Now, rid of the latest attention-whore idiot illustrative of the mouth-breathing class of internet troll, we can assemble the two or three pearls we promised to dig out of the metric buttload of diaper spackle from the previous exercise, and string them together to make some use of them.
Learn the difference between strong sentiment, and Incitement
Thomas Jefferson mused that the Tree of Liberty needs watering from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots. No one batted an eye, even with early 1800's sensibilities. That, friends, is "Just saying...".
Spewing that "I'd really like to strangle Federal Judge Shitforbrains!", OTOH, is liable to get you an earnest chat with federal marshals, at the very least.
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball.
The J6 protesters will not be participating in anything going forward, owing to a prior engagement.
Don't be those guys, for at least two reasons.
1) Incitement is illegal. And you've seen, in only the last week, how far the law will be stretched to go after perceived enemies of the state.
2) Nobody is telling anybody to start shooting anybody else. When it is time, you'll be able to figure it out for yourself with little outside input.
Until #1 becomes #2, you ought to heed some wise advice from a seasoned Doctor of Law. Ignoring the magnificence of the cinematic effort, you really should watch that clip, and take it to heart, until you could recite it from memory, and bear it well in mind - until this clip ascends to pre-eminence.
A Civil War Would Be A Disaster - But not the worst disaster, the last disaster, nor the only disaster
Bumbling around in the recesses of poor Michael's mind, along with incoherent psychosis, was the genesis of an actual coherent thought or three, had he the wit to nurture and tend them until they were ripe enough to pluck.
To wit: he confused and conflated Civil War with TEOTWAWKI. If you think they're the same thing, share with the rest of us how, in April of 1861, everyone fled to the countryside, and abandoned all the cities. Go ahead; I'll wait over here at the bar while you work that out.
Then tell us how the same thing happened in England during their Glorious Revolution. How about Paris, circa the Reign Of Terror? Or anywhere else, ever. Spain, 1930s? Cuba, 1950s? Vietnam, 1946-1975? Indonesia? Yemen? Congo? Rhodesia? SAfrica? Korea? Japan? China? Look in vain, because that's not what happens. Life goes on. One or both sides may experience tough times. Some places or all places may see such. But nobody says, "Holy shit! Civil War! Run for the woods, quick!"
I outlined the difference between city and rural in a civil war.
The problem, when (not if, to about 4 decimal places) we have another one, it isn't going to be state versus state, nor city versus country. It's going to be street to street, house to house, and in some people's homes, room to room.
And some people will get careless, or stupid, and a civil war will become the second- or third-most dangerous problem.
The currency could collapse. In fact, probably will. Could happen even if we don't get to a civil war in time. If this is news to you, yet another cinematic benediction comes to mind.
In fact, worst of all, we could have a civil war, and our side could even win that war, and we could still become Weimar/Zimbabwe/Venezuela.
But wait! There's more!
Someone in any Unpleasantness could get careless with matches, and next thing you know, the power grid goes POOF! Like fog on a July morning. In Death Valley. The cheeriest predictions for a grid-down "problem" are 90% casualties. But what's a paltry 300M dead, between friends, right?
A civil war, in either case, would become the lesser problem in about one pantry. So even if you have both, war isn't the biggest threat to you and yours, and even giving Uncle Government a snappy raised arm salute, and a daily tongue bath, is no guarantee things will be rosy even for the sycophantic Useful Idiots.
Planning For Almost Any Disaster Looks Pretty Much Like Planning For Only One Disaster- Get your Priorities in Order
In all foreseeable problems, some things will be more important than others, but most things will be important Every. Single. Time.
Without them, you can't do anything. In fact, without most of them, you will not be able to do anything, including survive.
With them, you can likely do as much as your means will allow.
Which leads to another brilliant bit of cinematic exposition. (Clever readers may detect a trend here.)
