while Parliamentarians replied that Royalist corruption was even worse, and was magnified by the royal court's sexual deviance and willingness to sell the country to foreigners. Throughout the 1630s, financial crises paralyzed government and political violence mounted. Pro-Parliament mobs murdered bishops and besieged royal favorites in their mansions, and, in the 17th-century equivalent of sending anthrax spores through the mail, a leading Parliamentarian received a package containing a rag soaked in pus from the sores of a plague victim. He suffered no ill effects — then as now, biological terrorism was difficult to do well — but within a year, the two sides would fight their first pitched battle.

Differences are just as important as similarities when we try to learn from the past.

The Roman Republic provides another classic case. In the 50s B.C., the political elite was deeply divided between what Romans called populares — men such as Julius Caesar, who presented themselves as champions of the masses — and optimates such as Pompey the Great, who claimed to stand for virtue, tradition and the nation as a whole. Webs of patronage and debt bound much of the population to one faction or the other. Escalating financial crises ruined cities and regions, and entire provinces lined up behind strongmen who claimed to be able to save them — Gaul with Caesar, Italy with Pompey. Politicians fortified their homes against mob violence, street gangs regularly stopped elections from being held and assassination became almost commonplace. The civil wars that began in 49 B.C. would leave millions dead.

However, although England and Rome provide alarming formal analogies, things get more complicated as soon as we start looking for relational analogies. While the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package regularly leads to civil war, it does not always do so. In Rome, for instance, the package was in some ways even more prominent in the 130s B.C. than in Julius Caesar's day. Tiberius Gracchus, usually seen as the first popularis politician, tried to cancel the debts of poor farmers and redistribute elite properties to them. A constitutional crisis ensued, splitting the ruling class. To conservatives, Gracchus seemed to be rallying the impoverished peasants of Etruria against Roman urban interests to make himself king. In political violence going far beyond Brooks' assault on Sumner, a meeting of the Roman Senate in 133 B.C. ended with conservatives breaking up the wooden benches on which they sat and using the pieces to beat Gracchus and 300 of his followers to death. Twelve years later, his brother Gaius also died in political violence over much the same issues. Yet civil war did not erupt in either case.

Similarly, following Henry VIII's break with the Roman church and dissolution of the Catholic monasteries in the 1530s, England experienced just as much polarization, regionalism, financial crisis and political violence as it would in the 1630s. However, it did not tip into civil war, although it came close. The United States was arguably almost as divided and haunted by political violence in the 1960s as in the 1850s, yet it too escaped civil war. We can only conclude that the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package was not a sufficient cause for civil war in Rome, England or the United States.

Nor was it a necessary cause. In Rome and England at least, civil wars broke out in the absence of polarization, regionalism or financial crisis (although political violence is, by definition, always part of civil war). In A.D. 69, which became known as "The Year of the Four Emperors," multiple civil wars convulsed Rome, but they were driven almost entirely by generals' ambitions to seize the throne. Similarly, between 1135 and 1153, England was torn apart by such severe civil wars that the period came to be called "The Anarchy." The violence was so extreme, one chronicler recorded, that "Men said openly that Christ and his saints slept"; yet the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package was largely absent in the 1130s. A royal succession crisis and fragile state institutions were all it took.

The polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package that 2010s America shares with 1850s America can be present without leading to civil war, and civil wars can break out without the package being present. We can only conclude that these forces are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for civil war. The dark prophecies of a second Civil War within the coming decade might well be nothing more than bad scholarship.

It's the Army, Stupid

So, the obvious questions: Why do the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package and civil war sometimes go together and sometimes not, and will they go together in America's short-term future?

Fortunately, the answer to the first question was worked out long ago, by the Roman historian Tacitus. Looking back on the Year of the Four Emperors some 50 years after the event, he recognized that "Now was divulged the secret of the empire — that emperors could be made elsewhere than Rome." What he meant by this was that although the empire's political institutions were all concentrated in the city of Rome, if the armies out in the provinces decided to intervene in the political process, they always had the final say. Rome lurched into civil war in 49 B.C. because Caesar and Pompey each had armies to back their political ambitions. It did so again in A.D. 69 because no fewer than four rivals found themselves in this position. It did not lurch into civil war in 133 B.C., though, because its mighty armies remained aloof from politics.

This is Thomas Hobbes' central point in 'Leviathan': Only a powerful government with terrifying armed force can scare people straight and deter them from using violence to pursue their own ends.

England stumbled into civil war in 1642 because it had no standing army at all. When relations between the Royalists and Parliamentarians broke down, each could safely set about raising its own armed forces with no fear that Leviathan would intervene and stop them. This was Thomas Hobbes' central point in his 1651 masterpiece Leviathan; only a powerful government with terrifying armed force can scare people straight and deter them from using violence to pursue their own ends. Things had been even worse in 1135, because in addition to there being no strong central army, dozens of barons had their own private armies, which they gleefully unleashed on rivals. In the 1530s, by contrast, despite the mass uprising in defense of Catholicism known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, the barons largely remained loyal to Henry VIII and civil war was avoided.

When relations between Northern and Southern states broke down in 1861, the United States had more in common militarily with England in 1642 than with any of the other cases discussed here. It did have a professional army, but it contained just 16,367 men, and 179 of its 197 companies were stationed west of the Mississippi, so far from the initial areas of fighting as to render them irrelevant. In any case, one in five of the U.S. Army's officers promptly resigned their commissions to join the Confederate states and thousands of noncommissioned men simply deserted and followed them. The government in Washington effectively had no army to enforce its will, and both sides — like King Charles I and the English Parliament in 1642 — had to set about raising forces almost from scratch.

Nothing could be less like the United States' position in 2018. It has the most powerful and professional armed forces the world has ever seen, and there is absolutely no doubt about their loyalty to the legitimate government or commitment to the principle of civilian command. American soldiers, sailors and airmen do have political opinions, but they currently can be relied on to put their duty first. The United States therefore has far more in common with Rome in 133 B.C. than with any of the other cases. Even if U.S. senators start killing each other with chair legs, the armed forces will not take sides, other than to implement orders — so long as the orders are legitimate and legal — from their elected commander-in-chief.

When we look at the recent civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya, or at places such as Egypt where civil war has been averted, nothing matters so much as the stance and strength of the armed forces. We have to conclude that the American Civil War Doomsday Clock does not stand at two, or even 52, minutes to midnight. The very idea is ridiculous. So long as the armed forces remain true to their highest traditions, it will not matter how angry the American people get or how badly their politicians behave. There will be no second Civil War.

[Crafty_Dog]

Mob threatens Tucker at his home:


https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1060329164367167488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1060343422282809344&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2018%2F11%2F07%2Fprotesters-tucker-carlson-house%2F

https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/07/protesters-tucker-carlson-house/?fbclid=IwAR24uWiOgg9WGxDWWreYwNJx4simepi0qXmTZClBSc80jCmQEKFFjh4qYWs

[ccp]

"MOb threatens Tucker Carlson"

Ok little Napolean (Bloomber) why don't you go out in front of the  mob and talk about solutions and compromise you little shit (talking about compromise while you thru your millions around to leftist candidates)

[G M]

https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/11/vox-co-founder-matt-yglesias-gets-doxxed-after-defending-harassment-of-tucker-carlson/?fbclid=IwAR3XZP4o49NkpArX4Ttyp5KTC4HJjCKPCY9zp0tPohAaoA8pOiTm9AOLdd4

[G M]

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/11/16/dem-rep-eric-swalwell-confiscate-guns-fight-back-will-nuke/

[Crafty_Dog]

The Left’s Linguistic War
Originally published at Fox News

One of the key lessons of the 2018 elections is that the Left is waging – and winning – a linguistic war. The Left claims and occupies more and more linguistic ground with each new fight.

Defense of the Founding Fathers becomes defense of white, racist, slaveowners.

Defense of American identity becomes an act of white male domination.

Racism is so commonly used by left-wing news media and politicians to describe conservative positions that one poll shows that 61 percent of Democrats believe Republicans are racist/bigoted/sexist (a study of CNN’s and MSNBC’s use of the word racist to describe conservative and Republican positions would be breathtaking).

Wanting to obey the law in counting votes becomes an effort to suppress votes and disenfranchise poor people, minorities, and immigrants.

The presumption of Democrats winning is so great that Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown said, “f Stacey Abrams doesn't win in Georgia, they stole it, it's clear.”

Every day, we are watching Democrats break and stretch the law for the sole purpose of winning, while they attack Republicans for wanting an honest count of legal voters.

Democrats and their liberal media allies know that if they repeat something often enough it begins to be accepted as truth.  However, the Left’s interest in winning the language war is only the first step toward legitimizing real threats and mob behavior.  Once they win the language fight, they can claim moral superiority. Once they have gained moral dominance, they can do anything to their opponents because they will be presumed right, and their opponents will be presumed wrong.

This is how Tucker Carlson’s wife found herself home alone, facing a mob that was pounding at her door so hard they cracked it.

The most recent example of the left-wing fascist threats and their impact comes from Seattle, where an independent candidate has been intimidated into withdrawing from a city council race by left-wing thugs.

As the former candidate, Christopher Rufo, wrote to his supporters:

“I had hoped that this would be a campaign of ideas, but I quickly discovered that there are some activists in this city who have no interest in ideas. Since the campaign launch, they have harassed and threatened my family nonstop. I was prepared to take the heat, but unfortunately, they have focused their hatred on my wife and children. They’ve made vile racist attacks against my wife, attempted to get her fired from her job, and threatened sexual violence. They even posted hateful messages to my 8-year-old son’s school message board. I know that as the race progresses, they will ratchet up their hate-machine and these attacks will intensify significantly…

“I know in my heart that our cause is just and our ideas would make Seattle a better place. But my primary responsibility is to make sure my family is healthy, happy, and safe. That’s not possible in our current political climate, which has been overtaken by polarization and the ever-present threat of violence.

“I’ve learned that our problem here in Seattle is much deeper than the city council’s policies—we have created a culture of intolerance that is deeply destructive to the common good.”

We are entering a dark period where freedom of speech becomes intimidation by the Left, where freedom of association becomes mobs threatening violence, where the very meanings of words are twisted to browbeat conservatives into silence.

The efforts to steal the governorships of Georgia and Florida and the Senate seat in Florida are only the tip of the iceberg of illegality and hostility that the Left now practices routinely.

Conservatives must develop new strategies, approaches, and skills to defeat the linguistic war of condemnation, hatred, and intimidation being waged every day by the Left.

This is a new era with new requirements. The skills and strategies of the past will simply fail.

Developing the conservative solution to the Left’s linguistic war is a major step toward winning in 2020 – and preserving our society.

Your Friend,
Newt
P.S. I am excited to announce my new course on American Exceptionalism in partnership with Arizona Christian University in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more>>


   
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Forward to a Friend

[G M]

http://blog.joehuffman.org/2018/02/22/alison-aires-thanks-for-sharing/#more-10035666

[Crafty_Dog]

Conceptually intriguing follow up from the same page:

http://blog.joehuffman.org/2013/03/07/conspiracy-to-infringe/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=140&v=VlBv9rFVuGI

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=140&v=VlBv9rFVuGI&fbclid=IwAR0-ohSG5vOqg6sTN4-SIsOaNLt-s6wH9MW2yewEpqwM_JFwqoiem3XgUHQ

Hat tip to Lloyd de Jongh for the following:

https://www.newsweek.com/are-antifa-terrorists-658396?fbclid=IwAR28yp6X89sfacReZ1lO_0xau-lNY_04y3xdeGjHBTsoSQUcgnBvWQAAuXE

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/01/antifa-charlottesville-violence-fbi-242235?fbclid=IwAR0GMTUM5WQtFGJepbuOPlwNWaSk4TqdZIVKMQ_PbWORSKCVDAOEj39vHOE

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/antifa-domestic-terrorists-us-security-agencies-homeland-security-fbi-a7927881.html?fbclid=IwAR0GMTUM5WQtFGJepbuOPlwNWaSk4TqdZIVKMQ_PbWORSKCVDAOEj39vHOE

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/antifa-domestic-terrorists-us-security-agencies-homeland-security-fbi-a7927881.html?fbclid=IwAR0GMTUM5WQtFGJepbuOPlwNWaSk4TqdZIVKMQ_PbWORSKCVDAOEj39vHOE

https://www.thedailybeast.com/homeland-security-warned-of-antifa-terrorist-attacks

http://edwardklein.com/antifas-islamist-connection/?fbclid=IwAR2a_1DUSvqq8H3wivpKTW8AvaSsDYTCGcglnEjOicCY_CfoiM03je1gfvI

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/28/black-clad-antifa-attack-right-wing-demonstrators-in-berkeley/

https://www.dailywire.com/news/20343/timeline-antifa-violence-january-%e2%80%93-august-2017-frank-camp

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/12/17681986/antifa-leftist-violence-clashes-protests-charlottesville-dc-unite-the-right

http://thefederalist.com/2017/11/01/antifa-not-fighting-freedom-communist-revolution/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/yes-antifa-is-the-moral-equivalent-of-neo-nazis/2017/08/30/9a13b2f6-8d00-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html?utm_term=.f00312b48313

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/photos-antifa-campus-violence/

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/

https://petapixel.com/2017/08/29/photographers-beware-violent-antifa-protestors

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/antifa-berkeley-violence-harms-political-culture/

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/06/21/its-going-down-antifa-website-calls-violence-against-trump-supporters-capitalists

https://web.archive.org/web/20181116112914/https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-liberals-antifa-violence-20170718-story.html

https://reason.com/archives/2017/09/08/antifa-has-backed-its-message-with-viole

https://torontosun.com/2017/08/30/undeserved-praise-for-antifas-thugs/wcm/7a35b36d-6e4e-417a-b706-388bc8a0bcb1

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/berkeley-proves-liberals-are-enabling-antifa-violence

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/30/nancy-pelosi-condemns-antifa-violence-in-berkeley/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/we-the-people-rally-organizers-home-vandalized-after-antifa-doxxed-him/

[G M]

http://monsterhunternation.com/2018/11/19/the-2nd-amendment-is-obsolete-says-congressman-who-wants-to-nuke-omaha/

THE 2ND AMENDMENT IS OBSOLETE, SAYS CONGRESSMAN WHO WANTS TO NUKE OMAHA
NOVEMBER 19, 2018  CORREIA45   


Last week a congressman embarrassed himself on Twitter. He got into a debate about gun control, suggested a mandatory buyback—which is basically confiscation with a happy face sticker on it—and when someone told him that they would resist, he said resistance was futile because the government has nukes.

