I know those people you talk of, I lived out in the Northern wild places a decade, all over, living rough, and am someone who can go back to places you all could not because I have cred in the world of outdoors-man/mountain man, and you cannot fake that – I also lived amongst the Rednecks of Florida and the Deep South for years – I can be accepted by them because I lived their world so much, living rough.
They do not trust outsiders as outsiders will F- their lands up by developing them, and they do not trust Fed Cops at all, or really any cops other than some local ones. They also have a lot of interactions with Fed Cops – Forest Service and BLM cops (Bureau of Land Management) – and they remember Ruby Ridge and a number of other events. They know the FBI and others watch them as a handy political scapegoat for when ever Washington needs one. ‘Round up the usual suspects’. Aside from all that they still are losing ground fast to developers.
Because the remote places are mostly Fed and State lands that means Fed Cops are the ones policing there – and Fed Cops are a type. And these guys do not like authority at all.
Anyway I know these kind of people, and this is how it is – They just want to be left alone. They have NO interest in going into the urban lands and causing trouble. The last thing they want is civil war or a fight with the Feds – they know they will lose, and gain nothing.
In a way they remind me of the Afghani. We went in with the insane logic, that the Taliban would cause terrorism – But they are utter isolationist. Their brand of Islam (a sort of Salafist Deobandi, but not pan-Islamist at all) is totally woven in with their tribal Pashtunwali creeds – and they want NO one to join them, they have no wish to export their ways as they are all about their tribal lands and people and culture. They are nothing like Arab Islamist (Islam swept out of Arabia – there it is a religion of spreading, nothing like Taliban). We should have just left them alone and saved $Trillions and huge numbers of deaths and injury.
“Today extremism-watching is a boom industry,”
This person Barbara F. Walter, is out to make status, power and $$ by lies – she could not know them, they would not talk with her in a real way. She is exploiting this group – she is a Liberal Hammer, and sees them as nails. As soon as NGO was mentioned I got her vibe.
“She believes very strongly in the judgments of NGOs and research panels, and she does not seem to have considered whether the worldview of the people who staff these groups”
NGO’s destroyed Afghanistan. They were Western urban elite, young from university, who set out to fix all which was wrong with the Afghani people, which that thought was everything about them. They just FU** ed them up instead – as they were not able to understand anything – they were so stupidly blinded by their own tiny world view, they were just hammers and the Afghani nails – and so 20 – 40 years of misery and destruction was inflicted.
This messed up woman is just the same. She will leave a whole lot of suffering, waste, and costs – for NOTHING but her own prejudices. These guys are not the problem – they just want to be left alone – the DC Liberal witch hunters are the problem.
99% a very good comment, except for this:-
“We went in with the insane logic, that the Taliban would cause terrorism – But they are utter isolationist.”
The Taliban hosted Al Qaeda.
Do you mean the Taliban supported and encouraged AQ, or they just didn’t forcibly evict them?
I don’t know the answer, thus the question. If I was isolationist and tolerant, I think I would not be cooperative with an outsider when they demand that I hand someone over.
I don’t know how the talks went between the parties, or how the translations went.
More complicated than that. Bin laden left Afghanistan in 1992 and went to Sudan. Sudan offered to sell Bin Laden to the USA but turn him down. BL returns to Afghanistan where Taleban offer him santuary which is correct according to Pushtun code. The Taleban is supported by Pakistan’s ISI.
Al Q became full of non Afghan’s to whom the Pushtun’s objected.
What the West failed to do was come up with was strategy where the Taleban would stop protecting BL and AQ without breaking the Pashtunwali. This may have been possible if the West had people who had lived and worked with the Pashtun.
T E Lawrence managed the dig at Carchemish which included tens or hundreds of arabs before WW1. By 1916 he spoke fluent arabic, knew how how they thought, felt and worked.Acoording to top Robert Baer ex CIA , they had one fluent Pashtiun speaker in 2001.
We have the same problem today. One needs to live and work in a community to understand it and not just be an observer. who visists every now and then. Orwell understood so much because he lived the lifes of a dishwasher in Paris and London; a tramp, school teacher and second hand bookseller, after he left the Burmese Police. He knew eight languages, including Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and Burmese. The Road to Wigan Pier could only have been written by someone who has Orwell’s depth and breadth of experience.
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
Quite convincing – though it would have been interesting if he had said more about what is actually happening on the ground, as opposed to among the terrorism-watchers.
The Economist reviewed the Walters book by saying “It is almost impossible to overstate the danger to US democracy in the current situation – but Ms Walters still manages it”. One point that Walters and others seem to ignore is that you can have a multi-ethnic autocracy, but a functioning democracy requires that people feel as one people. From recent Syria and Yougoslavia to 1848 Denmark (!), you see minorities rebel because they refuse to be outsiders in a democratic state by and for the majority. That is what looks worrying from the outside – not the ‘white supremacy’, but that ever larger US groups seem to feel that the US is not their country and they are not the same people as the other groups of citizens. Which is of course very much encouraged by the various 1619 projects, kneelers, statue topplers etc. Can anyone who actually lives there enlighten us on this?
Yes, simply being ‘American’ is passé over here, particularly among liberals. In order to fit in you need to belong to an oppressed group, no matter how tenuous the connection. I have had two female professors, one Native American, the other black, refer to their own particular ethnic group as ‘my people’ during class. Straight away this sets the stage in class between an in-group and an out-group. If a white professor exhibited similar tribal inclinations, there would be an uproar.
Earl King
2 years ago
Good grief. Whom ever this women is she seems to be devoid of any reading or history of the 60’s and 70’s. Anybody remember the Weatherman? An actual group that did believe in civil war? Their actually were bombings. From the Black Panthers to the SLA there were violent Black extremists. Back then it was collectively referred to as the “Left”. Social disobedience from anti war activists was also employed. Women’s rights groups would chain themselves to the doors of our government to promote passage of the ERA, the rhetoric was extremist (no bombings however).
Let me address anarchists. In America they are white but their ire is reserved for the Government. Not people of color. There have been fights between anarchists and the FBI for decades. They usually take place in a far off the beaten path rural setting that ends up in arrests or someone shot. Their fight is what they see as an overbearing fascist type government that is intrusive and wants to take away their freedom, their rights and more specifically their guns.