Planning Is Useless; But The Planning Process is Invaluable
That is a direct quote from General of the Armies and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but all he ever pulled off was D-Day, ending two wars, and the greatest peacetime boom in history, so what does he know?
Because as we noted earlier, plans go to $#!^. And the more elaborate the plan, the greater the number of points of failure, and the higher the odds that it will fail.
But failure to plan is planning to fail. Because the planning process shows you where all those places are where things could suddenly go pear-shaped.
So the important thing isn't to have any plan, let alone a perfect one, it's to have a perfect planning process, so you exhaustively expose ever single point of failure, and come up with - at the least minimum - Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency Courses Of Action.
Peace Is A Nice State To Live In - But It's Rarer Than Hen's Teeth
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
You need People.
You need Priorities.
You need Preparations.
You need a Planning Process.
Do those things, and you have a fighting chance with whatever comes.
Do them not, and other people will be splitting your gear after you're gone.
With 10 or 20 more IQ points, and better social skills, Michael might have dug all that out on his own, instead of wanting someone to hold his hand for him, lead him to it, and then cut it up into chewable bite-sized baby food so he could swallow it.
But some people would rather dig in their diapers than break a sweat, and do hard things.
"You talk big. You talk sedition. However, I have noticed that nobody seems to have a plan other than immediate violence. Great! Then what? Does everyone become a war lord? How does this work?
I know that what we have isn't perfect. I know what we have has been corrupted. Changes need to happen and they cannot happen soon enough. However, until there is a plan on how to progress from war to peace and someone that knows how to lead in both war and peace, you're just spitting into the wind and if you're lucky, you're stacking up bodies. That's about one of the dumbest plan, non plans, I have ever heard of."
You talk big. You talk sedition.
I've done no such thing. In fact, you have touched on so little of anything I actually said, it begs the assumption that you never read any of it, and this was simply you shaking out your diaper spackle according to the voices in your own head. Prove me wrong: go to the post which lit the fuse on your tampon, and pull the quotes that support your farcical contentions.
You can't, because it never happened. QED
However, I have noticed that nobody seems to have a plan other than immediate violence. Great! Then what? Does everyone become a war lord? How does this work?
At this point, your reading comprehension is so much a question leading to the irrefutable conclusion that you haven't read anything, further blather from you only underscores the likelihood. Quotes and links, or it never happened, and we're back to merely dealing with your delusions. AGAIN. You need help. This is not your therapist's office.
I know that what we have isn't perfect. I know that what we have is corrupted. Changes need to happen and they cannot happen soon enough.
Boilerplate bullshit for the Bubbas. What we had wasn't perfect 257 years ago, on Day One. It was far past corrupted by the turn of the previous century. What we have now is so far from fucked, you can't even see FUBAR in the rear view mirror with a telescope. So quit soft-peddling the absolute descent into Banana Republic farce as "not perfect". It's a rotten, moldering corpse on a hot day in the sun, with a smell so pungent it could knock buzzards off a gut wagon at 100 yards, and you'd have to soak it in Listerine, Betadine, and Lysol for a week just to get a decent maggot to think about putting on a bib to dine on it.
And if changes need to happen, and cannot happen soon enough, the last thing any intellectual lightweight like you should be doing is sitting there with his fingers in both ears up to the palm, and his head so far up his own ass he could see out his bellybutton, sitting there like a baby in shit with his pudding smeared all over his face and a dipshit grin, proud of his latest accomplishment in baby-hood.
However, until there is a plan on how to progress from war to peace and someone to lead in both war and peace, you're just spitting into the wind, and if you're lucky, you're stacking up bodies.
1) What was the plan on July 5th, 1776, for moving from war to peace? Show your work, and link your references.
2) What was the same plan on April 16th, 1861. Show your work, and link your references.
3) What was that plan on April 5th, 1917. Show your work, and link to your references.
4) What was that plan on December 8th, 1941? Show your work, and link all your references.