And everybody was like, wait, what?

Of course the congressman is now saying that using nuclear weapons on American gun owners was an exaggeration, he just wanted to rhetorically demonstrate that the all-powerful government could crush us peasants like bugs, they hold our pathetic lives in their iron hand, and he’d never ever advocate for the use of nuclear weapons on American soil (that would be bad for the environment!), and instead he merely wants to send a SWAT team to your house to shoot you in the face if you don’t comply.

See? That’s way better.

But this post isn’t about that particular line from one foolish congressman. It’s about all of the silly left wing memes that have popped up since, trying to justify the congressman’s basic premise that the 2nd Amendment is obsolete for resisting tyranny, and the government would obliterate anyone who failed to comply. Like this one:



I’ve seen a slew of these over the last few days. Nukes kicked it off, but I’ve seen it before with drones, or tanks, or cruise missiles. Sadly, this is one of the better ones, but that’s because the left can’t meme. Basically they all boil down to the same fundamental premise. The federal government has access to advanced weapon systems, and thus anyone who resisted gun confiscation would be effortlessly destroyed by these advanced weapon systems, ergo gun control has already won, forgone conclusion, and they declare victory.

Like most political memes, they’re taking an extremely complex situation, and providing a cartoonish, simplistic answer, which makes them look like complete dipshits to anybody with a clue, but scores them lots of Virtue Signal Points to their likewise ignorant but posturing friends. To my people, this is really goofy stuff. I mean, if you have even a basic knowledge of this topic these memes are about as clever as the ones from the vaccines cause autism morons and the flat earth society.

We are so divided it’s like we are speaking two different languages. Hell, on this topic we are on two different planets. And it is usually framed with a sanctimonious left versus right, enlightened being versus racist hillbilly, unfailing arrow of history versus the knuckle dragging past sort of vibe.

But basically it boils down to one side making the argument: The idea of the 2nd Amendment resisting a tyrannical government is obsolete, because the federal government is too overwhelmingly powerful, and has too many advanced technologies.    

So today I’m writing this for my left leaning friends and readers, in the hopes that I can break down the flaws in this argument. I’m going to try not to be too insulting. Accent on try… But I’ll probably fail because this is a really stupid argument.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a novelist now, but I retired from the Evil Military Industrial Complex, where I helped maintain those various advanced weapon systems you expect to bomb me with. Before that I was a gun dealer and firearms instructor. So basically I sold guns to the people you expect the people I trained to take them from.

On that note, I don’t think you fully comprehend the nature of the individuals you expect to do your dirty work, but I’ll come back around to that later.

First, let’s talk about the basic premise that an irregular force primarily armed with rifles would be helpless against a powerful army that has things like drones and attack helicopters.

This is a deeply ironic argument to make, considering that the most technologically advanced military coalition in history has spent the better part of the last two decades fighting goat herders with AKs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Seriously, it’s like you guys only pay attention to American casualties when there’s a republican in office and an election coming up.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama launched over five hundred drone strikes during his eight years in office. We’ve used Apaches (that’s the scary looking helicopter in the picture for my peacenik liberal friends), smart bombs, tanks, I don’t know how many thousand s of raids on houses and compounds, all the stuff that the lefty memes say they’re willing to do to crush the gun nut right, and we’ve spent something like 6 trillion dollars on the global war on terror so far.

And yet they’re still fighting.

So yes, groups of irregular locals can be a real pain in the ass to a technologically superior military force. That’s pretty obvious.

Now here is the interesting part. Best estimates are that any given time in Iraq we’ve been fighting about 20,000 insurgents at most. Keep that number in mind, because now we’re going to talk about the scope of this hypothetical fight over gun control.

Nobody really knows how many people in America own guns, or how many guns are here. The estimates range wildly. I’ve noticed a trend over recent years of the news media trying to minimize that number, to make it seem like it’s actually a very low percentage of Americans who own firearms, a fading cultural anomaly if you will, and to explain the one to two million new backgrounds checks done every month for new purchases, a handful of us just own a few hundred guns each.

Uh huh…. Sure.

While trying to make gun ownership seem like an oddball thing, I’ve seen the media come up with some truly silly estimates about the total number of guns in this country. The one that was going around earlier this year was really easy to debunk, because they used the number of NICS checks… Problem is, it didn’t take into account the millions guns sold before that (and they never really wear out), the fact that one NICS check can be used to buy multiples at a time, and that many US states (including the gun nuttiest) use their own state background check system, and don’t report to that federal number. Oh yeah, with advances in cheap machining, making your own guns at home has become increasingly popular.

When pollsters call to ask us if and how many guns we own—we think about things like a congressmen talking about nuking us—and immediately lie our asses off. The biggest recurring joke in the gun community is that I don’t own any guns, because I lost them all in a freak canoe accident.

So nobody really knows how many guns there are here, or how many of us own them. But the answer is A LOT.

Recently the WaPo ran an article called Americans Vastly Overestimate the Number of Gun Owners. As with most WaPo articles, it was about 90% bullshit, but they are claiming that only 20 to 30 percent of Americans own guns.  That may sound plausible if you live in Manhattan, but out here in flyover country, that’s downright laughable, but anyways, to make the idea of mass gun confiscation as plausible as possible, let’s run with that rosy figure. We’ll even take the lower one of 20%. (snort)

Too bad America has over a third of a billion people, because even the unrealistic figure of 20% of 325 million is still a whopping 65 MILLION people. That’s about the same as the entire population of France. That’s about the same as the population of Great Britain, only with 500 times the firepower. Good thing we didn’t go with that 30%, because now the number is way bigger than the population of Germany (and you know what a pain beating them last time was!).  Or ironically, about three times the population of Iraq.

It’s kind of funny, when it comes to us adopting social or economic programs, the left is always comparing the US to Denmark, which has the population of LA county, and that’s totally not apples and oranges, but declaring war on a percentage of the American population bigger than most nation states? That’s no biggie.

But I digress…

Okay, so let’s say Congressman Swalwell gets his wish, and the government says turn them in or else. And even though the government has become tyrannical enough to send SWAT teams door to door and threaten citizens with drones and attack helicopters, rather than half the states saying fuck you, this means Civil War 2, instead we’ll stick to the rosiest of all possible outcomes, and say that most gun owners comply.

In fact, let’s be super kind. Rather than a realistic number, like half or a third of those people getting really, really pissed off and hoisting the black flag, let’s say that 99% of them decide to totally put all their faith into the government, and that the all-powerful entity which just threatened to kill their entire family will never ever turn tyrannical from now on, pinky swear, so what do they have to lose? And a whopping 90% of gun owners go along peacefully.

That means you are only dealing with six and a half MILLION insurgents. The entire active US military is about 1.3 million, with about 800,000 reserve. Which is also assuming that those two Venn diagrams don’t overlap, which is just plain idiotic, but I’ll get to that too.

Let’s be super generous. I’m talking absurdly generous, and say that a full 99% of US gun owners say won’t somebody think of the children and all hold hands and sing kumbaya, so that then you are only dealing with the angriest, listless malcontents who hate progress…  These are those crazy, knuckle dragging bastards who you will have to put in the ground.

And there are 650,000 of them.

To put that into perspective, we were fighting 22,000 insurgents in Iraq, a country which would fit comfortably inside Texas with plenty of room to spare. This would be almost 30 times as many fighters, spread across 22 times the area.

And that estimated number is pathetically, laughably low.

In one of the bluest states in America, the New York SAFE Act only has like a 4% compliance rate. And that’s mostly just people choosing to ignore an onerous law. Because the further you get away from the major cities, the more people just don’t give a crap about your utopian foolishness. Its benign neglect, and most Americans are happy to ignore you until you mess with them. You start dropping Hellfire missiles on Indiana? Fuck you, its game on. And that 1% is going to turn into 50% damn quick.

So just by the numbers, it’s an insurmountable problem, but we’re just getting started with how stupid this idea is.

Let’s talk about the logistical challenges of this holy crusade to free the country of icky guns and murder everybody who thinks differently than you do.

In Iraq, our troops operated out of a few secure bases. Those were the big areas where we could do things like store supplies, airlift things in or out, repair vehicles, have field hospitals, a Burger King, etc. And then there were Forward Operating Bases. These are the little camps troops could stage out of to operate in a given area. The hard part was keeping those places supplied, and I believe most of America’s causalities came from convoys getting hit while trying to supply things like ammo, food, and fuel, because when you’re moving around, you’re a big target. All of these places were secured, and if you got too close, or they thought you were going to try and drive a car bomb through the gate, they’d light you up.

Now, imagine trying to conduct operations in a place with twenty times the bad guys, and there are no “safe zones”. Most of our military bases aren’t out in the desert by themselves. They’ve had a town grow up around them, and the only thing separating the jets from the people you expect them to be bombing is a chain link fence.

The confiscators don’t live on base. They live in apartment complexes and houses in the suburbs next door to the people you expect them to murder. Every time they go out to kick in some redneck’s door, their convoy is moving through an area with lots of angry people who shoot small animals from far away for fun, and the only thing they remember about chemistry is the formula for Tannerite.

In something that I find profoundly troubling, when I’ve had this discussion before, I’ve had a Caring Liberal tell me that the example of Iraq doesn’t apply, because “we kept the gloves on”, whereas fighting America’s gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing held back… Holy shit, I’ve got to wonder about the mentality of people who demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign country, are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas.

You really hate us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns? But I don’t think unrelenting total war against everyone who has ever disagreed with you on Facebook is going to be quite as clean as you expect.

There will be no secure delivery of ammo, food, and fuel, because the guys who build that, grow that, and ship that, well, you just dropped a Hellfire on his cousin Bill because he wouldn’t turn over his SKS. Fuck you. Starve. And that’s assuming they don’t still make the delivery but the gas is tainted and food is poisoned.

Oh wait… Poison? That would be unsportsmanlike! Really? Because your guy just brought up nuclear weapons. What? You think that you’re going to declare war on half of America, with rules of engagement that would make Genghis Khan blush, and my side would keep using Marquis of Queensbury rules?

Oh hell no.

A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch. And the settings are Vote or Shoot Fucking Everybody.  And believe me, you really don’t want that switch to get flipped, because Civil War 2.0 would make Bosnia look like a trip to Disneyworld.

Speaking of ugly, do you really honestly think that you’re going to be able to kill people because they disagree with you, and they won’t hit you back where it hurts?  While you’re drone striking Omaha Nebraska you really think that the people who live where all the food is grown, the electricity is generated, and all the freeways and rail lines run through,  that some of them aren’t going to take it  personal? And that they’re not going to use their location and access to make life extremely uncomfortable for you?

The scariest single conversation I’ve ever heard in my life was five Special Forces guys having a fun thought exercise about how they would bring a major American city to its knees. They picked Chicago, because it was a place they’d all been. It was fascinating, and utterly terrifying. And I’ll never ever put any of it in a book, because I don’t want to give crazy people any ideas. Give it about a week and people would be eating each other (and gee whiz, take one wild guess what the political leanings of most Green Berets are?).