Sadly where we are today is more of a self separating society in to political tribes. It is not Democrats leaving CA. It is likely moderate to conservative Republicans and Libertarians leaving due to the economy and an overbearing government. Recently someone got the FBI Director to say white extremism presents the most threat to Americans. It is bullsh^t. It is as silly as suggesting that Jan 6th was a threat to our country. Police were always going to take back the Capitol. The Supreme Court would ended a Mike Pence nullification of the election very quickly if it had occurred. The Pentagon would have backed up the FBI and Federal police in physically taking Trump out of the WH. Of the thousands that showed up only a small few had guns. You’d need guns to take over the levers of government. It is political hype and theater to take Jan 6th and make it seem like more like the French Revolution or for that matter the Communist Revolution.Until you see people by the hundreds of thousands if not million willing to die to put some demagog in office America is not likely to enter a civil war. I agree that race is more likely a flash point. Democrats seem intent on having one.
Yours is a perceptive comment, Earl. Thanks for sharing it. On a side note . . . I noticed that you mentioned Mike Pence. Considering our present American problem, it seems to me that VP Mike, who truly did do the “right thing”, would be the best Republican to lead the GOP out of its diversion into trumpist dysfunction. He certainly understands the depths of “both sides” of the Republican worldview. And being from the midwest, he probably has a realistic understanding of “both sides” of our schizoid national identity problem.
Jeremy Bray
2 years ago
To have a civil war you need two parties eager for a fight. At present groups who wish to trash their neighbourhood to protest on behalf of BLM seem to meet virtually no resistance even from the authorities who are supposed to uphold law and order.
Are there anti-BLM riots? I don’t read about them in the press. Talk of civil war in the US seems about as realistic as the presence of alleged right wing terrorist groups in the UK.
Of course some people are going to want to make a good living exaggerating the threat of the Boogeyman.
Part of the problem with your analogy, is police cracked down on rioting in right leaning areas. There was little need for citizens to get violent against dangerous rioters to protect lives and property if the police are doing their job. Most of the damage and destruction was in Democrat held areas. I will point out that in the event of an actual civil war, those police officers will easily side with the locals. Same with vast swaths of the armed forces.
I could list a broad variety of reasons why I think the Right would win in a civil war against the Left and I have in “Would America survive a civil war?” by Malcom Kyeyune. I am not sure how much anybody actually “wins” and the aftermaths of civil wars are often just as ugly as anything in the war itself. Sure, if you are a bunch of hardcore Communists or Fascists, you just execute people, put on show trials, throw people in prison, suspend civil liberties, and seize as much power as possible. What if you actually believe in democracy, civil liberties, freedom of the press, and limitations on government power? Well, you are going to have to extend those very things to the people you just fought. Also, this is the period where “El Presidente” types come out of the woodwork and want to seize power for themselves. The side that won the war will want concessions. Good luck balancing those with something the other side can accept and not continue fighting or just engage in a decades long terrorism campaign that threatens to collapse the already fragile state. Then you get to the basic fact that the country is still a wreck, everyone still hates each other, and no one is stupid enough to give up all their firepower. Healing the country and fixing things would require men and women of principles, intelligence, and character. Guess what group seems to be in really short supply these days?
Finally, the problems of an American civil war will not just be limited to America. Like it or not American military force is what sets the current world balance of power. If the country was distracted by a civil war, foreign countries, China in particular, would be stupid not to take advantage of the opportunity. Bye bye Taiwan! This could have profound ripple effects that last way beyond the situation in America itself.
One bit of good news is civil wars don’t usually start until one side sees it as a last resort. I know this will be difficult for a lot of people on the angry internet to understand but starting shooting before you really have to just makes you look like an unreasonable d**k and tends to lose you support. At the same time quit provoking people thinking “they will never do anything.” History is littered with examples of where that went horribly wrong. Anyway, I wrote more than I expected too so this is it.
Thanks, Matt, for adding your perspective. It makes good sense. Dare I say it makes “common sense” a la Thomas Paine?
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
“The thesis of the book becomes that the entire Right-wing radical fringe is oriented around ethnic identity, and that ethnic resentments organised by “ethnic entrepreneurs” … are the source of most civil wars.”
How are di Angelo, Kendi, Eddo-Lodge & co anything other than ethnic entrepreneurs?
Laura Creighton
2 years ago
Walter’s suggestion is that they hire researchers and intelligence professionals who will approach the radical Right as if it were Isis or the Taliban. “If we are to avert civil war,” she writes, “we must devote the same resources to finding and neutralising homegrown combatants as we do to foreign ones.”
Because you’ve been doing such a great job with that, right?
Saul D
2 years ago
I’d not come across anocracy before. In Spanish ano (not to be confused with año) refers to a certain part of the body. So I read anocracy as rule by a**holes. I guess that’s the same meaning as semi-democracy.
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Pretty well everything bad that’s come into the world in the last 50 years has come into it from California.
Excellent article. I am one of those people who is “disconnected from mainstream institutions” and therefore unreachable by them. I live in a somewhat rural area and am mostly retired. I have little sympathy for racial categories of any kind; I was raised on MLK’s “content of her character” theorem, and I still believe it.
In my own community, I am the guy who opens up the church for your group, the guy who shops the local grocery rather than the WalMart because he thinks localism really matters, who’s daughters you’ll see riding horses around town, who runs movies in his barn during summer, and who will jump your car in the parking lot, whatever your color and however you’re dressed. I’m invisible to the regime that runs this country, but there are millions like me.
Ah, so you’re one of those “deplorables”, and likely a domestic terrorist who expresses unapproved opinions. Your mere existence represents the gravest threat to our democracy since the civil war. I suggest you report yourself to the state security apparatus immediately!
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
In the olden days, novelists took on many, many different jobs, as a way to see the country, or the world. Steinbeck, Conrad (a seafarer/merchant navy), Orwell (a former policeman, in the imperial police, and a bookseller). Cervantes was a soldier at the Battle of Lepanto. Creative living as opposed to imaginative writing courses for them. But among the powers-that-be, in the midst of them, too, they see are prone to seeing windmills as giants. Plus ça change …
Well, she’s been to college and doesn’t know anyone who disagrees with anything she says, so what would be the point of venturing outside of whichever coastal city she might inhabit?
This is an interesting aside for me, an author/publisher of four historical fiction novels: Glass half-Full, Glass Chimera, Smoke, King of Soul.
But I digress. Excuse me. My question is: do you think that 40 years as a carpenter/maintenance guy in an Appalachian town would qualify me to enter the same literary domain as Steinbeck, Conrad and Orwell? As for Cervantes . . . the only windmills I see these days seem to be contributing to our transition to 21st-century appropriate, sustainable technology. I doubt that I would attack one.
But I do see fiction as, as Jordan Peterson points out, somehow more indicative of reality than most academic thesis-izing.