Because Stevie Wonder can see from space, at night, that you aren't the brightest light on the Christmas tree, so if you can think of something so obviously important, needful, sensible, and indispensable, there must be copious examples from our own history you could point to in mere mouseclicks, right? RIGHT?? Michael? Anyone? Anyone...???
No? NOTHING???
Well, shit howdy, boy, looks like you all you did there was change which cleated foot is stomping on your jangly bits, didn't ya? Let's help you out on this, and call in some expert testimony.
Having studied the topic diligently and at length, we can call such maxims from memory in moments, and apply them practically in real time; but being a thoroughgoing idiot yourself, you can be forgiven for such words and concepts being entirely alien to your thinking (we use the term loosely).
That's about one of the dumbest plan, non plans, I have ever heard of.
Entire libraries are full of the things of which you have never heard, so your unfamiliarity with it is not a particularly withering sobriquet of derision.
"Call me a coward or whatever name you want. Tease me about voting moar harder. Warn me again about how we will all be fed into box cars and taken to the prison camps to be shot or burned. If that's what you think is going to happen, you really don't have a clue about what a Civil War is."
As you wish:
You're a coward. An idiot. A moron. A fucktard. A gross ignoramus with delusions of intelligence. It isn't true because I said it, it's true because everything you wrote demonstrates it, beyond all argument. You're just about bright enough to vote moar harder! And then you'll be shocked! Shocked, I say! when it doesn't solve the plethora of problems coming at you. You'll be rounded up, shot on sight, or, if you're "lucky", loaded into box cars, taken to a concentration camp, brow-beaten into submission, starved, worked to death, and then actually beaten, until you eventually die or are killed as another useless eater, unworthy of even life itself, and all the while you'll be waiting for the day you can write a sternly-worded letter of complaint to your congressweasel for the outrage.
Like happens after every Leftard communist coup since ever, which is exactly what they've been telling you in plain English they want to do to you for literally YEARS.
Time to bring out another expert to enlighten you:
If that's what you think is going to happen, you really don't have a clue about what Civil War is.
If that's what you think ISN'T going to happen, you don't have a clue about what Civil War is.
You wasted an entire essay illustrating in glorious technicolor your ignorance and delusions, and you think at the end of that, anyone is looking at you as anything but an object lesson in "Don't Be THAT Guy"?!?
Best wishes with that plan, knucklehead. Thanks for phoning in your take from the left end of the IQ bell curve.
"What you have ain't a plan. It's a wish and a hope and tough talk. You have no clear vision of where you're going and you want everyone to follow.
Hard Pass "General"."
Since it sailed right over your head (having it permanently implanted up your ass to the shoulders for years and years will do that), what I wrote was never intended as a plan, never advertised as a plan, never attempted to BE a plan. The wish was that it might, finally, with President Trump - the leading opposition candidate to the regime in power now on the edge of a farcical and unprecedented jail sentence that could conceivably "accidentally" result in his death - get even the most thick-headed moron, like yourself, to stop being one, get off their ass, pull their head out of it, and induce them to start doing the basic, sensible, common sense things that any jackass could see as needful, all on their own, by themselves, simply because they possessed the barest and most basic instinct for self-preservation, and weren't afflicted with a terminal case of Shit For Brains.
I asked no one to follow me in any way, shape, or form, nor elected myself the leader of anyone with that, nor any other, effort.
So you may continue in your 80-IQ delusions, and go to Hell in whatever way seems most fitting to yourself, with my sincerest benediction.
And to a metaphysical certainty, with a surprised look on your gobsmacked face, right up until oxygen deprivation to your vital organs converts you from a bio-organism into fertilizer for the more industrious worms and microbes on the planet.
Because I can only tell you the truth, but I can't make you smart enough to think. And a sincere thanks, Michael, for illustrating in ways I could never do why most of the efforts to get the attention of and induce any common sense behaviors by the Undecided Stupid People are about as useful as peeing on an electric fence, and nearly as painful to undertake.