Similar dinner conversation once, with a bunch of SWAT cops from a major American city, talking about how incredibly easy it would be to entirely shut down and utterly ruin their city, with only a small crew of dedicated individuals and about forty eight hours of mayhem and fuckery. (And guess what their political leanings were?  Hint, most of them were eager to retire because they’d been treated like shit by their liberal mayors, and take their pension to someplace like Arkansas)

So yeah, let’s talk about those people you think are going to be unfeeling automatons who will have no problem killing their friends and neighbors on your behalf…

They are us.

Above I mentioned a Venn diagram of obstinate gun owners and the military, but you can change that to cops and it’s going to be pretty similar. Those diagrams overlap a lot, and depending on the particular department or unit, they make one big happy circle.

Back when I owned a gun store, we were located one block from Utah Army National Guard Headquarters. Every drill weekend my building was a sea of ACU (and the fact that very few of my liberal readers know what that abbreviation means just shows goes to show how incredibly out of touch they are, but I mean that ugly sage grey digital camouflage).  It was just a bunch of guys hanging out, talking shit, and BUYING GUNS.

Lots and lots of guns. And I know most of my left wing readers can’t tell them apart, but they were specifically buying the scary ones that you want to ban the most. Thousands of them.  And cops… Holy moly I sold a lot of guns to cops. Not department guns, though we supplied a few of those, but personal guns.

Having worked with a lot of police departments, guess what? The guys who actually know how to shoot? The ones who run the training programs? Usually they’re my people too. The gun nuts gravitate toward that position because A. more taxpayer funded ammo, and B. they actually give a shit about the subject, so they learn on their own, and then try to pass those skills onto their coworkers to better keep them alive.

Whenever I see one of these dipshit memes produced by some Gender Studies Major, it just demonstrates how incredibly sheltered and out of touch they are. They don’t know fuck all about these people. Usually if they’re talking about soldiers, it’s about how they’re evil baby killers, or time bombs of PTSD rage, or poor deluded fools who joined the military because they couldn’t get a real job…. And cops, it’s about how they’re just a bunch of trigger happy racists just itching for an excuse to execute everybody who looks different than they do.

But don’t worry, despite all those years of abuse, when you ask them to go door to door in their hometown to systematically attack people they’ve known their whole lives, friends and family who’ve done nothing wrong, and maybe get shot or blown up, and when it’s over then turn in their own personal guns, all because some moron in a big city a thousand miles away said so, I’m sure they’ll hop right to it.

See, one of the things you guys on the left don’t realize is that there’s that whole “Othering” thing. You do it all the time without thinking about it. Where you just ascribe increasingly terrible things to people, like all gun owners are murderous, racist, kill crazy, redneck, dumb ass peckerwoods who want children to die, to the point that to you, we’re this unimaginable, evil, Other, so it’s okay to threaten to murder us, and feel good about yourself.  Because we’re bad, and you’re the good guy, and thus totally justified in all you do.

Yet you assume that the people who gravitate toward the career fields you’ll need to wage war on us will feel the same way you do.  When in reality most of them think you’re posturing, elitist, ignoramuses who don’t know the first thing about guns, crime, violence, or America.

Now this is where I’ll part ways with most of my libertarian brethren, because they are quick to point out that there are plenty of places where cops enforce existing gun or drug laws. The part they’re missing is that most people are complicated, and they’ve got lines they won’t cross.

In this case, the target isn’t some Other, it’s not just their people, it’s them. And an active shooting war between the government and half the population? That’s a pretty big fucking line. And we’re not talking about people they are already inclined not to like, but rather they’re supposed to go shoot their doctor and their mechanic for doing something that up until a few days ago was legal and they were doing themselves. A small percentage will be happy to put on the jack boots and start loading people into cattle cars. But a larger percentage will say nope, I’m calling in sick, don’t feel like getting blown up today.

And another big chunk will actively help the insurgents, because they fucking hate you and everything you stand for. Like seriously, out of touch liberals, how many small town sheriff’s deputies do you think would describe themselves as “progressive”?

Now this will vary wildly depending on jurisdiction. Some places, no problem. People will comply. Others because of the culture, they won’t. Yet, in the places where they are the least likely to comply, those are the places where you are the most likely to have the local authorities be actively on the side of the insurgents. (this is kind of a no brainer to anybody who has ever looked at any guerilla war ever in history). Which means that the occupiers then have to import outsiders to do the deed, but then the presence of outsiders piss off the rest of the local fence sitters, and now everybody is getting blown up.

The problem with all those advanced weapons systems you don’t understand, but keep sticking onto memes, is guess who builds them, maintains them, and drives them?  When I first saw this idiotic Apache meme my comment was that sadly Freedom Eagle’s day job was as a contractor doing helicopter engine maintenance.

Those drones you guys like to go on about, and barely understand? One of the contracts I worked on was maintaining the servers for them. Guess which way most military contractors vote? Duh. Though honestly, if I was still in my Evil Military Industrial Complex job when this went down, I’d just quietly embezzle and funnel millions of DOD dollars to the rebels. Because fuck you is why.

So you’ve got an insurmountable challenge, that’s logistically impossible, and a big chunk of the people you expect to fight on your behalf being actively against you. Your side would need an incredible amount of will, especially after they turned off your electricity and water, and there’s no more food on the shelves.

This is why smart progressives prefer to boil the frog slowly.

To pull off confiscation now you’d have to be willing to kill millions of people. The congressman’s suggestion was incredibly stupid, but it was nice to see one of you guys being honest about it for once.  In order to maybe, hypothetically save thousands, you’d be willing to slaughter millions. Either you really suck at math, or the ugly truth is that you just hate the other side so much that you think killing millions of people is worth it to make them fall in line. And if that’s the case, you’re a sick bastard, and a great example of why the rest of us aren’t ever going to give up our guns.

[DougMacG]

"THE 2ND AMENDMENT IS OBSOLETE, SAYS CONGRESSMAN WHO WANTS TO NUKE OMAHA"

This is a great post.  It's nice to be on the side of the people who have the guns and the states that have most of the nukes.  It is good I think to delve into the possibility of this exploding into a real fight or war so that it doesn't.

In Iraq we struggled to fight 20,000 insurgents.  In America that might be 65 million.  Good point.  It includes the people with the guns and the people who know how to shoot them.  Maybe liberals should stop talking about taking away constitutional rights, guns being just one of them, what about equal protection under the law and a whole host of other things like simply the right to have a sovereign nation and govern it.

"Smart progressives prefer to boil the frog slowly."

This is scary true.  Just look at the last two generations of the media-academia complex plodding forward more thoroughly than the greatest military generals of history leaving no stone unturned until not only the genders issues teachers but the scientists and the engineers are all part of the movement.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mexp/neo-nazis-are-organizing-secretive-paramilitary-training-across-america?fbclid=IwAR0oZgvcPvcX0T5Je1-r-CLJgTTKrzAR813TYX4qKBR4MBu-zyGCDurEsUo

[G M]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mexp/neo-nazis-are-organizing-secretive-paramilitary-training-across-america?fbclid=IwAR0oZgvcPvcX0T5Je1-r-CLJgTTKrzAR813TYX4qKBR4MBu-zyGCDurEsUo

I would be willing to bet there are more U/C Federal, State and Local LEOs and informants inside this organization than actual neonazis.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/violent-antifa-radicals-attack-marine-corps-reservists-in-philadelphia/

[ccp]

"https://bigleaguepolitics.com/violent-antifa-radicals-attack-marine-corps-reservists-in-philadelphia/"

no plea deal this time  as in 2007. Just a trial and harsh sentence when found guilty.

[G M]

https://iotwreport.com/portland-tourism-video-reedited-starring-antifa/

A Leftist Mob ‘Polices’ Portland
Andy Ngo October 11, 2018
Antifa in downtown Portland, Ore.
Antifa in downtown Portland, Ore.

Portland, Ore.

Flyers urged Portlanders to attend a protest: “27yo black father of 3 murdered by racist Portland Police.” Some 100 Black Lives Matter activists with the group Don’t Shoot Portland and their masked antifa allies answered the call to gather downtown Oct. 6. Fists in the air, they demanded “justice” for Patrick Kimmons, killed by police in late September. “Stop racist police terror,” read one sign at the rally. “Throw all cops in the trash,” declared another. Never mind that Kimmons had an extensive criminal record and was suspected of shooting two people before police responded.

As the crowd made their way to a nearby courthouse, they marched in the middle of the street, bringing traffic to a stop though they didn’t have a permit. Kent Houser, 74, made the mistake of attempting to pass them in his sedan. His car slowly pushed against a masked marcher. The crowd surrounded the car and started kicking it. After speeding down the block, Mr. Houser stepped out and was assaulted by the mob. They pushed him and smashed his car with clubs after he managed to get back inside the vehicle. No police were in sight even though the central precinct was blocks away.

Portland’s Resistance, a local social-justice group, then put out a call on Twitter asking the public to identify “this white man.” They published photos of him and his license plate with the message: “Make racists afraid again.” Mr. Houser has since received threatening phone calls identifying his wife by name. “I’ve lived here my whole life but I don’t want to go downtown anymore,” he says. “When the streets are commandeered by a sponsored group of angry, agitated ingrates and criminals, we have no city.”

The mob later occupied a busy intersection. When a middle-aged man driving a car with North Carolina plates stopped in confusion, the agitators descended on him. “You white little f—er!” shouted one white man. “You are a little white supremacist. Go back to North Carolina where you came from.” The driver phoned police for assistance. Nobody came.

The crowd targeted other drivers. “You’re lucky you didn’t hit me. I would have beat your a—,” yelled a demonstrator at another driver. One person punched the back of a passing car whose driver dared to honk. In downtown Portland, law-abiding drivers were at the mercy of marauding street thugs.

A block away, police officers looked on passively. Why didn’t they respond? The department told me in a statement that it feared intervention would “change the demeanor of the crowd for the worse.”

Such lawlessness is increasingly typical here. Portland’s Resistance organized a protest after Election Day 2016 that turned into a riot. Masked vandals smashed stores and set fires, causing over $1 million in damage. Portland’s Resistance raised $55,000 on GoFundMe ostensibly to help pay for the rebuilding effort. Two years later only $2,450 is known to have been dispersed. This summer a mob occupied the area around the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office for more than a month.

When people find out that I live in Portland, one question I’m frequently asked is if the comedy show “Portlandia” is anything like real life. I tell them real life is much worse.

Mr. Ngo is an editor at Quillette.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/39089/antifa-went-protest-fascists-they-targeted-wrong-andy-ngo?utm_source=shapironewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=120718-news&utm_campaign=position2

[G M]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/39089/antifa-went-protest-fascists-they-targeted-wrong-andy-ngo?utm_source=shapironewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=120718-news&utm_campaign=position2

Anyone who dares disagree with their agenda is their enemy.

[ccp]

Will he be like General Grant / Patton  Jackson or like the gutless phony George B. McClellan?

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/schumer-and-pelosi-play-hardball-with-republicans/

[Crafty_Dog]

That would be better in the Politics thread.

=========

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/nation/2018/12/08/fbi-says-proud-boys-are-not-an-extremist-group-after-all/?noredirect=on&fbclid=IwAR0ODcjzpD5dfUcXQDRGeDaD1efAXyKLjkcgRRxM9qr7PaLyjRvQ8-jSGtA

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/12/13/marines-assaulted-philadelphia-keenan-massey-antifa/

[G M]

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/learning-from-the-spanish-civil-war/

Pay attention, this will be on the upcoming final.

[G M]

https://christianmerc.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-better-understanding-of-evil.html?m=1

SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 2019

A Better Understanding of Evil

Working in Texas, in the panhandle, there are few bookstores. There are convenience stores aplenty, some fast food joints, a number of BBQ spots along US 287 and oil, of course. Bookstores? Not many, but I did find a rather storied one in Archer City.

Wandering the almost overwhelming inventory sent my mind in many different directions. I love history, political theory, the literary masters, etc. This bookstore has the greatest selection of rare and valuable books I have ever seen, if a bit haphazard in their stock due to the fact that they are all used books.

Anyone who loves books, especially used books, understands that there is a mystical sort of "voice in the wilderness" quality to searching for a book in a used bookstore. It is not so much that you go looking for it, as you wait to be inexorably drawn to it. I was wandering such a bookstore once and there on the shelf, for the most ungodly of reasons, was a geophysical log interpretation manual that I just had to have.

This is how I came upon Pontynen and Miller's "Western Culture at the Crossroads."

The book attempts to explain in a scholarly way the issues many of us have been writing about for years, a thing Mike Vanderboegh said in Lies of Omission, that we are a nation not "divided" so much as diametrically opposed to each other. While nothing, so far, has been revealed in the book that is not already known (it was published in 2011) it attempts to go further back with the explanation for what we are currently witnessing on a large and vivid scale.

The point was made, at least argued, that the Western culture and especially American culture is at a crossroads, the origin of each intersecting road going back to before the Enlightenment. What we see now as a liberal/conservative or a republican/communist conflict is actually a conflict between modernist and postmodernist point of view versus a Judeo-Christian culture.