Richard Pearse
2 years ago
“The Right in the county is now almost entirely alienated from the other structures of government, and it is hard to see how this situation could change, because many of the people involved in state and county government don’t actually see their concerns or worldview as democratically valid.”
Doesn’t it make more sense to say that “the other structures of government” are trying to muzzle the right and promote the antics of BLM, Antifa et al as people fighting the “health crisis” of systemic racism?
In other words, Walter and her book deal (and the Cathedral who promote and support them) are merely another example of Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” – stop, censor and disparage movements from the right, while giving full voice to the chanters and oracles of “Systemic [fill in the blank]” {James Lindsay (New Discourses) does an excellent job of reading through Marcuse’s masterpiece of intolerance , while applying it to the current state of Big Tech , Democratic Party antics and the Legacy Media.}
I have read Marcuse, although I have noticed that other left-heads of our lifetime did draw much from his theories.
But I want to comment on your mention of “The Right in the count(r)y.”
As a radical centrist, I must contribute to this discussion by sharing that much of this conservative discontent has nothing to do with races or skin color. There is more discontent and ire in flyover country provoked by the education establishment’s rejection of classic Western faith (as in God) and the ramifications of reading the Bible instead of the NYT or WaPo.
Most specifically, the conservative worldview of family, covenantal marriage between one man and woman, and how these moral building blocks are ignored in some public education programs whereby children are “educated” about various sexual identities that conflict with the ages-old doctrines of faith–these are the deeper issues. Deeper, let’s point out, than race, or BLM.
To be or not to be (politically correct) in the kids’ classroom. That is the question.
Absolutely true. And importantly, these same “right wing” views are shared by the majority of non-white people in this country. We’re all on the same page and get along just fine. It’s great. The leftist narrative, as aggravating as it may be, is fictional and unsustainable.
R S Foster
2 years ago
…if there is another American Civil War, I strongly suspect it will be started by the Left refusing to cede power to a legitimately elected “MAGA” President, in 2024…possibly even Trump himself, certainly somebody he backs…and will arise because if the Republicans retake Congress and Senate in the Mid-Terms (which they very well might)…
…the Democrat/Woke Establishment will set about gerrymandering the system to ensure the American People can’t make another “mistake” like the one they made in 2016 by preferring “The Donald” to the Duly Anointed and Sainted Hillary…and as they will only be able to do it (or anything) by Presidential Decree, thereby doing in advance of the Election what they tried to do after it in the years after 2016…and doing so in plain sight.
Fortunately the Right are likely to win, because they have most of the guns, and not only as armed civilians and militias…but as local police and sherrif’s departments, national guard units…and the rank and file of the armed forces…who seem to me most unlikely to machine-gun “their ain’ folk” on the instructions of the Beltway Bureaucrats (in Unifom) at the Pentagon…but it won’t be them that start it, it will be arrogant overreach by the Left…
Maybe. If so, the left will no doubt claim, perfectly sincerely, that the MAGA president is not legitimately elected, but got in based on fraud and misuse of power, never mind gerrymandering. Exactly like Trump claimed in 2020. Trump and friends seem to have had no reliable evidence to back their claim. It will be interesting to see which side will be favoured by the evidence next time.
I think this is another example of the hyperbole and narrative formation that exists in an attempt to sway the argument.
Of course there is climate change, but if I believe humans can’t do anything about it, I’m pegged as a “climate denier”. So too if I think people should have the right to take a vaccine or not. I’m pegged as an anti-vaxxer.
It is certainly evident now that more “votes” may have been counted in Biden’s column in the last election. That is not the issue, however. The fact is that so many of these strategically placed “votes” have no basis for verification, therefore are questionable. All for a 50 year political grifter who never campaigned. And we are seeing the results clearly ever day.
Not sure I follow you. Near as I can understand, the votes counted for Biden at the last election have exactly the same basis for verification as the votes counted for Trump, the votes counted for either candidate in 2016, in 2008, in 2000, etc. Why is Bidens win in 2020 questionable, if Trumps win in 2016, Bush in in 2000 etc. are not?
Did you not know that Hillary was the legitimate winner in 2016 and that Trump stole the election by colluding with those dirty Russkies? It was the number one news story throughout Trump’s presidency, right up until covid came along and saved the day.
“Fortunately the Right are likely to win, because they have most of the guns, and not only as armed civilians and militias…but as local police and sherrif’s departments, national guard units…and the rank and file of the armed forces…who seem to me most unlikely to machine-gun “their ain’ folk”
This is why I don’t think a civil war will happen. Reading the history of 1970s Britain (I think this was detailed in Peter Hennessey’s book The Secret State), there was a half-baked plot by UK military officers to overthrow the then Labour Government which was veering ever further to the left. But they realised that such a plot could not succeed because the rank and file soldiery would not support it (and would likely actively oppose it). So it all came to nothing, except for a comic sketch in Reggie Perrin.
I know that the US is not the UK, and that the potential antagonists are on different sides. But surely, the sane people in the US, on both sides, realise that the rank and file military / law enforcement are not going to fire on their own kin.
…I’m not sure the (apparent) utter moral certainty of the Woke Left/Liberal Establishment of the USA on each and every subject…up to and including incoherent idiocies like the 1619 Project, the absolute rectitude of Critical Race Theory, the idea that “mostly peaceful protests” include burning down buildings and killing people… whereas a disorganised mob, none to my knowledge armed and a number in fancy dress (who killed nobody, but some of whom were themselves killed)…was a serious effort at an organised coup d’etat…is really quite “sane” any more, tbh.
Plus I think they are far more remote from the rest of the people than is even possible in a place as small as the United Kingdom…and this is especially true of the decision-makers “Inside the Beltway”. And in addition worth observing that many people believe HMtQ laid a restraining hand on Her Officers in respect of Her Government, allegedly through her Mother…a very different situation where the C-in-C is also the Head of the Executive (including the security services) and a very much engaged partisan on one side of the incipient civil war
One of the strongest arguments for our current constitutional arrangements, in my view..!
I take your point about recent events being not entirely sane, but it does appear that there are some restraining factors, at least within the higher echelons of politics. The Democrats chose Biden over Bernie Sanders as their presidential candidate, with Kamala Harris as the more radical running mate. But even Kamala Harris seems to have been reined in since election. Yes, Biden is hyping up the significance of the Capitol theatricals, but that’s just what any politician would do in the run up to the midterm elections. Maybe he is playing with fire, but I doubt he intends an inferno. I could of course be wrong, in which case the US is truly heading up the creek without a paddle.