Today is the 20th Anniversary of Vengeance Gone Mostly Right.
We recently purchased a tabletop metal bulldozer (sadly, not a Tonka™). We shall be, as we have time, adding metal plates to match the configuration of a Killdozer to put on the shelf in Mr. Heemeyer's honor.
Michael rides the thunderjug, taking his ease on the republic's flag, before wiping his backside with the Constitution.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us turn our pages to First Stupidians, and continue the disassembly.
"Do we really want a Civil War? Do we storm the government buildings and hunt down the good with the bad? Do we hang them all because they just happen to be in a government building when we happened to show up for the war? Do we actually hunt down the 3 letter agents that we know are living in our neighborhoods and hang them and their families because they just wanted to put food on their table and into the mouths of their children? Do you want to be both judge and jury? Do you have evidence that these people are corrupt or are you just lumping them all together because they still work for the govt. and if they're still working for the govt. at this point then they're all bad? Is that how you want to do this?"
Do we really want a Civil War?
No. Idiot. Nor has anyone called for one, from our side. But even though you aren't interested in a war, the war is interested in YOU.
The Leftardian lunatics have been beating that drum for at least five years, and practicing the song lyrics for something closer to two generations, at minimum. If this is news to you, perhaps it's hard to tell with your head wedged high and tight in a small, dark place. We suggest vaseline and a crowbar, and the assistance of friends, as necessary, until you hear a satisfying POP!, and the darkness begins to clear up.
Do we storm the government buildings and hunt down the good with the bad? Do we hang them all because they just happen to be in a government building when we happened to show up for the war?
Yet again, no one has suggested that. Your army of Straw Men is growing into Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Terra Cotta Army.
Point of Order: Who are these "good" government workers to whom you refer? Show your work. Otherwise, you're appealing to Facts Not In Evidence. The name for those, in the trade, is "fairytales". They make a poor basis for considered analysis and laying out courses of action.
Do we actually hunt down the three letter agents that we know are living in our neighborhoods and hang them and their families because they just wanted to put food on their table and into the mouths of their children?
1) Nice try, Officer. You've just crossed the line between "just saying", and "incitement". Better luck next time, and tell your Special Agent In Charge to train you better next time. You are a No-Go at the Entrapment Station. Fucktard.
2) Point of Order: Both BLM rioters and SS konzentrationslager guards "just wanted to put food on the table" and "into the mouths of their children". You must have been sick the day they covered that the "Just following orders" defense was shredded to doll rags at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, and they hung the people trying it. "For the children" was the excuse for everything in the Clinton Criminal Regime, from ripping a Cuban refugee child at machinegun-point from the arms of his American family, to torching the women and children at Waco "for their own good", and shooting a mother carrying her child by an FBI sniper at Ruby Ridge. But thanks for carrying water for the entire federal three-letter agency apparatus, and outing yourself so succinctly and thoroughly. That was done with the consummate precision of shoving a loaded pistol into your waistband and blowing off your own dick. Bravo. Call 9-1-1 for that, and get a tourniquet on it.
Do you want to be both judge and jury?
Tell you what, sport: look at the judges and juries in any one of 100 recent trials in the last decade, and tell me I, or ANY Man On The Street (outside of Portland or NYFC) couldn't do a 1,000,000% better job of delivering justice in every case than the current chicanery and jackassery masquerading as a justice system. Show. All. Work. We would be better off if we simply rounded up the closest 12 people to any crime, held the trial, and performed the hanging at the curb, than anything the products of our law schools have delivered in pretty much my entire adult lifetime. Committees of Vigilance should be the custom, not the exception, and at the rate we're going, "due process" is soon going to be a bullet. And that situation hasn't been what anyone wanted; it's been foisted upon us by the exact people who swore oaths to do things the exact opposite way. But Nature abhors a vacuum. Which begs the question of how your head hasn't long since imploded.