While I am not sure that I will ultimately buy into the concept that the Judeo-Christian culture seeks beauty, truth and love, I am not finished reading the book and will reserve judgment until then. The authors did do a great job of explaining the opposite side of the coin and one passage sticks out immediately.

(Speaking of the left and by this I mean Republicans, too, because there is no longer and may never have been a true difference between Republicans and Democrats. What Pontynen and Miller describe could be any politician and it is the whole of the body politic in America that subscribes to the modernist-postmodernist point of view.)

The passage is this: "They rationalize power, envy and greed in the name of virtue, or claim it (virtue) is beyond rational discursive evaluation."

Immediately I understood Hillary Clinton a thousand times better than I ever had. I had always thought she was evil, that she knew she was evil, that she reveled in the fact of her evil and when her plans came to fruition delighted in her evil. What I had never considered was that she thought of her evil as a virtue.

What I had not considered is that the left rejects objective truth as a means of rejecting morality and attacking those seeking truth through the Judeo-Christian culture or scripture. That they see the pursuit and ultimate achievement of power instead of truth as worthy of a purpose as the attainment of peace or the fulfillment of understanding.

Yes, I understood this before in a vague sort of way, but the book brought it into sharp focus and helped me to understand that the real battle lines had been drawn long, long ago.

Everyone I have ever talked to on our side of the equation has sought mostly to be left alone to seek beauty, understanding and truth, while everyone I have encountered on the opposite side of the equation has sought power for power's sake. Since I understand that someone might want power to do nefarious things, mostly evil, I chalked it up as evil. I had not considered that they saw the attainment of power as a virtue in the way I see honesty as a virtue.

To them, as the quote makes clear, whatever drives them to the attainment of power, be it greed, envy, lust or sociopathic disassociation, is a de facto virtue. Hollywood suddenly makes a lot more sense when viewed in that context.

I don't know how better to illustrate the real conflict gathering strength in this nation or how better to explain the utter uselessness of continued hope in some peaceful resolution. When the body politic is convinced that their tendencies toward theft, surveillance, oppression, suppression, violence and enslavement of the people are actually virtues to be nurtured because they have brought power to them, what more needs to be said?

[ccp]

GM post above :
"When the body politic is convinced that their tendencies toward theft, surveillance, oppression, suppression, violence and enslavement of the people are actually virtues to be nurtured because they have brought power to them, what more needs to be said? "

In reference to this z:

vir·tue

noun
1.
behavior showing high moral standards.
"paragons of virtue"
synonyms:   goodness, virtuousness, righteousness, morality, ethicalness, uprightness, upstandingness, integrity, dignity, rectitude, honesty, honorableness, honorability, honor, incorruptibility, probity, propriety, decency, respectability, nobility, nobility of soul/spirit, nobleness, worthiness, worth, good, trustworthiness, meritoriousness, irreproachableness, blamelessness, purity, pureness, lack of corruption, merit; principles, high principles, ethics
"the simple virtue and integrity of peasant life"

I would like to add my thoughts to GMs post:

***theft, surveillance, oppression, suppression, violence and enslavement of the people ***

That  is what they advocate, but they cloak with  virtuous words and labels  'equality' and 'fairness' and 'rights' and 'justice' .

And the elites then can feel good about themselves and the are happy to pillage for their perceived benefit when they eagerly agree to the plans.

[ccp]

ahh.

here is similar conclusion right off of today's Breitbart titled "virtue signaling "

*they * are more virtuous than us and use that propaganda to *shame * those who disagree with them.

more of they are *good* we are *evil*.  and the millenials and gen X soak it up .  I would think in societies that try to be civil it is desirable to be on the side of *good*:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/20/delingpole-left-wing-and-the-right-attack-kids-to-demonstrate-virtue/

[G M]

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272650/exterminating-whitey-mark-tapson

You are slated for extermination.


Plan accordingly.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2019/01/john-boch/antifa-attacks-ieds-found-at-eugene-or-police-headquarters-after-shooting/

[G M]

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2019/01/john-boch/antifa-attacks-ieds-found-at-eugene-or-police-headquarters-after-shooting/

Just the beginning.

[Crafty_Dog]

This comes well recommended to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebAQg6YG1nw&fbclid=IwAR2P-5Qi-FXsuGbJ1gvRatnjdaQrICQyWb7jabimGa0u7t9vo3DmC7bEcP0

[G M]

Bracken: When The Music Stops – How America’s Cities May Explode In Violence
Posted on September 3, 2012

From Matt Bracken:

In response to recent articles in mainstream military journals discussing the use of the U.S. Army to quell insurrections on American soil, I offer an alternate vision of the future. Instead of a small town in the South as the flash point, picture instead a score of U.S. cities in the thrall of riots greater than those experienced in Los Angeles in 1965 (Watts), multiple cities in 1968 (MLK assassination), and Los Angeles again in 1992 (Rodney King). New Yorkers can imagine the 1977 blackout looting or the 1991 Crown Heights disturbance. In fact, the proximate spark of the next round of major riots in America could be any from a long list cribbed from our history.

We have seen them all before, and we shall see them all again as history rhymes along regardless of the century or the generation of humankind nominally in control of events. But the next time we are visited by widespread, large-scale urban riots, a dangerous new escalation may be triggered by a fresh vulnerability: It’s estimated that the average American home has less than two weeks of food on hand. In poor minority areas, it may be much less. What if a cascading economic crisis, even a temporary one, leads to millions of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards flashing nothing but ERROR? This could also be the result of deliberate sabotage by hackers, or other technical system failures. Alternatively, the government might pump endless digits into the cards in a hopeless attempt to outpace future hyperinflation. The government can order the supermarkets to honor the cards, and it can even set price controls, but history’s verdict is clear: If suppliers are paid only with worthless scrip or blinking digits, the food will stop.

STEP ONE: FLASH MOB LOOTING

In my scenario, the initial riots begin spontaneously across affected urban areas, as SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) and other government welfare recipients learn that their EBT cards no longer function. This sudden revelation will cause widespread anger, which will quickly lead to the flash-mob looting of local supermarkets and other businesses. The media will initially portray these “food riots” as at least partly justifiable. Sadly, millions of Americans have been made largely, or even entirely, dependent on government wealth transfer payments to put food on their tables.

A new social contract has been created, where bread and circuses buy a measure of peace in our minority-populated urban zones. In the era of ubiquitous big-screen cable television, the internet and smart phones, the circus part of the equation is never in doubt as long as the electricity flows. But the bread is highly problematic. Food must be delivered the old-fashioned way: physically. Any disruption in the normal functioning of the EBT system will lead to food riots with a speed that is astonishing. This will inevitably happen when our unsustainable, debt-fueled binge party finally stops, and the music is over. Now that the delivery of free or heavily subsidized food is perceived by tens of millions of Americans to be a basic human right, the cutoff of “their” food money will cause an immediate explosion of rage. When the hunger begins to bite, supermarkets, shops and restaurants will be looted, and initially the media will not condemn the looting. Unfortunately, this initial violence will only be the start of a dangerous escalation.

The ransacked supermarkets, convenience stores, ATMs and gas stations will not be restocked during this period due to the precarious security situation. A single truck loaded with food or gasoline would be perceived to be a Fort Knox on wheels and subject to immediate attack unless heavily protected by powerfully armed security forces, but such forces will not be available during this chaotic period. Under those conditions, resupply to the urban areas cannot and will not take place. The downward spiral of social and economic dysfunction will therefore both accelerate and spread from city to city. These delays, in turn, will lead to more riots with the constant underlying demand that hungry people be fed, one way or another.

Catch-22, anyone? When these demands do not bring the desired outcome, the participants will ratchet up the violence, hoping to force action by the feckless state and national governments.

The “food riots” will be a grass-roots movement of the moment born out of hunger and desperation. It will not be dependent upon leaders or an underlying organization, although they could certainly add to the sauce. Existing cell phone technology provides all the organization a flash mob needs. Most of the mobs will consist of minority urban youths, termed MUYs in the rest of this essay. Which minority doesn’t matter; each urban locale will come with its own unique multi-ethnic dynamic.

Some locales will divide upon religious or political lines, but they will not be the dominant factors contributing to conflict. In the American context, the divisions will primarily have an ethnic or racial context, largely because that makes it easy to sort out the sides at a safe distance. No need to check religious or political affiliation at a hundred yards when The Other is of a different color.

We Americans are all about doing things the easy way, so, sadly, visible racial and ethnic features will form the predominant lines of division.

Would that it were not so, but reality is reality, even when it’s is a bitch.

Especially then.

NEXT STEP: FLASH MOB RIOTS

In order to highlight their grievances and escalate their demands for an immediate resumption of government benefits, the MUY flash mobs will next move their activities to the borders of their ethnic enclaves. They will concentrate on major intersections and highway interchanges where non-MUY suburban commuters must make daily passage to and from what forms of employment still exist. People making a living will still be using those roads to get to where they earn their daily bread.

The results of these clashes will frequently resemble the intersection of Florence and Normandie during the Rodney King riots in 1992, where Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck’s cab and beaten nearly to death with a cinder block. If you don’t remember it, watch it on Youtube. Then imagine that scene with the mob-making accelerant of texting and other social media technology added to stoke the fires. Instead of a few dozen thugs terrorizing the ambushed intersections, in minutes there will be hundreds.

Rioters will throw debris such as shopping carts and trash cans into the intersection, causing the more timid drivers to pause. The mobs will swarm the lines of trapped cars once they have stopped. Traffic will be forced into gridlock for blocks in all directions. Drivers and passengers of the wrong ethnic persuasions will be pulled from their vehicles to be beaten, robbed, and in some cases raped and/or killed. It will be hyper-violent and overtly racial mob behavior, on a massive and undeniable basis.

Some of those trapped in their cars will try to drive out of the area, inevitably knocking down MUY pedestrians and being trapped by even more outraged MUYs. The commuters will be dragged out of their cars and kicked or beaten to death. Other suburban commuters will try to shoot their way out of the lines of stopped cars, and they will meet the same grim fate once they run out of bullets and room to escape.

The mob will be armed with everything from knives, clubs and pistols to AK-47s. A bloodbath will result. These unlucky drivers and their passengers will suffer horribly, and some of their deaths will be captured on traffic web cameras. Later, these terrible scenes will be released or leaked by sympathetic government insiders and shown by the alternative media, which continue to expand as the traditional media become increasingly irrelevant.

Implausible, you insist?

This grim tableau is my analysis of age-old human behavior patterns, adding flash mobs and 2012 levels of racial anger to the old recipe. Early-teenage MUYs today are frequently playing “The Knockout Game” on full bellies, just for kicks, and proudly uploading the videos. They and their older peers can be expected to do far worse when hunger and the fear of starvation enter their physical, mental, and emotional equations. The blame for their hunger will be turned outward against the greater society, and will be vented at first hand against any non-MUY who falls into their grasp while they are in the thrall of mob hysteria. These episodes of mass psychology we will refer to as “flash mob riots”, “wilding”, or some other new name.

THE OFFICIAL POLICE RESPONSE TO FLASH MOB RIOTS

To gear up for even a single “Florence and Normandie on steroids” flash mob street riot, city police departments will require an hour or longer to stage their SWAT teams and riot squads in position to react. Ordinary patrol cars in small numbers will not venture anywhere near such roiling masses of hysterical rioters, not even to perform rescues. Those citizens trapped in their cars cannot expect timely assistance from local or state authorities.

Even in the first days of widespread riots, when the police forces are well rested, it might take several hours to mount a response sufficient to quell the disturbance and restore order to even one major street intersection riot. In the meantime, scores of innocent commuters will have been attacked, with many of them injured or killed and left at the scene. It will be a law enforcement nightmare to quell the disturbance, mop up lingering rioters, restore security, and bring medical attention to the living and get medical examiners to the dead. And each jurisdiction will face potentially dozens of such scenes, thanks to the ability for MUYs to cross-communicate at will using their wireless devices.

The far more difficult challenge for the police is that by the time they are suited in riot gear, armed and geared up to sweep the intersection, it will probably be empty of rioters. The police, with their major riot squad reaction times measured in hours, will be fighting flash mobs that materialize, cause mayhem, and evaporate in only fractions of hours. This rapid cycle time is a clear lesson taken from massive riots by immigrant French Muslim MUYs in their own religious enclaves and bordering areas.

The American flash mob riot will exist almost entirely inside the law enforcement OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop. In other words, the rioters will have a much quicker reaction time than the police. Until fairly recently, superior police communications meant that they could use their radio networks as a force multiplier. With their networking advantage and cohesive reactions both within a department and among cooperating local agencies, police could act as shepherds guiding or dispersing a wayward stampeding flock.

Today, the mob has the greater advantage, immediately spreading word of every police preparation by text and Tweet, even in advance of the police movement. Attempts by the authorities to stop the flash mobs by blocking and jamming wireless transmissions will have limited success.