As for the US decision makers being more remote from the people than is the case in the UK, I can believe that. But only slightly. If you took the guns and religion out of Hillbilly Elegy, it would equally apply to that part of the UK where I am from. Fortunately, us Brits tend not to revolt, but only because if we tut loud enough people will take notice.
HMQ has been a great stabilising force in the UK (and I say that as a republican), but soon we will have Charlie. Armed forces swearing allegiance to King and Country? May still be OK – we just have to make sure that he gets his advice from sane people rather than his aspidistra.
…in terms of the Monarchy, I’m all for not fixing things that aren’t bust…and bearing in mind the “soft power” they provide at a cost which I believe is less than that of the President of Italy (which might be Berlusconi quite soon!), I’d definitely put the whole set up in that category. Not least because I think they are a very necessary protection against constitutional overeach of the kind I now fear is a real prospect in the USA…
…and I think it perfectly plausible that they might already have prevented military misbehaviour back in the 60’s…and I don’t see either Charles or William being much different to HMtQ in that respect. (Aspidistras hate shooting…they can’t duck, and their pots get broken!)
On the other, the big issues for me are the vast geographical scale of the place…you could lose the UK in most states, many times over in some, and I have to say I really didn’t understand the impact of that at all until I actually lived there for a couple of years…the second being the extent to which ambitious people really do leave home, and never go back…
…typically small town to big city college, first job in another big city a couple of thousand miles away…next job on the other coast…and with no more than a fortnight’s holiday…by the time you are “Inside the Beltway”, you probably don’t even go back for Thanksgiving…
…and finally, the whole of both Houses of Congress is about a 130 representatives smaller for a country vastly bigger and five times more populous…
…so there really isn’t anything that even comes close to an MPs Surgery, or getting buttonholed on the High Street, or in the Golf Club or Trades and Labour. Our MPs can be a bit detached between Elections…theirs are close to invisible even during them.
Chas said he spoke to his plants he didn’t say anything about listening to them. I have several varieties of carrots growing in troughs in my guestbedroom window and I talk to them every time I water them. Sometimes I say please sometimes I threaten – what I’m actually doing is giving them an extra dose of CO2 which is a fertiliser (and is copied by many commercial growers using “bottled” CO2) which is also used by publicans to bring your ale to the beer engine. As you may have read, CO2 is in short supply from time to time so why are people worried about having too much.of it lying around. Just because his ideas are not the same as yours or mine doesn’t mean that he is talking out of his Aspidestra.
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
I wonder from afar if this isn’t a chicken and egg situation. Just reading these essays and books is telling people about possible civil wars and they want to read more about it so more journalists are making more money with more essays…
I am not an expert but when I used to work in redneck country about 20 years ago, people used to tell me the same stories about heavily armed groups living in trailer parks.
John T. Maloney
2 years ago
The is a long-standing tradition of the Democrat Party specifically. The founder of the Democrat Party, Andrew Jackson, conceived and implemented the cruel and unnecessary Indian Removal Act. This allowed the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in “exchange” for Indian lands. In 1851, the United States Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act which authorized the creation of Indian “reservations” in modern-day Oklahoma. In 1934, FDR deployed the Indian Reorganization Act. All of these disasters were intended “to control” indigenous populations.
In sum, the Indian reservation system was created to keep Native Americans off of lands that European Americans wanted. Farcically, they claimed the reservation system allowed indigenous people to govern themselves and to maintain some of their cultural and social traditions.
The nub of this soaring farce is the “cultural and social” fabric of the populations was built entirely on proximate lands – the forests, plains, mountains, streams, rivers, and ecologies that they have nurtured and husbanded for multiple millennia. It didn’t end well. The same goes for the so-called “hinterland extremists.” (?)
JFK tried the same thing in Vietnam with his Harvard-led “strategic relocation” idiocy. Taking people that have lived on the same spit of jungle mud for 20,000 years and moving them to a different “civilized” location is tantamount to ripping out their souls. It didn’t end well. Same for the so-called “hinterland extremists.”
These grave problems arose mostly from The Academy in the Northeast of the USA (Yale, Harvard, Brown, etc.). Mid-Atlantic agencies in Washington and Virginia furnished the muscle.
Unfortunately, the USA harbors and elevates these decadent apparatchiks and a servile media to wreak havoc on their imaginary threats.
For example, President Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management, an organ of the Interior Dept, from Foggy Bottom (1849 C Street NW Washington, D.C.) to <gasp!> Colorado (where the land is). Pearl-clutching Biden lackeys promptly moved it back to Foggy Bottom.
Meanwhile, a wise Justice summarized this whole mess well: “The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone.” –Louis D Brandeis.
Most all “hinterland extremists” just want to be left (the f**k) alone.
I fail to understand how the folks who are censoring my news and social media are a force for democracy. Similarly, it would appear that the government that repeatedly seeks ways to make me do their bidding without following due process and the rule of law dosn’t seem to me to be the forces of democracy, even though the government officials call themselves Democrats. The sanctimonious tyrants that want to dictate how I think and what I say don’t seem to be the benign philosophers they style themselves. In short, wokesters suck.
This ain’t a fight between urban and rural. It’s a fight between supporters of the Constitution and the rule of law against “experts” who say they can easily identify the “greater good” and implement policies to achieve it, if only all Constitutional checks and balances were swept away.
This fight may appear urban versus rural, but that’s only because urban populations are easier to physically control. They’re concentrated. However, as major cities become high crime hell holes, U-Haul is helping people flee from disfunctional blue city and state governments. You can get rid of the blues by moving away from them.
The one thing that will cause shooting is if there is blatant, obvious cheating in 2022 and 2024 elections. Not just the 2020 style of violating election laws because of Covid-19, but the 100,000 fraudulent votes in the 1982 election for Governor of Illinois kind of cheating. (Republican Jim Thompson won anyway, by just under 9,000 votes.) If the cheating is blatant, and changes the outcome of the election obviously so that Democrats win with it after being sunk in all the polls, there probably will be trouble involving guns.
Last edited 2 years ago by Douglas Proudfoot
LCarey Rowland
2 years ago
Thanks, James, for your unique take on this societal development.
The two groups of which you write are, indeed, “worlds” apart.
I know those people you talk of, I lived out in the Northern wild places a decade, all over, living rough, and am someone who can go back to places you all could not because I have cred in the world of outdoors-man/mountain man, and you cannot fake that – I also lived amongst the Rednecks of Florida and the Deep South for years – I can be accepted by them because I lived their world so much, living rough.