Do you have evidence that these people are corrupt or are you just lumping them all together because they still work for the govt. and if they're still working for the government at this point then they're all bad?
Not at all. Just as in Mexico, we can tell the honest ones, because when they become whistleblowers, they're fired, killed, declared mentally incompetent, or exiled to Slobovia. You keep harping pretty hard on the "honest govt. worker" Theory. Everyone else is just going along to get a pension. Do yourself a huge favor, and look up the legal concepts of "Accessory After The Fact" and "Misprision Of Felony". Both hard felonies under federal statutes, with real time in federal pound-you-in-the-@$$ prison. And if they talked this over with anyone at any time, they're guilty of "Criminal Conspiracy ". Now, google the number of prosecutions and convictions for that, since ever. I'll wait. So yes, they're pretty much all guilty but the whistleblowers, top to bottom, QED, just going by law on the books for hundreds of years.
So you were sick the day they covered that at Fed Academy, just playing stupid, or what?
It's probably hard to see that clearly with your government paycheck smacking you in the face twice a month, isn't it, Officer? But you wish to imply, as the Devil's Advocate, that there are good ones still hiding in there somewhere? Who stand around impotently, and chewing on their fingernails and clutching their pearls for decades upon decades as Leviathan rapaciously devours the population and the Republic itself with all the pity of a shark attacking a crippled seal? Abraham's haggling with God over the fate of Sodom comes to mind. So does the happy ending of that event.
Is that how you want to do this?
Michael, this is why you fail. You attempt to put words into my mouth I never said, then disagree with your own concoctions rather than reading what I wrote, and responding to that. This is why I refer to you as Idiot, Moron, and Fucktard. Because words mean things, and you clearly can't manage yours, address a point intelligently, or even construct the simplest of arguments on your own behalf. You keep ginning up out of whole cloth your own retarded arguments, and then merrily gallop off on your ass and tilt at them, with all the glee of a 3-year-old knocking over his Lego knights and MicroMachines. Word to your mother: the internet is not a bigger real-life version of "Grand Theft Auto", where you get to drive through everything willy-nilly and do whateverinfuck you want, for fun and points. If you're going to make an argument, you first have to address what was actually said, which you've all but ignored, at this point for three of your five paragraphs, and then make counter-arguments to Actually THAT. You want to step up to the plate, drop the bat, catch the pitch yourself, run through the infield, check the fielders into the boards, throw the ball into the outfield bleachers, and then claim you just threw a touchdown and deserve 6 points.
NewsFlash, Slick: IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT.
This is why my responses to you look exactly like pushing a crippled retard off a cliff. Because that's pretty much exactly what's happening.
And we're only 60% of the way there.
Amaze-balls that you went to all that effort just to come out in favor of Fedtopia's kakistocracy.
And for comedy relief, occasionally one of your fellow retards pleads for mercy in the comments, and/or wishes they could drag you back onto the short bus, and go back to your group home.
Cheer up, Skippy: You sat in the bear trap all on your own. So you may be missing your ass when we get you out, but at least your IQ will be a point or two higher going forward. At least until you heal up some.
Do Original Michael a solid though: next time, pick a different signature.
"Are you planning on creating your own form of government, maybe start your own little country within the ruins of what was once the USofA? Or, are you gonna just hunker down and wait a few years and hope that some other George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin is going to pick up where the old USofA was meant to be and start afresh? What's your plan?"
Why do you ask? I bring up the question only because I spent...lemme see...ah, yes, there it is, carry the nothing...exactly ZERO SECONDS discussing any form of government, anywhere in the OP. Not a peep. I rather suspect any form of government will look remarkably like the current one, minus any number of miscreants currently within it, and after the removal of any number of alterations to the original blueprints that have served - as intended from the outset - to bastardize and undermine the original intent. But that's just one opinion among tens of millions. I never brought it up. Which once again points out that you're not responding to anything I wrote, you're out in the fields building straw men. It's your defining trait.