It is at this point that the situation spirals out of control.

The enraged mobs in urban America will soon recognize that their spontaneous street riots cannot be stopped by the police, and then they will grow truly fearsome. For the police, it will be a losing game of Whack-a-Mole, with riots breaking out and dispersing at a speed they cannot hope to match. The violence will spread to previously unaffected cities as an awareness of law enforcement impotence is spread by television and social media. After a few days, the police forces will be exhausted and demoralized. As the violence intensifies and spreads, and in the absence of any viable security arrangements, supermarkets and other stores will not be restocked, leaving the MUYs even more desperate and angry than before. The increasing desperation born of worsening hunger will refuel the escalating spiral of violence.

Nor will violent conflict be only between the inhabitants of the urban areas and the suburbs. The international record of conflict in tri-ethnic cities is grim, making the old bi-racial dichotomy formerly seen in America seem stable by comparison. In tri-ethnic cities the perceived balance of power is constantly shifting, with each side in turn feeling outnumbered and outmuscled. Temporary truces, betrayals and new alliances follow in rapid succession, removing any lingering sense of social cohesion.

The former Yugoslavia, with its Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim divisions, comes starkly to mind. The Lebanese Civil War between the Christians, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze raged across Beirut (at one time known as “The Paris of the Middle East”) for fifteen brutal years. Once a city turns on itself and becomes a runaway engine of self-destruction, it can be difficult to impossible to switch off the process and return to normal pre-conflict life. It’s not inconceivable that the United States could produce a dozen Sarajevos or Beiruts, primarily across racial instead of religious divides.

Vehicle traffic by non-minority suburban commuters through adjoining minority areas will virtually halt, wrecking what is left of the local economy. Businesses will not open because employees will not be able to travel to work safely. Businesses in minority areas, needless to say, will be looted. “Gentrified” enclaves of affluent suburbanites within or near the urban zones will suffer repeated attacks, until their inhabitants flee.

Radically disaffected minorities will hold critical infrastructure corridors through their areas hostage against the greater society. Highways, railroad tracks, pipe and power lines will all be under constant threat, or may be cut in planned or unplanned acts of raging against “the system.” As long as security in the urban areas cannot be restored, these corridors will be under threat. Even airports will not be immune. Many of them have been absorbed into urban areas, and aircraft will come under sporadic fire while taking off and landing.

In the absence of fresh targets of value blundering into their areas, and still out of food, MUYs will begin to forage beyond their desolated home neighborhoods and into suburban borderlands. “Safe” supermarkets and other stores will be robbed in brazen commando-like gang attacks. Carjackings and home invasions will proliferate madly. As I have discussed in my essay “The Civil War Two Cube,” so-called “transitional” and mixed-ethnic areas will suffer the worst violence. These neighborhoods will become utterly chaotic killing zones, with little or no help coming from the overstretched police, who will be trying to rest up for their next shift on riot squad duty, if they have not already deserted their posts to take care of their own families.

THE SUBURBAN ARMED VIGILANTE RESPONSE

In the absence of an effective official police response to the exploding levels of violence, suburbanites will first hastily form self-defense forces to guard their neighborhoods—especially ones located near ethnic borders. These ubiquitous neighborhood armed defense teams will often have a deep and talented bench from which to select members, and they will not lack for volunteers.

Since 9-11, hundreds of thousands of young men (and more than a few women) have acquired graduate-level educations in various aspects of urban warfare. In the Middle East these troops were frequently tasked with restoring order to urban areas exploding in internecine strife. Today these former military men and women understand better than anyone the life-or-death difference between being armed and organized versus unarmed and disorganized.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of veterans currently own rifles strikingly similar to those they carried in the armed forces, lacking only the full-automatic selector switch. Their brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and neighbors who did not serve in the military are often just as familiar with the weapons, if not the tactics. Today the AR-pattern rifle (the semi-automatic civilian version of the familiar full-auto-capable M-16 or M-4) is the most popular model of rifle in America, with millions sold in the past decade. Virtually all of them produced in the past decade have abandoned the old M-16’s signature “carrying handle” rear iron sight for a standardized sight mounting rail, meaning that virtually every AR sold today can be easily equipped with an efficient optical sight. Firing the high-velocity 5.56×45 mm cartridge and mounted with a four-power tactical sight, a typical AR rifle can shoot two-inch groups at one hundred yards when fired from a steady bench rest. That translates to shooting eight- to ten-inch groups at four hundred yards.

Four hundred yards is a long walk. Pace it off on a straight road, and observe how tiny somebody appears at that distance. Yet a typical AR rifle, like those currently owned by millions of American citizens, can hit a man-sized target at that range very easily, given a stable firing platform and a moderate level of shooting ability.

And there are a far greater number of scoped bolt-action hunting rifles in private hands in the United States. Keep this number in mind: based on deer stamps sold, approximately twenty million Americans venture into the woods every fall armed with such rifles, fully intending to shoot and kill a two-hundred-pound mammal. Millions of these scoped bolt-action deer rifles are quite capable of hitting a man-sized target at ranges out to and even beyond a thousand yards, or nearly three-fifths of a mile. In that context, the 500-yard effective range of the average semi-auto AR-pattern rifle is not at all remarkable.

So, we have millions of men and women with military training, owning rifles similar to the ones they used in combat operations overseas from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Many of these Soldiers and Marines have special operations training. They are former warriors with experience at conducting irregular warfare and counter-terrorism operations in dangerous urban environments. They are the opposite of unthinking robots: their greatest military talent is looking outside the box for new solutions. They always seek to “over-match” their enemies, using their own advantages as force multipliers while diminishing or concealing their weaknesses. These military veterans are also ready, willing and able to pass on their experience and training to interested students in their civilian circles.

Let’s return to our hypothetical Florence and Normandie intersection, but this time with hundreds of rioters per city block, instead of mere dozens. Among the mobs are thugs armed with pistols and perhaps even AK-47s equipped with standard iron sights, and except in rare cases, these rifles have never been “zeroed in” on a target range. In other words, past a medium distance of fifty to a hundred yards, these MUY shooters will have little idea where their fired bullets will strike—nor will they care. Typically, most of the rioters armed with a pistol, shotgun or an iron-sighted rifle could not hit a mailbox at a hundred yards unless by luck. Inside that distance, any non-MUY could be at immediate risk of brutal death at the hands of an enraged mob, but beyond that range, the mob will pose much less danger.

Taking this imbalance in effective ranges of the firearms most likely to be available to both sides, certain tactical responses are sure to arise, and ranking near the top will be the one described next.

THE SNIPER AMBUSH: THE NEW TACTIC OF CHOICE

The sniper ambush will predictably be used as a counter to rampaging mobs armed only with short- to medium-range weapons. This extremely deadly trick was developed by our war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking advantage of the significant effective range and firepower of our scoped 5.56mm rifles. Tactics such as the sniper ambush may not be seen early in the civil disorder, but they will surely arise after a steady progression of atrocities attributed to rampaging MUYs.

Street intersection flash mob riots will not be the only type of violence exploding during periods of civil disorder. As mentioned earlier, the number and ferocity of home invasions will skyrocket, and they will be very hard to defend against. Neighborhood self-defense forces will be able to protect a group of homes if they are located on cul-de-sacs or in defensible subdivisions with limited entrances, turning them overnight into fortified gated communities. Individual homes and apartment buildings located in open grid-pattern neighborhoods with outside access from many directions will be much more difficult to defend, and the home invasions will continue.

Carjacking and other forms of armed robbery will proliferate to previously unimagined levels, leading to a total loss of confidence in the government’s ability to provide security across all social lines. Stray bullets striking pedestrians or penetrating houses will take a frightening toll, even in areas previously considered to be safe. The police will be exhausted by constant riot-squad duty, and will not even respond to reports of mere individual acts of violent criminality. They will simply be overwhelmed, and will be forced to triage their responses. The wealthy, powerful and politically well-connected will demand the lion’s share of remaining police resources, further diminishing the safety of average Americans.

In that context, neighborhood self-defense forces will form the nucleus of the armed vigilante direct action groups which will spring up next in the progression. Suburban anger will continue to build against the MUYs, who are perceived to be the originators of the home invasions and gang-level armed looting raids. Survivors of street ambushes, carjackings and home invasions will tell blood-curdling tales and show horrific scars.

The neighborhood defense teams will evolve into proactive suburban armed vigilante groups (SAVs) out of a desire to preemptively take the violence to their perceived enemies, instead of passively waiting for the next home invasion or carjacking. The SAV teams will consist of the more aggressive and gung-ho members of the self-defense forces, who met and compared notes. Often they will be young men with recent combat experience in the armed forces, who will apply their military training to the new situation. Major intersections and highway interchanges where ambush riots have previously occurred will be among the SAV targets. The SAV reaction times will be measured in minutes, compared to the hours required by major police department SWAT teams and riot squads.

A SAMPLE SNIPER AMBUSH SCENARIO

When word is received that a flash mob is forming at one of their pre-reconnoitered intersections or highway interchanges, the SAV team will assemble. Sometimes cooperating police will pass tactical intel to their civilian friends on the outside. Some clever individuals will have exploited their technical know-how and military experience to build real-time intel collection tools, such as private UAVs. Police will have access to urban security camera footage showing MUYs moving barricade materials into position—a normal prerequisite to a flash mob riot intended to stop traffic. Tip-offs to the vigilantes will be common, and where the networks are still functioning, citizens may still be able to access some video feeds. Sometimes, police will even join the SAV teams, incognito and off-duty, blurring the teams into so-called “death squads.”

The operation I will describe (and it’s only one of dozens that will be tried) uses two ordinary pickup trucks and eight fighters. Two riflemen are lying prone in the back of each truck, facing rearward, with removable canvas covers concealing their presence. Their semi-automatic, scoped rifles are supported at their front ends on bipods for very accurate shooting. A row of protective sandbags a foot high is between them and the raised tailgate.

In the cab are a driver and a spotter in the passenger seat who also serves as the vehicle’s 360-degree security. The two trucks don’t ever appear on the same stretch of road, but coordinate their movements using one-word brevity codes over small FRS walkie-talkie radios. Each truck has a series of predetermined elevated locations where the intersection in question will lie between 200 and 500 yards away. Each truck is totally nondescript and forgettable, the only detail perhaps being the non-MUY ethnicity of the suburbanite driver and spotter driving relatively near to a riot in progress.

By the time the two SAV pickup trucks arrive at their firing positions on different streets and oriented ninety degrees to one another, the flash mob riot is in full swing. A hundred or more of the rampaging youths are posturing and throwing debris into traffic in order to intimidate some cars into stopping. The riflemen in the backs of the pickups are waiting for this moment and know what to expect, trusting their spotters and drivers to give them a good firing lane. The spotters in each truck issue a code word on their radios when they are in final position. The tailgates are swung down, and the leader among the riflemen initiates the firing. All-around security is provided by the driver and spotter.

Lying prone and using their bipods for support, the shooters have five to ten degrees of pan or traverse across the entire intersection. Individual rioters are clearly visible in the shooters’ magnified optical scopes. Each of the four snipers has a plan to shoot from the outside of the mob toward the middle, driving participants into a panicked mass. The left-side shooters start on the left side and work to the middle, engaging targets with rapid fire, about one aimed shot per two seconds. Since the two trucks are set at ninety degrees to one another, very complete coverage will be obtained, even among and between the stopped vehicles.

The result is a turkey shoot. One magazine of thirty aimed shots per rifle is expended in under a minute, a coded cease-fire is called on the walkie-talkies, and the trucks drive away at the speed limit. The canvas covering the truck beds contains the shooters’ spent brass. If the trucks are attacked from medium or close range, the canvas can be thrown back and the two snipers with their semi-automatic rifles or carbines will add their firepower to that of the driver and spotter.

Back at the intersection, complete panic breaks out among the rioters as a great number of bullets have landed in human flesh. Over a score have been killed outright, and many more scream in pain for medical attention they will not receive in time. The sniper ambush stops the flash mob cold in its tracks as the uninjured flee in terror, leaving their erstwhile comrades back on the ground bleeding. The commuters trapped in their vehicles may have an opportunity to escape.

This type of sniper ambush and a hundred variations on the theme will finally accomplish what the police could not: put an end to mobs of violent rioters making the cities through-streets and highways impassible killing zones. Would-be rioters will soon understand it to be suicidal to cluster in easily visible groups and engage in mob violence, as the immediate response could come at any time in the form of aimed fire from hundreds of yards away. Even one rifleman with a scoped semi-auto can break up a medium-sized riot.

Many citizens will take to carrying rifles and carbines in their vehicles, along with their pistols, so that if their cars are trapped in an ambush they will have a chance to fight their way out. If their vehicle is stopped outside the immediate area of the flash mob, they will be able to direct accurate fire at the rioters from a few hundred yards away. Inside the fatal hundred-yard radius, unlucky suburbanite drivers and passengers pulled from their cars will still be brutally violated, but the occurrences of large mob-driven street ambushes will be much less frequent once long-range retaliation becomes a frequent expectation.