They do not trust outsiders as outsiders will F- their lands up by developing them, and they do not trust Fed Cops at all, or really any cops other than some local ones. They also have a lot of interactions with Fed Cops – Forest Service and BLM cops (Bureau of Land Management) – and they remember Ruby Ridge and a number of other events. They know the FBI and others watch them as a handy political scapegoat for when ever Washington needs one. ‘Round up the usual suspects’. Aside from all that they still are losing ground fast to developers.
Because the remote places are mostly Fed and State lands that means Fed Cops are the ones policing there – and Fed Cops are a type. And these guys do not like authority at all.
Anyway I know these kind of people, and this is how it is – They just want to be left alone. They have NO interest in going into the urban lands and causing trouble. The last thing they want is civil war or a fight with the Feds – they know they will lose, and gain nothing.
In a way they remind me of the Afghani. We went in with the insane logic, that the Taliban would cause terrorism – But they are utter isolationist. Their brand of Islam (a sort of Salafist Deobandi, but not pan-Islamist at all) is totally woven in with their tribal Pashtunwali creeds – and they want NO one to join them, they have no wish to export their ways as they are all about their tribal lands and people and culture. They are nothing like Arab Islamist (Islam swept out of Arabia – there it is a religion of spreading, nothing like Taliban). We should have just left them alone and saved $Trillions and huge numbers of deaths and injury.
“Today extremism-watching is a boom industry,”
This person Barbara F. Walter, is out to make status, power and $$ by lies – she could not know them, they would not talk with her in a real way. She is exploiting this group – she is a Liberal Hammer, and sees them as nails. As soon as NGO was mentioned I got her vibe.
“She believes very strongly in the judgments of NGOs and research panels, and she does not seem to have considered whether the worldview of the people who staff these groups”
NGO’s destroyed Afghanistan. They were Western urban elite, young from university, who set out to fix all which was wrong with the Afghani people, which that thought was everything about them. They just FU** ed them up instead – as they were not able to understand anything – they were so stupidly blinded by their own tiny world view, they were just hammers and the Afghani nails – and so 20 – 40 years of misery and destruction was inflicted.
This messed up woman is just the same. She will leave a whole lot of suffering, waste, and costs – for NOTHING but her own prejudices. These guys are not the problem – they just want to be left alone – the DC Liberal witch hunters are the problem.
Great comment.
You sound awfully like the late Sanford Artzen.
Who?
A notable commentator from the early days of UnHerd.
99% a very good comment, except for this:-
“We went in with the insane logic, that the Taliban would cause terrorism – But they are utter isolationist.”
The Taliban hosted Al Qaeda.
Ah, but did Al Qaeda really pull off 9/11?
Following the logic of Cicero and “Cui Bono?” it does seem rather unlikely.
Oh Christ, a truther. Sorry, but I’m just not interested in accompanying you down the rabbit-hole.
Fair enough!
Do you mean the Taliban supported and encouraged AQ, or they just didn’t forcibly evict them?
I don’t know the answer, thus the question. If I was isolationist and tolerant, I think I would not be cooperative with an outsider when they demand that I hand someone over.
I don’t know how the talks went between the parties, or how the translations went.
Incorrect, the Pakistan’s hosted Al Qaeda. Read Steve Colls 2 excellent books on Afghanistan.
More complicated than that. Bin laden left Afghanistan in 1992 and went to Sudan. Sudan offered to sell Bin Laden to the USA but turn him down. BL returns to Afghanistan where Taleban offer him santuary which is correct according to Pushtun code. The Taleban is supported by Pakistan’s ISI.
Al Q became full of non Afghan’s to whom the Pushtun’s objected.
What the West failed to do was come up with was strategy where the Taleban would stop protecting BL and AQ without breaking the Pashtunwali. This may have been possible if the West had people who had lived and worked with the Pashtun.
T E Lawrence managed the dig at Carchemish which included tens or hundreds of arabs before WW1. By 1916 he spoke fluent arabic, knew how how they thought, felt and worked.Acoording to top Robert Baer ex CIA , they had one fluent Pashtiun speaker in 2001.
We have the same problem today. One needs to live and work in a community to understand it and not just be an observer. who visists every now and then. Orwell understood so much because he lived the lifes of a dishwasher in Paris and London; a tramp, school teacher and second hand bookseller, after he left the Burmese Police. He knew eight languages, including Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and Burmese. The Road to Wigan Pier could only have been written by someone who has Orwell’s depth and breadth of experience.
Quite convincing – though it would have been interesting if he had said more about what is actually happening on the ground, as opposed to among the terrorism-watchers.
The Economist reviewed the Walters book by saying “It is almost impossible to overstate the danger to US democracy in the current situation – but Ms Walters still manages it”. One point that Walters and others seem to ignore is that you can have a multi-ethnic autocracy, but a functioning democracy requires that people feel as one people. From recent Syria and Yougoslavia to 1848 Denmark (!), you see minorities rebel because they refuse to be outsiders in a democratic state by and for the majority. That is what looks worrying from the outside – not the ‘white supremacy’, but that ever larger US groups seem to feel that the US is not their country and they are not the same people as the other groups of citizens. Which is of course very much encouraged by the various 1619 projects, kneelers, statue topplers etc. Can anyone who actually lives there enlighten us on this?
Yes, simply being ‘American’ is passé over here, particularly among liberals. In order to fit in you need to belong to an oppressed group, no matter how tenuous the connection. I have had two female professors, one Native American, the other black, refer to their own particular ethnic group as ‘my people’ during class. Straight away this sets the stage in class between an in-group and an out-group. If a white professor exhibited similar tribal inclinations, there would be an uproar.
Good grief. Whom ever this women is she seems to be devoid of any reading or history of the 60’s and 70’s. Anybody remember the Weatherman? An actual group that did believe in civil war? Their actually were bombings. From the Black Panthers to the SLA there were violent Black extremists. Back then it was collectively referred to as the “Left”. Social disobedience from anti war activists was also employed. Women’s rights groups would chain themselves to the doors of our government to promote passage of the ERA, the rhetoric was extremist (no bombings however).
Let me address anarchists. In America they are white but their ire is reserved for the Government. Not people of color. There have been fights between anarchists and the FBI for decades. They usually take place in a far off the beaten path rural setting that ends up in arrests or someone shot. Their fight is what they see as an overbearing fascist type government that is intrusive and wants to take away their freedom, their rights and more specifically their guns.