THE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO VIGILANTISM

Where they will be unable to respond swiftly or effectively to the outbreaks of street riots by MUY flash mobs, the police and federal agents will respond vigorously to the deadly but smaller vigilante attacks. These sniper ambushes and other SAV attacks will be called acts of domestic terrorism and mass murder by government officials and the mainstream media. A nearly seamless web of urban and suburban street cameras will reveal some of the SAV teams by their vehicles, facial recognition programs, and other technical means. Some early arrests will be made, but the vigilantes will adapt to increasing law enforcement pressure against them by becoming cleverer about their camouflage, most often using stolen cars and false uniforms and masks during their direct-action missions. Observe Mexico today for ideas on how this type of dirty war is fought.

Eventually, the U.S. Army itself might be called upon to put out all the social firestorms in our cities, restore order and security, pacify the angry masses, feed the starving millions, get vital infrastructure operating again, and do it all at once in a dozen American Beiruts, Sarajevos and Mogadishus.

Good luck to them, I say.

A few hundred “Active IRA” tied down thousands of British troops in one corner of a small island for decades. The same ratios have served the Taliban well over the past decade while fighting against the combined might of NATO. Set aside for a moment the angry starving millions trapped in the urban areas, and the dire security issues arising thereof. Just to consider the official reaction to vigilantism separately, it’s unlikely that any conceivable combinations of local and state police, federal law enforcement, National Guard or active-duty Army actions could neutralize or eliminate tens of thousands of former special operations troops intent on providing their own form of security. Millions of Americans are already far better armed and trained than a few hundred IRA or Taliban ever were. And the police and Army would not be operating from secure fire bases, their families living in total safety thousands of miles away in a secure rear area. In this scenario, there is no rear area, and every family member, anywhere, would be at perpetual risk of reprisal actions by any of the warring sides.

In this hyper-dangerous environment, new laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in vehicles would be ignored as the illegitimate diktat of dictatorship, just when the Second Amendment is needed more than ever. Police or military conducting searches for firearms at checkpoints would themselves become targets of vigilante snipers. Serving on anti-firearms duty would be seen as nothing but pure treason by millions of Americans who took the oath to defend the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Politicians who did not act in the security interest of their local constituents as a result of political correctness or other reasons would also be targeted.

A festering race war with police and the military in the middle taking fire from both sides could last for many years, turning many American cities into a living hell. Remember history: when the British Army landed in Northern Ireland in 1969, they were greeted with flowers and applause from the Catholics. The Tommys were welcomed as peacekeepers who would protect them from Protestant violence. That soon changed. Likewise with our tragic misadventure in Lebanon back in 1982 and 1983. Well-intended referees often find themselves taking fire from all sides. It’s as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise. Why would it be any different when the U.S. Army is sent to Los Angeles, Chicago or Philadelphia to break apart warring ethnic factions?

For a long time after these events, it will be impossible for the warring ethnic groups to live together or even to mingle peacefully. Too much rage and hatred will have been built up on all sides of our many American multi-ethnic fault lines. The new wounds will be raw and painful for many years to come, as they were in the South for long after the Civil War. The fracturing of the urban areas, divided by no-man’s-lands, will also hinder economic redevelopment for many years because the critical infrastructure corridors will remain insecure.

Eventually, high concrete “Peace Walls” like those in Belfast, Northern Ireland, will be installed where the different ethnic groups live in close proximity. That is, if recovery to sane and civilized norms of behavior are ever regained in our lifetimes and we don’t slide into a new Dark Age, a stern and permanent tyranny, warlordism, anarchy, or any other dire outcome.

Dark Ages can last for centuries, after sinking civilizations in a vicious, downward vortex. “When the music’s over, turn out the lights,” to quote Jim Morrison of The Doors. Sometimes the lights stay out for a long time. Sometimes civilization itself is lost. Millions of EBT cards flashing zeroes might be the signal event of a terrible transformation.

It is a frightening thing to crystallize the possible outbreak of mass starvation and racial warfare into words, so that the mind is forced to confront agonizingly painful scenarios. It is much easier to avert one’s eyes and mind from the ugliness with politically correct Kumbaya bromides. In this grim essay, I am describing a brutal situation of ethnic civil war not differing much from the worst scenes from recent history in Rwanda, South Africa, Mexico, Bosnia, Iraq, and many other places that have experienced varying types and degrees of societal collapse. We all deplore the conditions that might drive us toward such a hellish outcome, and we should work unceasingly to return America to the path of true brotherhood, peace and prosperity. Race hustlers of every stripe should be condemned.

Most of us wish we could turn back the calendar to Norman Rockwell’s America. But we cannot, for that America is water long over the dam and gone from our sight, if not from our memories. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” If that is true, judging by current and even accelerating cultural shifts, we might already have passed the point of no return.

The prudent American will trim his sails accordingly.

Matt Bracken is the author of “When The Music Stops” and other essays in The Bracken Anthology, the Enemies Foreign And Domestic trilogy, and his latest novel, Castigo Cay.

Editor’s Note – 0900 EDT 14 SEPT 2012: Per Matt’s request, the second paragraph has been edited slightly to reflect the more probable government actions regarding EBT cards.

Editor’s Note – 0210 EDT 16 SEPT 2012: I have taken the liberty of taking Matt’s note below, originally posted at the end of “Coup”, and placing it here so that new readers would learn of that related essay.

Author’s Note: This essay and last week’s “What I Saw At The Coup” were both written in response to the article published on July 25, 2012 in the semi-official Small Wars Journal titled “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A Vision of the Future.”

My twin essays represent starkly different “visions of the future” that would-be tyrants, their hopeful henchmen and other self-deluded nimrods may want to consider, before ordering the U.S. military or federal agencies to suppress Americans.

[G M]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2pMkkXIDrM

Bill Ayers was one of the people in the room.

http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/

[ccp]

AOC is the new dumb and clever Bill Ayers.

I don't know why the answer for some is always communism.

[G M]

https://coldfury.com/2019/02/21/the-little-coup-that-couldnt/

The little coup that couldn’t
 Posted on 2/21/2019      by Mike   


VDH performs the post-mort.

In sum, the Left and the administrative state, in concert with the media, after failing to stop the Trump campaign, regrouped. They ginned up a media-induced public hysteria, with the residue of the Hillary Clinton campaign’s illegal opposition research, and manipulated it to put in place a special counsel, stocked with partisans.

Then, not thugs in sunglasses and epaulettes, not oligarchs in private jets, not shaggy would-be Marxists, but sanctimonious arrogant bureaucrats in suits and ties used their government agencies to seek to overturn the 2016 election, abort a presidency, and subvert the U.S. Constitution. And they did all that and more on the premise that they were our moral superiors and had uniquely divine rights to destroy a presidency that they loathed.

Shame on all these failed conspirators and their abettors, and may these immoral people finally earn a long deserved legal and moral reckoning.

Yes indeed; t’is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But I won’t be holding my breath, and neither should you. Which brings us right ’round to this truly dismal prospect:

“Imagine, if you will, the momentary hysteria of the Kavanaugh nomination,” this individual writes, “revived and extended into a permanent state, with a real sense of existential threat animating all participants. That is our probable 2019.

“This doesn’t stay inside the Beltway. This means heightened ideological conflict as a permanent feature of ordinary American life,” the writer continues.

“We haven’t seen much of this before — the strife of the 1960s and 1970s being fairly localized in many ways, and that of the 1860s being mostly regionalized — with one major exception. That exception is the American Revolution itself, when neighbors really did turn upon one another in the name of political theory in a process more brutal and merciless than popular memory recalls.”

The writer reminds us that “in our lifetimes, the single most significant threat to the life, liberty and property of the average American citizen has always been the federal government. The danger in 2019 is that a consequence of that federal government’s crescendoing dysfunction will be the replacement of that most significant threat with one far more grave, far more vicious and far more relentless: our own neighbors.”

“This is about people burning down their neighbors’ houses and businesses, to run them out of town, over ideological differences. Look at the Balkans in the early 1990s. This is about a group from one side, murdering the entire family — Dad, Mom, Brother and baby Sister — of their neighbors, over political differences.”

Barring that extreme (or maybe not), “This is the probable 2019 and you should prepare for it,” continues Mr. Robb’s anonymous friend.

Unlike the American Revolution, there will be no black hats or white hats: “There does not seem to be much by way of partisans for liberty in 2019. More apt, probably, is the example of France with its own tradition of ideological self-terrorization, devoid of any good guys, whether in 1792-94, 1870-1871 or 1958-1962.”

Yikes.

You can say that again, pal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=0-JA1ffd5Ms

[ccp]

yes VDH is always spot on .  He "gets it"  unlike some of his other NR colleagues .

The 'Southern Poverty Law Center  would probably label those of us who come to this thread a "hate group"
If you are not a politically correct Democrat you are a "hater"

Why these "fkers" get any attention at all is beyond me but then again the ones who pay attention to them are their co MSM and the Democrat Party:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/number-u-hate-groups-hits-time-high-watchdog-163128670.html

[Crafty_Dog]

SPLC's endowment is over $400 million if I remember correctly , , ,

[G M]

Things are rapidly moving to a boil. If you are making moves, now is the time to get things done. Urban areas are death zones. Plan accordingly.

https://www.readymaderesources.com/product/the-dark-secrets-of-shtf-survival-the-brutal-truth-about-violence-death-mayhem-you-must-know-to-survive/

[G M]

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/hybridcivil/

What Would a Hybrid Civil War Look Like?
 BY RICHARD FERNANDEZ MARCH 2, 2019

Hardly a day goes by without the tempo of political hostility rising -- sometimes to the level of physical confrontation. Recently, "a man being sought for the assault of a conservative activist on the University of California, Berkeley campus [was] arrested."

There is less and less regret for incivility. Nobody says sorry anymore, they just retreat into a private reality where they are always right. The Washington Post, still reeling from misidentifying the victim and aggressor in a story about Covington Catholic High School students and activist Nathan Phillips, simply slapped itself on the wrist with an Editor's Note admitting it got its account wrong and declared it all square. That was better than YouTube, which allegedly deplatformed a retired Navy SEAL who debunked Nathan Phillips' claim that he was a Vietnam vet.

Retired Navy Seal Don Shipley has made it his life's mission to expose these shameless charlatans. His channel had 232,806 subscribers at the time it was taken down and had been in operation since around 2008.
He told PJ Media that he thinks his channel was taken down because he had "outed Nathan Phillips," who had "masqueraded as a Vietnam vet."

In Britain, politicians are calling for the frank censorship of "hate speech."

"I have written to Google CEO @SundarPinchai calling on him, as a matter of urgency," wrote one high ranking Labour MP on Twitter, "to remove the YouTube page of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson."

The take-no-prisoners nature of the new politics was illustrated by Michelle Malkin's claim at CPAC arguing that Republican elites could not deliver border security.

"E-verify has been stalled. Sanctuary cities have metastasized, and both parties are to blame. And yes, I’m looking at you, retired Paul Ryan. And yes, I’m looking at you, Mitch McConnell! And yes, I’m looking at you, Bush family!" she said before a brief pause, and then, pointing up to the roof, added: “And yes, I’m looking at you, the ghost of John McCain!” The remarks were met with applause and a standing ovation.
Howard Schultz tweeted that "the failed political class of Washington, D.C., has broken America’s political system. And out of that are rising political extremes on both sides." Yet to some, extremes are not a bug but a feature. Bernie Sanders declared without a hint of irony that "Donald Trump wants to divide us up based on the color of our skin, based on where we were born, based on our gender, our religion and our sexual orientation," even though that is the perfect definition of intersectional identity politics.

While one explanation for the fractiousness is a reversion to our primitive natural tendency to mistrust outsiders, the other possibility is that it is now the way modern warfare is waged. The Russians have ascribed events unfolding in Venezuela to an American Trojan Horse strategy. It "would rely on 'protest potential of the fifth column' to destabilize the situation in the countries with unwanted governments ... using the technologies of color revolutions."

SPONSORED
The Russians, whose Soviet empire was overthrown by the color revolutions, have been experimenting with similar strategies known as hybrid warfare. As the NYT reported

General Gerasimov laid out in an article published in 2013 ... which many now see as a foreshadowing of the country’s embrace of "hybrid war"... analysts see a progression from the blend of subversion and propaganda used in Ukraine to the tactics later directed against Western nations, including the United States, where Russia’s military intelligence agency hacked into Democratic Party computers during the 2016 election.
With conventional war rendered suicidal by the advent of nuclear weapons, a cocktail of lawfare, info war, deliberate population movement, and targeted physical intimidation is now the toolset of choice and the Russians, Chinese, jihadis, EU, and USA each have their versions.