Sadly where we are today is more of a self separating society in to political tribes. It is not Democrats leaving CA. It is likely moderate to conservative Republicans and Libertarians leaving due to the economy and an overbearing government. Recently someone got the FBI Director to say white extremism presents the most threat to Americans. It is bullsh^t. It is as silly as suggesting that Jan 6th was a threat to our country. Police were always going to take back the Capitol. The Supreme Court would ended a Mike Pence nullification of the election very quickly if it had occurred. The Pentagon would have backed up the FBI and Federal police in physically taking Trump out of the WH. Of the thousands that showed up only a small few had guns. You’d need guns to take over the levers of government. It is political hype and theater to take Jan 6th and make it seem like more like the French Revolution or for that matter the Communist Revolution.Until you see people by the hundreds of thousands if not million willing to die to put some demagog in office America is not likely to enter a civil war. I agree that race is more likely a flash point. Democrats seem intent on having one.
Yours is a perceptive comment, Earl. Thanks for sharing it. On a side note . . . I noticed that you mentioned Mike Pence. Considering our present American problem, it seems to me that VP Mike, who truly did do the “right thing”, would be the best Republican to lead the GOP out of its diversion into trumpist dysfunction. He certainly understands the depths of “both sides” of the Republican worldview. And being from the midwest, he probably has a realistic understanding of “both sides” of our schizoid national identity problem.
To have a civil war you need two parties eager for a fight. At present groups who wish to trash their neighbourhood to protest on behalf of BLM seem to meet virtually no resistance even from the authorities who are supposed to uphold law and order.
Are there anti-BLM riots? I don’t read about them in the press. Talk of civil war in the US seems about as realistic as the presence of alleged right wing terrorist groups in the UK.
Of course some people are going to want to make a good living exaggerating the threat of the Boogeyman.
Part of the problem with your analogy, is police cracked down on rioting in right leaning areas. There was little need for citizens to get violent against dangerous rioters to protect lives and property if the police are doing their job. Most of the damage and destruction was in Democrat held areas. I will point out that in the event of an actual civil war, those police officers will easily side with the locals. Same with vast swaths of the armed forces.
I could list a broad variety of reasons why I think the Right would win in a civil war against the Left and I have in “Would America survive a civil war?” by Malcom Kyeyune. I am not sure how much anybody actually “wins” and the aftermaths of civil wars are often just as ugly as anything in the war itself. Sure, if you are a bunch of hardcore Communists or Fascists, you just execute people, put on show trials, throw people in prison, suspend civil liberties, and seize as much power as possible. What if you actually believe in democracy, civil liberties, freedom of the press, and limitations on government power? Well, you are going to have to extend those very things to the people you just fought. Also, this is the period where “El Presidente” types come out of the woodwork and want to seize power for themselves. The side that won the war will want concessions. Good luck balancing those with something the other side can accept and not continue fighting or just engage in a decades long terrorism campaign that threatens to collapse the already fragile state. Then you get to the basic fact that the country is still a wreck, everyone still hates each other, and no one is stupid enough to give up all their firepower. Healing the country and fixing things would require men and women of principles, intelligence, and character. Guess what group seems to be in really short supply these days?
Finally, the problems of an American civil war will not just be limited to America. Like it or not American military force is what sets the current world balance of power. If the country was distracted by a civil war, foreign countries, China in particular, would be stupid not to take advantage of the opportunity. Bye bye Taiwan! This could have profound ripple effects that last way beyond the situation in America itself.
One bit of good news is civil wars don’t usually start until one side sees it as a last resort. I know this will be difficult for a lot of people on the angry internet to understand but starting shooting before you really have to just makes you look like an unreasonable d**k and tends to lose you support. At the same time quit provoking people thinking “they will never do anything.” History is littered with examples of where that went horribly wrong. Anyway, I wrote more than I expected too so this is it.
Thanks, Matt, for adding your perspective. It makes good sense. Dare I say it makes “common sense” a la Thomas Paine?
“The thesis of the book becomes that the entire Right-wing radical fringe is oriented around ethnic identity, and that ethnic resentments organised by “ethnic entrepreneurs” … are the source of most civil wars.”
How are di Angelo, Kendi, Eddo-Lodge & co anything other than ethnic entrepreneurs?
Because you’ve been doing such a great job with that, right?
I’d not come across anocracy before. In Spanish ano (not to be confused with año) refers to a certain part of the body. So I read anocracy as rule by a**holes. I guess that’s the same meaning as semi-democracy.
Pretty well everything bad that’s come into the world in the last 50 years has come into it from California.
Hollywood, California
Prior to that off course it was Bavaria & Austria to name but two.
What about Petrograd, Russia?
Don’t forget Canberra, Australia.
Excellent article. I am one of those people who is “disconnected from mainstream institutions” and therefore unreachable by them. I live in a somewhat rural area and am mostly retired. I have little sympathy for racial categories of any kind; I was raised on MLK’s “content of her character” theorem, and I still believe it.
In my own community, I am the guy who opens up the church for your group, the guy who shops the local grocery rather than the WalMart because he thinks localism really matters, who’s daughters you’ll see riding horses around town, who runs movies in his barn during summer, and who will jump your car in the parking lot, whatever your color and however you’re dressed. I’m invisible to the regime that runs this country, but there are millions like me.
Ah, so you’re one of those “deplorables”, and likely a domestic terrorist who expresses unapproved opinions. Your mere existence represents the gravest threat to our democracy since the civil war. I suggest you report yourself to the state security apparatus immediately!
In the olden days, novelists took on many, many different jobs, as a way to see the country, or the world. Steinbeck, Conrad (a seafarer/merchant navy), Orwell (a former policeman, in the imperial police, and a bookseller). Cervantes was a soldier at the Battle of Lepanto. Creative living as opposed to imaginative writing courses for them. But among the powers-that-be, in the midst of them, too, they see are prone to seeing windmills as giants. Plus ça change …
Creative living as opposed to imaginative writing courses for them
This is a very good way of putting it – do you mind if I use this?
Barbara Walter seems adverse to actually going out there into the messy world and look at that about which she writes.
Yes, you may use that. And you may also use “in the olden days” too.
Well, she’s been to college and doesn’t know anyone who disagrees with anything she says, so what would be the point of venturing outside of whichever coastal city she might inhabit?
I think Malcolm Lowry may have worked in the merchant navy too. And Cervantes also “enjoyed” the formative experience of slavery under the Ottomans.
This is an interesting aside for me, an author/publisher of four historical fiction novels: Glass half-Full, Glass Chimera, Smoke, King of Soul.
But I digress. Excuse me. My question is: do you think that 40 years as a carpenter/maintenance guy in an Appalachian town would qualify me to enter the same literary domain as Steinbeck, Conrad and Orwell? As for Cervantes . . . the only windmills I see these days seem to be contributing to our transition to 21st-century appropriate, sustainable technology. I doubt that I would attack one.
But I do see fiction as, as Jordan Peterson points out, somehow more indicative of reality than most academic thesis-izing.
“The Right in the county is now almost entirely alienated from the other structures of government, and it is hard to see how this situation could change, because many of the people involved in state and county government don’t actually see their concerns or worldview as democratically valid.”
Doesn’t it make more sense to say that “the other structures of government” are trying to muzzle the right and promote the antics of BLM, Antifa et al as people fighting the “health crisis” of systemic racism?
In other words, Walter and her book deal (and the Cathedral who promote and support them) are merely another example of Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” – stop, censor and disparage movements from the right, while giving full voice to the chanters and oracles of “Systemic [fill in the blank]” {James Lindsay (New Discourses) does an excellent job of reading through Marcuse’s masterpiece of intolerance , while applying it to the current state of Big Tech , Democratic Party antics and the Legacy Media.}
I have read Marcuse, although I have noticed that other left-heads of our lifetime did draw much from his theories.
But I want to comment on your mention of “The Right in the count(r)y.”
As a radical centrist, I must contribute to this discussion by sharing that much of this conservative discontent has nothing to do with races or skin color. There is more discontent and ire in flyover country provoked by the education establishment’s rejection of classic Western faith (as in God) and the ramifications of reading the Bible instead of the NYT or WaPo.
Most specifically, the conservative worldview of family, covenantal marriage between one man and woman, and how these moral building blocks are ignored in some public education programs whereby children are “educated” about various sexual identities that conflict with the ages-old doctrines of faith–these are the deeper issues. Deeper, let’s point out, than race, or BLM.
To be or not to be (politically correct) in the kids’ classroom. That is the question.
Absolutely true. And importantly, these same “right wing” views are shared by the majority of non-white people in this country. We’re all on the same page and get along just fine. It’s great. The leftist narrative, as aggravating as it may be, is fictional and unsustainable.
…if there is another American Civil War, I strongly suspect it will be started by the Left refusing to cede power to a legitimately elected “MAGA” President, in 2024…possibly even Trump himself, certainly somebody he backs…and will arise because if the Republicans retake Congress and Senate in the Mid-Terms (which they very well might)…
…the Democrat/Woke Establishment will set about gerrymandering the system to ensure the American People can’t make another “mistake” like the one they made in 2016 by preferring “The Donald” to the Duly Anointed and Sainted Hillary…and as they will only be able to do it (or anything) by Presidential Decree, thereby doing in advance of the Election what they tried to do after it in the years after 2016…and doing so in plain sight.
Fortunately the Right are likely to win, because they have most of the guns, and not only as armed civilians and militias…but as local police and sherrif’s departments, national guard units…and the rank and file of the armed forces…who seem to me most unlikely to machine-gun “their ain’ folk” on the instructions of the Beltway Bureaucrats (in Unifom) at the Pentagon…but it won’t be them that start it, it will be arrogant overreach by the Left…
Maybe. If so, the left will no doubt claim, perfectly sincerely, that the MAGA president is not legitimately elected, but got in based on fraud and misuse of power, never mind gerrymandering. Exactly like Trump claimed in 2020. Trump and friends seem to have had no reliable evidence to back their claim. It will be interesting to see which side will be favoured by the evidence next time.
I think this is another example of the hyperbole and narrative formation that exists in an attempt to sway the argument.
Of course there is climate change, but if I believe humans can’t do anything about it, I’m pegged as a “climate denier”. So too if I think people should have the right to take a vaccine or not. I’m pegged as an anti-vaxxer.
It is certainly evident now that more “votes” may have been counted in Biden’s column in the last election. That is not the issue, however. The fact is that so many of these strategically placed “votes” have no basis for verification, therefore are questionable. All for a 50 year political grifter who never campaigned. And we are seeing the results clearly ever day.
Not sure I follow you. Near as I can understand, the votes counted for Biden at the last election have exactly the same basis for verification as the votes counted for Trump, the votes counted for either candidate in 2016, in 2008, in 2000, etc. Why is Bidens win in 2020 questionable, if Trumps win in 2016, Bush in in 2000 etc. are not?
Did you not know that Hillary was the legitimate winner in 2016 and that Trump stole the election by colluding with those dirty Russkies? It was the number one news story throughout Trump’s presidency, right up until covid came along and saved the day.
“Fortunately the Right are likely to win, because they have most of the guns, and not only as armed civilians and militias…but as local police and sherrif’s departments, national guard units…and the rank and file of the armed forces…who seem to me most unlikely to machine-gun “their ain’ folk”
This is why I don’t think a civil war will happen. Reading the history of 1970s Britain (I think this was detailed in Peter Hennessey’s book The Secret State), there was a half-baked plot by UK military officers to overthrow the then Labour Government which was veering ever further to the left. But they realised that such a plot could not succeed because the rank and file soldiery would not support it (and would likely actively oppose it). So it all came to nothing, except for a comic sketch in Reggie Perrin.
I know that the US is not the UK, and that the potential antagonists are on different sides. But surely, the sane people in the US, on both sides, realise that the rank and file military / law enforcement are not going to fire on their own kin.
…I’m not sure the (apparent) utter moral certainty of the Woke Left/Liberal Establishment of the USA on each and every subject…up to and including incoherent idiocies like the 1619 Project, the absolute rectitude of Critical Race Theory, the idea that “mostly peaceful protests” include burning down buildings and killing people… whereas a disorganised mob, none to my knowledge armed and a number in fancy dress (who killed nobody, but some of whom were themselves killed)…was a serious effort at an organised coup d’etat…is really quite “sane” any more, tbh.
Plus I think they are far more remote from the rest of the people than is even possible in a place as small as the United Kingdom…and this is especially true of the decision-makers “Inside the Beltway”. And in addition worth observing that many people believe HMtQ laid a restraining hand on Her Officers in respect of Her Government, allegedly through her Mother…a very different situation where the C-in-C is also the Head of the Executive (including the security services) and a very much engaged partisan on one side of the incipient civil war
One of the strongest arguments for our current constitutional arrangements, in my view..!