“The idea that the Russians have discovered some new art of war is wrong,” Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute and the author of “Russian Political War,” said of the general’s latest speech. “This is basically the Russians trying to grapple with the modern world.” Hybrid war has long been a Western military term of art, analysts say, especially in the context of counterterrorism.
But since the resulting battlefields are waged inside the country, there is little reason why domestic political conflict should not resemble the international ones. Because victory is now attained by jailing opponents, silencing or financially sanctioning them, punitive prosecution, deplatforming, and universal surveillance are used alike in both cases and it is increasingly hard to tell them apart. The thesis that America is already in a "civil war" or on the brink occurred to Greg Jaffe, national security reporter, and Jenna Johnson, national political correspondent for The Washington Post.

At a moment when the country has never seemed angrier, two political commentators from opposite sides of the divide concurred recently on one point that was once nearly unthinkable: The country is on the verge of “civil war.”
First came former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova, a Fox News regular and ally of President Trump’s. “We are in a civil war,” he said. “The suggestion that there’s ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future is over. . . . It’s going to be total war.”

The next day, Nicolle Wallace, a former Republican operative turned MSNBC commentator and Trump critic, played a clip of di­Genova’s commentary on her show and agreed with him — although she placed the blame squarely on the president.

Trump, she said, “greenlit a war in this country around race. And if you think about the most dangerous thing he’s done, that might be it.” ... fears that once existed only in fiction or in the fevered dreams of conspiracy theorists have become a regular part of the political debate. These days, there is talk of violence, mayhem and, increasingly, civil war.

If a civil war were actually underway it would take the form of hybrid warfare and look much like what can already be observed today. It would explain why, in an era obsessed with safe spaces and tolerance, there is little of either left; why no one is safe from offense, nothing is private; why everything is increasingly criminalized. That context would explain why each new restriction, whether on the use of cash, private transportation, or gun ownership can be perceived as a veiled threat. "Speaking to conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, diGenova summed up his best advice to friends: 'I vote, and I buy guns. And that’s what you should do.'"

It might shed light on why so many people already feel like psychological refugees with the strange sense they have been evicted from their homes and wondering: what happened to my country? To the church on the corner? To family gatherings? Trust networks? Why have they been turned into battlegrounds?

In an eerie case of possible mirror-imaging, the Washington Post article quotes Michael Cohen: "Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power." But even if overt violence never breaks out, already among the casualties may be America's soul.  Arthur Brooks of AEI describes how hate-filled he thinks society has become.

People often say that our problem in America today is incivility or intolerance. This is incorrect. Motive attribution asymmetry leads to something far worse: contempt, which is a noxious brew of anger and disgust. And not just contempt for other people’s ideas, but also for other people. In the words of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt is “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.”
The sources of motive attribution asymmetry are easy to identify: divisive politicians, screaming heads on television, hateful columnists, angry campus activists and seemingly everything on the contempt machines of social media. This “outrage industrial complex” works by catering to just one ideological side, creating a species of addiction by feeding our desire to believe that we are completely right and that the other side is made up of knaves and fools. It strokes our own biases while affirming our worst assumptions about those who disagree with us.

Is America already in a state of civil hybrid war from which only one winner can emerge? The problem with Trojan horses and the reason they're so effective is that they remain ambiguous until it's almost too late.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/trump-resistance-government-anonymous-james-baker-samantha-power/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR+Daily+Monday+through+Friday+2019-03-05&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart&fbclid=IwAR3zbNB8y-HEOoJpFLSzdAmgIjY2UKK4hJMmasq3V45XMP4WzLn6f-W3LWw

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/17/autopsy-of-a-dead-coup/?fbclid=IwAR2TGq3namkO9ZlEQ7rqdAo_Zv35iS1vDqUZOEKx1eNSillycWDNFaI2z9k

[Crafty_Dog]

Though there are a couple of aspects to this article (e.g. the naive reference to the ADL and the SPLC) we of good patriotic orientation need to be aware of the taint of white supremacism/white nationalism on the fringe of our efforts to save America if only to prevent the progressives and the Pravdas from painting us in the public eye as having them among us.

==================================



What White Supremacism and Jihadism Have in Common
By Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
Scott Stewart
Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
A Ku Klux Klan march Aug. 19, 1925, on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.
(Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)


    The respective ideologies driving white supremacist and jihadist terrorism share a number of similarities despite their different tenets and opponents.
    Law enforcement in the West has more history investigating white supremacist terrorism than jihadism.
    While the 9/11 attacks led to a major focus on the jihadist threat, pressure on white supremacists has not relented — but neither have the white supremacists.

In last week's On Security column about the Christchurch attack in New Zealand, I noted that white supremacists adopted the leaderless resistance model of terrorism before jihadists did. A knowledgeable reader subsequently asked about the similarities between white supremacist and jihadist terrorism. Like jihadism, the various ideologies driving white supremacism are not going away any time soon, and comparing the two can provide valuable lessons for understanding the ongoing threat.

The Big Picture

Since the dawn of modern terrorism in Victorian times, radicals from a variety of ideologies have attempted to use violence to draw attention to and advance their political or ideological causes. Law enforcement and security agencies have responded to terrorism using all the tools at their disposal, but arresting or killing terrorist leaders has only reduced the threat, not eliminated it. As long as the ideologies driving terrorism remain — such as the neo-Nazi beliefs that persisted after the fall of Nazi Germany — adherents will be able to radicalize and mobilize new members.

Fragmentation and a Leadership Vacuum

The white supremacist/nationalist universe is heavily fragmented. In general, white supremacists believe white people are inherently superior to other races, while white nationalists, or separatists, focus on maintaining a white race that is separate from other races. The numerous distinct strains of the white supremacist and white separatist ideology range from Klansmen who consider themselves Christians to pagan Odinists, from National Socialists (aka neo-Nazis) who seek to overturn the current political order to patriotic nationalists who seek to return to some imagined golden age. Despite their differences, most of these strains view their local efforts as belonging to a wider global struggle, making them similar to jihadists.

Like jihadists, many white supremacists and nationalists also see themselves as engaged in an existential battle against an encroaching evil. The definition of that evil varies depending on the strain of white supremacism/nationalism involved, but can include Jews, racial minorities, immigrants, global elites or a combination of these. The idea of being engaged in a struggle is similar to how jihadists believe they are battling a "Jewish/Crusader alliance" and other enemies of Islam. Jihadism and white supremacism also tend to be dualistic in the sense that a person is either a member of the ideological in-group or is considered an enemy; they recognize no innocent bystanders.

Most white supremacists/nationalists view themselves as a vanguard seeking to use terrorism to waken the masses who are not racially aware in order to precipitate an apocalyptic final battle — sometimes referred to as RAHOWA, short for "racial holy war" — that will result in a final reckoning and the establishment of pure white homelands. The attackers behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, the 2011 Norway attacks and the recent Christchurch mass shootings all articulated this desire to spark a final battle.

Al Qaeda was similarly formed to serve as a vanguard organization to lead a global jihad. Osama bin Laden and other jihadist leaders such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi have sought to use terrorism to draw the United States into an apocalyptic battle and to mobilize the Muslim masses to rise up and fight.

Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, however, have proved far more successful at attracting people to the jihadist cause than white supremacists and nationalists recently have. One factor accounting for this is the battlefield successes enjoyed by jihadist insurgents in places like Iraq, Syria and Libya, which have created territory where foreign jihadists can join the struggle. While a few Western white supremacists/nationalists have traveled to fight with right-wing groups such as the Azov Battalion in eastern Ukraine and in Rhodesia during the bush war of the 1970s, there simply has not been a similar battlefield for white supremacists/nationalists to rally around. Moreover, the pull of Ukraine for white supremacists has been lessened by the fact that, like Nazi Germany, some white supremacists consider Slavic people racially inferior.

The lack of an obvious standard-bearer for the whole movement has also been a major inhibitor of white supremacism/nationalism relative to jihadism. As noted above, the white supremacist and white nationalist movement is highly fragmented. There simply is no central figure even for the various individual parts of the white supremacist movement to rally around, much less for the entire movement to rally around. This is understandable given the abundance of ideologies that comprise the white supremacist universe. Even the neo-Nazi segment of the movement in the United States has lacked a central figure since George Lincoln Rockwell.

After his 1967 assassination, Rockwell's followers formed many competing splinter groups. Some fairly well-known figures emerged from Rockwell's organization, such as National Alliance founder William Pierce, American Nazi Party leader Matt Koehl (both now dead) and James Mason, the founder of the National Socialist Liberation Front — whose later adoption of some of Charles Manson's ideas formed the ideological basis for the recently formed, violently radical Atomwafen Division. These successors were often at odds with each other as they competed for a relatively small pool of funding and recruits. More recently, some leaders have rapidly risen to prominence inside the United States only to fade, such as Bill White of the National Socialist Movement and Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute.

Such leaders have never managed to consolidate much control over the movement inside the United States, much less globally. Spencer attempted to bring some sort of unity to the movement in the United States through the August 2017 "Unite the Right" march in Charlottesville, Virginia, to which he attracted some 500 people from an array of neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate, Klan, militia, white nationalist, white identity, skinhead, alt-right and other white supremacist and nationalist groups. When about 1,000 counterdemonstrators met these white supremacists in the absence of an inadequate police presence, the situation descended into violence and the rally was canceled. An angry white supremacist then drove into a crowd of counterprotesters celebrating the cancellation, killing a counterprotester.

After the Charlottesville debacle, finger-pointing and backbiting among white supremacist and nationalist leaders quickly ensued, and any small steps toward cohesion Spencer may have generated in the runup to the event quickly were reversed. An August 2018 attempt to re-create the Unite the Right event in Washington failed, with only a few dozen white supremacists/nationalists appearing. And so the white supremacist and nationalist movement continue to lack the sort of global leader akin to bin Laden or al-Baghdadi, a leadership gap it has experienced since the fall of the Axis powers.

A History of Disruption by Law Enforcement

Speaking of the fall of Hitler and Mussolini, history is another major difference between white supremacist terrorism and jihadism. Law enforcement in the United States has been dealing with white supremacist violence since the mid-19th century and the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas, in 1856 and the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1860s. Anti-immigration fervor also led to a major revival of the Klan (and its violence) in the 1920s, with millions of people joining the Klan — even in Northern states. In a show of power on Aug. 8, 1925, 50,000 robed Klansmen paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, an event Spencer consciously sought to replicate with the Unite the Right march. White supremacist violence in the United States also reared its head during the 1950s and 1960s, when Klansmen and other white supremacists lynched persons it deemed troublemakers, torched homes and bombed churches.

By the early 1970s, the Covenant Sword and Arm of the Lord, a Christian identity domestic terrorist group, was formed, followed by The Order in the 1980s. The years 1977-1980 saw Joseph Paul Franklin conducted a string of racially motivated murders, robberies and arsons spanning several states, severely wounding high-profile personalities Vernon Jordan and Larry Flynt in failed assassination attempts. In 1981, a group of U.S. and Canadian white supremacists was arrested for plotting to overthrow the government of Dominica.

This cluster of white supremacist terrorist activity drew significant law enforcement attention to the movement. Law enforcement efforts culminated in the Fort Smith sedition trial in 1988, in which 14 white supremacist leaders were charged with seditious conspiracy. The charged included members of The Order and the Covenant Sword and Arm of the Lord along with Klan Leader Louis Beam, National Alliance William Pierce and Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler.

In the late 1980s, a very mature and diverse white supremacist movement began to consider the leaderless resistance model of terrorism. Al Qaeda formed around the same time, launching the global jihadist movement.

Although the 14 white supremacist leaders were acquitted of seditious conspiracy charges, the trial still proved a watershed event for the white supremacist movement in the United States. Testimony at the trial revealed that undercover law enforcement informants had heavily infiltrated all of the organizations. This revelation caused white supremacists to rethink how they conducted terrorism, with many adopting the leaderless resistance model in which lone assailants and phantom cells conduct illegal activity while aboveground individuals and groups careful not to break the law disseminate propaganda and provide guidance to the underground terrorists. To do this, they have taken ample advantage of freedom of expression laws, first in physical publishing and broadcasting and later on the internet, something the jihadists have also done more recently.

The change in tactical approach was made visible in the fiction written by National Alliance leader William Pierce. In 1978, he wrote a book called "The Turner Diaries" using the pen name Andrew Macdonald, a work intended to provide a blueprint for conducting terrorist operations as an underground organization. Not coincidentally, the organization in "The Turner Diaries" was named "The Order." In 1989 following the Fort Smith trial, Pierce wrote a different operational blueprint in a book called "Hunter," which provided a leaderless resistance model. (Pierce dedicated Hunter to Joseph Paul Franklin.) Louis Beam also published a treatise on leaderless resistance in his publication "The Seditionist" in 1992.

Thus, a very mature and diverse white supremacist movement was moving to adopt the leaderless resistance model of terrorism shortly after al Qaeda was created in 1988 and launched the global jihadist movement. It would be several years before jihadists would feel the need to begin to adopt leaderless resistance in response to law enforcement pressure.

Not only did white supremacist groups garner significant law enforcement attention many decades before jihadists did, they also were far easier for European and U.S. law enforcement agencies to monitor and infiltrate because there were no ethnic or language barriers to overcome. Western law enforcement agencies and their personnel also better understood the ideology of white supremacy than that of jihadism. (Some would argue they still do.)

Indeed, attention to the white supremacist threat became so heavy that deconfliction became a serious problem for U.S. law enforcement. In some Klan or neo-Nazi meetings — and later in IRC channels, Usenet chat rooms and websites on the internet — there were more undercover law enforcement officers and informants than there were white supremacists. Organizations that monitored white supremacists such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center added to the many eyes on the white supremacist movement.

Until 9/11, law enforcement paid nowhere near the attention to jihadists that it paid to white supremacists and nationalists. Due to the magnitude of the 9/11 attacks, however, the attention pendulum rapidly swung in the direction of the jihadists, with law enforcement agencies adding language skills and diversity to help in their fight.

But U.S. law enforcement never fully took its eyes off the white supremacist/nationalist threat. As we noted in 2007, law enforcement used the new tools provided by the Patriot Act to hit a wide array of white supremacist/nationalist groups and leaders very hard in the early 2000s.

Such pressure has not relented. As we noted in August 2017, law enforcement has even used the same tactics developed in the fight against grassroots jihadists to combat grassroots right-wing extremists. And U.S. law enforcement is not alone: European law enforcement agencies have consistently targeted violent white supremacist and nationalist groups, resulting in a highly fragmented white supremacist movement in Europe.

Acknowledging that white supremacism and nationalism is not a new problem and that law enforcement has never stopped addressing it is not to dismiss the danger white supremacists and nationalists pose. White supremacist/nationalist terrorism is a very old problem, one that law enforcement in the West continues to battle. And as with jihadism, the various ideologies driving white supremacism/nationalism are not going away any time soon.
Scott Stewart supervises Stratfor's analysis of terrorism and security issues. Before joining Stratfor, he was a special agent with the U.S. State Department for 10 years and was involved in hundreds of terrorism investigations.
Connected Content

[Crafty_Dog]

Follow up to the preceding:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18284174/facebook-ban-white-nationalist-separatist-content?fbclid=IwAR1yPy-3NVpHzxE3X44om8sb2H0FGhLCcbir_gspJ8RdrWOWX8JnEhngHsM

[Crafty_Dog]

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/04/01/maga-hat-wearing-sword-wielding-assailant-slashes-man-outside-san-francisco-roller-rink/amp/?fbclid=IwAR0CS7s4tVgMoC5Kd7nM0K3mEN4KJAZveIwVIS3zl5ZfflyNe6Pz71AdABE

[G M]

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/04/01/maga-hat-wearing-sword-wielding-assailant-slashes-man-outside-san-francisco-roller-rink/amp/?fbclid=IwAR0CS7s4tVgMoC5Kd7nM0K3mEN4KJAZveIwVIS3zl5ZfflyNe6Pz71AdABE

A picture of the suspect was released by police.

[DougMacG]

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/04/01/maga-hat-wearing-sword-wielding-assailant-slashes-man-outside-san-francisco-roller-rink/amp/?fbclid=IwAR0CS7s4tVgMoC5Kd7nM0K3mEN4KJAZveIwVIS3zl5ZfflyNe6Pz71AdABE

I've never seen a hat commit so many crimes.  People interviewed were more offended by the hat than by then homophobic slurs.  Is the California legislature going to react with sword control laws?

[ccp]

Funny
Obama Biden stickers and emblems used to offend me just as much as Maga hat wearers offend socialists.

but I wouldn't dream of belittling them or getting into their face or arguing with them about them expressing their opinion.

not like the LEFT that ironically always goes around screaming  "free speech"*

 (*as long as politically correct)

[DougMacG]

Funny
Obama Biden stickers and emblems used to offend me just as much as Maga hat wearers offend socialists.

but I wouldn't dream of belittling them or getting into their face or arguing with them about them expressing their opinion.

not like the LEFT that ironically always goes around screaming  "free speech"*

 (*as long as politically correct)

Right.  I wouldn't dream of wearing the hat or identifying my car with a sticker, but my vote for him again looks certain.

The slogan is brilliant.  Trump openly admits he stole it from Reagan.  It's game theory 101 and his opponents walk right into the trap of opposing: "Make America Great Again".

Learning nothing from Michelle Obama, "first time I have ever been proud of my country", Eric Holder was the latest Leftist celeb to question, "when was America ever great?"

"When was America ever great?"  One commenter mentioned 1945 as a good example, when by chance my dad was in the first medical unit to arrive at Buchenwald (concentration camp), drove released Nazi POW soldiers to their homes in his  ambulance, awaited instructions of whether they would join the Pacific conflict next, and my mom was among the first women in the world to enter aeronautical (now aerospace) engineering.  You would have to be very deep inside a Democrat-run city today to see this country as one of the shitholes.  But even there the "poor" on average have multiple cars, air conditioning, cable tv and free healthcare.

[G M]

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/the_neverending_threat_of_civil_war.html#ixzz5kPaOoqwR

April 6, 2019
The Never-Ending Threat of Civil War
By E.M. Cadwaladr

We and the Left are now two nations within one country.  This is undeniable.  We are now so different that we cannot even agree on what a country is, or on the merits of a country having a border.  The number of people who still say, "I just don't care about politics" dwindles.  It is still possible to hate both sides — but it is getting hard to be indifferent and still be breathing.  How many people can just take or leave infanticide?  How many people are entirely flexible about the idea of the government having authority over anything and everything, to experimenting with our fundamental demographics, or to giving up fossil fuels cold turkey?

The "news," whether ours or theirs, focuses myopically on the daily round of legal wrangling that now completely lacks the power to resolve our differences.  The law has degenerated into a mere procedural habit.  Few people, and even fewer officials, were genuinely interested in whether Robert Mueller was pursuing the truth or not.  The assumption, on both sides, was that he wasn't.  What matters now is simply which side wins.  We won this round, but we should not read too much into that fleeting, rather technical victory.  We delude ourselves if we believe that a report, a statute, or a ruling will make either of the two antagonistic nations abandon their respective causes.  Both sides will continue to play the legal game only so long as they believe that the law can keep their adversaries at bay.  If either side is ever proven irrefutably wrong in that belief, violence will follow soon after as the option of default.  History screams this truth — even to those who are too deaf to hear it.  Nations, distinct peoples with their own deep feelings of identity, do not consent quietly to their own demise.

While I personally would dance an Irish reel to see a nationwide roundup of errant Democrat councilpersons for the crime of declaring their cities exempt from federal immigration law, I know that this would be a revolutionary detonator for the Left.  Many leftists would certainly decide to pursue their ends "by any means necessary."  Some of them have done so already.  Just ask Steve Scalise.  We have our breaking point, and they have theirs.  Our two nations hang suspended over war's abyss, kept in mid-air temporarily by a tug-of-war of pundits, politicians, and overpaid attorneys.  Our "leaders" are not quite ready to repudiate the only instruments of power they know how to wield, but in their cynical maneuvering, they have broken the very foundations of the rule of law itself.  We have seen the two-tiered legal system and found it unworthy of respect.  We have watched in quiet horror as a federal judge in Hawaii stuck his dainty legal foot in front of Trump's immigration order — but that's exactly how the game is played.  You and I hold our breath, waiting for the shambling Frankenstein's monster of formalities to eventually keel over and drop dead.  We wait for our side to finally draw a line and say, "Enough!" — or for their side to dig in and openly proclaim, "We won't be bound by a constitution written by old dead white men anymore!"

Consider the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that a dozen states have now passed into law.  These states have agreed to sign their citizens' electoral votes over to whatever presidential candidate wins the popular vote.  In one sense, this may be constitutional.  The framers allowed each state to determine for itself how its electors would be assigned.  In another sense, such laws are clearly anti-constitutional.  The framers quite explicitly intended to preserve the sovereignty of the less populous states, and a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact accomplishes just the opposite end.  Such laws are nothing less than attempts by California and New York to nullify the interests of whole regions of the country.  If the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact movement succeeds in achieving its golden number of 270 votes, will the state of Oklahoma, or Alabama, or Alaska, be content to have its votes made moot?  At what point does such a clever lawyer's trick make secession less objectionable than the alternative?

The abyss looms large beneath us.  We are stretched closer and closer to our limits.

The people who are eager for a civil war are fools.  They don't understand the catastrophe they're begging for.  But the people who believe that a civil war is now a real possibility are neither fools nor wild-eyed alarmists.  Moreover, the people who believe that, grim though the prospect may be, war might be the lesser of two evils have a daily strengthening case.  The Left has shown itself to be dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization itself.  We have not been faced with such an existential threat since European armies threw the Turks back from Vienna in 1529.  The fascists of the mid–2oth century, for all their loathsome policies, were not the kind of threat to the fabric of our society that we face now.  Bad as they were, they did not seek the destruction of Europeans as a people, or of European culture as a living, breathing thing.  Progressivism does.  What could be more worthy of, if you will forgive the word, "resistance"?

We conservatives have let this ideological cancer metastasize for far too long for its excision to be simple or painless.  For too long, we have been patient with outrages we should have fought to reverse.  We have let our opponents secede incrementally from us for decades.  We have been tolerant and patient.  In our tolerance and patience, we have given up our civil society, our political representation, and our freedoms one by one.  Our maladies won't be fixed by delicate adjustments now — half-heartedly performed by yet another generation of narcissistic government planners and invisible elitist bureaucrats.  Intellectuals like George Will and think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation have done us little good.  Our condition demands a radical, unflinching surgery if we, as a nation, are to survive.  Either the cancer wins, and kills us all, or we defeat it — and we accept the scars.  Let us not pretend they would not be hideous scars.  And let us not pretend it would not be a deeply barbarous and bitter surgery.

The truth is that we, as individuals, have rather few decisions left to make.  The titanic nations of the Left and right are rising en masse — flexing their muscles and snorting menacingly at one another.  We cannot get out of their way.  There is no safe part of the country, nor any genuinely safe haven left in any other country.  This is a global conflict.  We have run out of frontiers.  There is only so much "prepping" one can do for an upheaval of this magnitude.  We Americans have not seen such a calamity on our soil for six generations.  What our ancestors knew, we have forgotten.  The Civil War of our history has become a dim and comfortable myth.  A new war leers at us like the devil, but we talk about it like a football game.  We may learn as human beings have always learned — the hard way.

[DougMacG]

Whether to fight it or to prevent the next civil war, Republicans need to hold the Senate under all circumstances to keep the fight political.

Democrats have quite recently accelerated their anti-constitutional direction.  We had Roe v Wade, the Bork fight and war on the second amendment, but now the move away from constitutional limits on government power is fully out in plain sight.  Abandoning the electoral college is an obvious example.  "Pack the Court" is now considered a reasonable position on the Democratic side, see Butgieg thread.  Also see the Dem support and complicity in the attempted coup.  AG Bill Barr gets it: if true, this is a "big deal".

We no longer have moderate Republicans (or moderate Democrats) winning or even competitive in Senate races in Democrat majority states like New York, California, Illinois and so on.  Republicans need to start winning 100% of the races in their states as well as this country gets more and more divided. 

Lately R's lost Senate races in Alabama, Montana, West Virginia, Ohio and Arizona in what was considered a good year for Republicans in the Senate.  All politics is local?  Bullsh*t  Rubbish.  The war is national at a minimum.

I hate to compare anything here with al Qaida, ISIS etc, but one side declared war and the other pretends the intentions of their rivals are fine, don't worry.

Trump threaded the needle to win the Presidency,.  He might win again but no one sees how a Republican wins after that.  Meanwhile Supreme Court nominees now require just 50-51 votes in the Senate for confirmation.  The next President could appoint and get confirmed a dozen new Justices on the first day if he, she or zhe wants to, if the opposition doesn't do everything politically possible to stop them.

With a Republican majority Senate, the battles that President Kamala (or whoever) faces stay mostly in Washington.  Legislation and court nominees would need to attract a Republican vote or two.

With the McCain, Collins, Murkowski, Flake, Corker experience, we know that defections are possible and that a one or two seat majority is not a majority.  Republicans need to win all Senate seats in the conservative states and half the seats in the divided states.

When Democrats finally win it all again, House, Senate, Presidency and the Courts, and they decide to rule the rest of the country without their consent, whether gun confiscation or just banning automobiles as they already propose, the war is on and there is no path to victory for either side.

The only antidote to the poison that is the Left is to stop losing winnable elections.

[Crafty_Dog]

"The only antidote to the poison that is the Left is to stop losing winnable elections"

In my thinking I place considerable responsibility for the state we are in to the Hard Left's decision in the early 70s to go into education to indoctrinate the next generations. 

We need to roll up our sleeves and do the deep work to pass on the American Creed.