I take your point about recent events being not entirely sane, but it does appear that there are some restraining factors, at least within the higher echelons of politics. The Democrats chose Biden over Bernie Sanders as their presidential candidate, with Kamala Harris as the more radical running mate. But even Kamala Harris seems to have been reined in since election. Yes, Biden is hyping up the significance of the Capitol theatricals, but that’s just what any politician would do in the run up to the midterm elections. Maybe he is playing with fire, but I doubt he intends an inferno. I could of course be wrong, in which case the US is truly heading up the creek without a paddle.
As for the US decision makers being more remote from the people than is the case in the UK, I can believe that. But only slightly. If you took the guns and religion out of Hillbilly Elegy, it would equally apply to that part of the UK where I am from. Fortunately, us Brits tend not to revolt, but only because if we tut loud enough people will take notice.
HMQ has been a great stabilising force in the UK (and I say that as a republican), but soon we will have Charlie. Armed forces swearing allegiance to King and Country? May still be OK – we just have to make sure that he gets his advice from sane people rather than his aspidistra.
…in terms of the Monarchy, I’m all for not fixing things that aren’t bust…and bearing in mind the “soft power” they provide at a cost which I believe is less than that of the President of Italy (which might be Berlusconi quite soon!), I’d definitely put the whole set up in that category. Not least because I think they are a very necessary protection against constitutional overeach of the kind I now fear is a real prospect in the USA…
…and I think it perfectly plausible that they might already have prevented military misbehaviour back in the 60’s…and I don’t see either Charles or William being much different to HMtQ in that respect. (Aspidistras hate shooting…they can’t duck, and their pots get broken!)
On the other, the big issues for me are the vast geographical scale of the place…you could lose the UK in most states, many times over in some, and I have to say I really didn’t understand the impact of that at all until I actually lived there for a couple of years…the second being the extent to which ambitious people really do leave home, and never go back…
…typically small town to big city college, first job in another big city a couple of thousand miles away…next job on the other coast…and with no more than a fortnight’s holiday…by the time you are “Inside the Beltway”, you probably don’t even go back for Thanksgiving…
…and finally, the whole of both Houses of Congress is about a 130 representatives smaller for a country vastly bigger and five times more populous…
…so there really isn’t anything that even comes close to an MPs Surgery, or getting buttonholed on the High Street, or in the Golf Club or Trades and Labour. Our MPs can be a bit detached between Elections…theirs are close to invisible even during them.
Chas said he spoke to his plants he didn’t say anything about listening to them. I have several varieties of carrots growing in troughs in my guestbedroom window and I talk to them every time I water them. Sometimes I say please sometimes I threaten – what I’m actually doing is giving them an extra dose of CO2 which is a fertiliser (and is copied by many commercial growers using “bottled” CO2) which is also used by publicans to bring your ale to the beer engine. As you may have read, CO2 is in short supply from time to time so why are people worried about having too much.of it lying around. Just because his ideas are not the same as yours or mine doesn’t mean that he is talking out of his Aspidestra.
I wonder from afar if this isn’t a chicken and egg situation. Just reading these essays and books is telling people about possible civil wars and they want to read more about it so more journalists are making more money with more essays…
I am not an expert but when I used to work in redneck country about 20 years ago, people used to tell me the same stories about heavily armed groups living in trailer parks.
The is a long-standing tradition of the Democrat Party specifically. The founder of the Democrat Party, Andrew Jackson, conceived and implemented the cruel and unnecessary Indian Removal Act. This allowed the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in “exchange” for Indian lands. In 1851, the United States Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act which authorized the creation of Indian “reservations” in modern-day Oklahoma. In 1934, FDR deployed the Indian Reorganization Act. All of these disasters were intended “to control” indigenous populations.
In sum, the Indian reservation system was created to keep Native Americans off of lands that European Americans wanted. Farcically, they claimed the reservation system allowed indigenous people to govern themselves and to maintain some of their cultural and social traditions.
The nub of this soaring farce is the “cultural and social” fabric of the populations was built entirely on proximate lands – the forests, plains, mountains, streams, rivers, and ecologies that they have nurtured and husbanded for multiple millennia. It didn’t end well. The same goes for the so-called “hinterland extremists.” (?)
JFK tried the same thing in Vietnam with his Harvard-led “strategic relocation” idiocy. Taking people that have lived on the same spit of jungle mud for 20,000 years and moving them to a different “civilized” location is tantamount to ripping out their souls. It didn’t end well. Same for the so-called “hinterland extremists.”
These grave problems arose mostly from The Academy in the Northeast of the USA (Yale, Harvard, Brown, etc.). Mid-Atlantic agencies in Washington and Virginia furnished the muscle.
Unfortunately, the USA harbors and elevates these decadent apparatchiks and a servile media to wreak havoc on their imaginary threats.
For example, President Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management, an organ of the Interior Dept, from Foggy Bottom (1849 C Street NW Washington, D.C.) to <gasp!> Colorado (where the land is). Pearl-clutching Biden lackeys promptly moved it back to Foggy Bottom.
Meanwhile, a wise Justice summarized this whole mess well: “The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone.” –Louis D Brandeis.
Most all “hinterland extremists” just want to be left (the f**k) alone.
Now this is a Statesman, even though I disagree with her politics. Amazing.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/01/14/after-sinema-hacked-to-death-dems-filibuster-plan-manchin-fired-off-another-kil-n2601837?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky1
I fail to understand how the folks who are censoring my news and social media are a force for democracy. Similarly, it would appear that the government that repeatedly seeks ways to make me do their bidding without following due process and the rule of law dosn’t seem to me to be the forces of democracy, even though the government officials call themselves Democrats. The sanctimonious tyrants that want to dictate how I think and what I say don’t seem to be the benign philosophers they style themselves. In short, wokesters suck.
This ain’t a fight between urban and rural. It’s a fight between supporters of the Constitution and the rule of law against “experts” who say they can easily identify the “greater good” and implement policies to achieve it, if only all Constitutional checks and balances were swept away.
This fight may appear urban versus rural, but that’s only because urban populations are easier to physically control. They’re concentrated. However, as major cities become high crime hell holes, U-Haul is helping people flee from disfunctional blue city and state governments. You can get rid of the blues by moving away from them.
The one thing that will cause shooting is if there is blatant, obvious cheating in 2022 and 2024 elections. Not just the 2020 style of violating election laws because of Covid-19, but the 100,000 fraudulent votes in the 1982 election for Governor of Illinois kind of cheating. (Republican Jim Thompson won anyway, by just under 9,000 votes.) If the cheating is blatant, and changes the outcome of the election obviously so that Democrats win with it after being sunk in all the polls, there probably will be trouble involving guns.
Thanks, James, for your unique take on this societal development.
The two groups of which you write are, indeed, “worlds” apart.
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