So the more germane question is why you're so concerned with the details on a form of government, since government is nearly always the problem, not the solution to it.
One can but wonder how many times you think are sufficient to grab ahold of a cherry-red hot stove before you either run out of hands, or inclination, to repeat the mistake. Most people would stop at one.
Two and a half posts just to examine your first paragraph, and underline the silliness! And we still await, in vain, any response by you to anything we actually wrote. If only for the novelty.
"I hear a lot about how we need to get this Civil War started and how politicians need to be swinging from the lamp posts or introduced to the guillotine. I hear about how we all need to buckle up because we're in for a rough ride. I hear all of that noise, but nobody seems to have thought beyond that. Who do we rally behind in the aftermath that's ready to lead this once great country into a new era? I can't think of a single soul that I would trust or want to start a new government. Can you?"
I hear a lot about how we need to get this Civil War started
Do tell! From whom? Yet again, we bring this up because we cannot recollect ever stating that we need to do any such thing. So we'll give you an easy task: drop names, and post link(s), online, now - otherwise It Never Happened. I'll match paychecks with you that you can't come up with one person writing at a single blog who's argued that we "need to" begin a Civil War.
So, yet again, you're caught responding to the voices in your head, rather than reality, or anything we actually wrote.
This is my shocked face.
...and how politicians need to be swinging from lamp posts or introduced to the guillotine. I hear about how we all need to buckle up because we're in for a rough ride.
They do. And you should. Disagree? Make your case. Bonus point: You actually brought up something we actually said. Beginner's luck.
I hear all that noise,
Words mean things. "Noise" is what you're putting out. What you're manifestly NOT hearing is called "signal". And like radio waves, that signal is passing over you, but you're not tuned in, and you sure as hell aren't receiving anything.
...but nobody seems to have thought beyond that.
How to tell me You Haven't Been Paying Attention without telling me you haven't been paying attention.
Who do we rally behind in the aftermath that's ready to lead this once great country into a new era?
1) I would have thought that after events in Charlottesville and Washington D.C., you'd have learned a lesson about rallies, and had enough of them for quite awhile. Okay, sorry, not you. But smart people.
2) I'm going out on a limb here, and guessing you're a Common Core graduate. So let's fill in a ginormous hole in your understanding of our national history. (Maybe, write this on your palm with a Sharpie, lest ye forget any of it.) First, we started shooting at redcoats. Then, like a year later, we had a Declaration Of Independence. Then we battled a tyrannical government for a paltry seven long, brutal additional years before the British agreed to peace terms. Then four years and two forms of government later, we finally elected Geo. Washington to lead this country into a new era. Not the other way around.
3) So maybe you should grasp the concept that you should be far more concerned about your warfighting skills, organization, logistics, etc. than you ever should be with wondering where Geo. Washington II is, and when he's going to lead you into the promised land. you haven't even bought a dress for your prom, let alone been asked out, let alone gotten married; and yet you're already picking out the wallpaper for the baby's room in your honeymoon cottage, and figuring out which college they'll attend.
You tell me: how stupid and bassackwards is that?
I can't think of a single soul that I would trust or want to start a new government? Can you?
I can think of dozens. So you haven't been paying very close attention to that, either, Baby Duck. More to the point, you're trying to figure out forming a government, and you haven't figured out forming a fire team or squad, and you have no freaking clue whether and who would even be around after a notional civil war ends, to know who you could pick to form that government.
So maybe a lot less wishcasting about things that don't matter, and won't matter for years to decades beyond the Next Big Thing and a LOT MORE about how to pack a ruck, approach a dead drop, avoid surveillance, smuggle people and material through checkpoints, or a cool million other things you're going to need to get from now to that day.
We shall now retire for the moment, having waded through 2/5ths of Michael's paragraphs, and let Michael get his hands on a tourniquet or two and some ice packs, the better to deal with all the lumps and lacerations suffered in this latest exchange.
Administrivia: For the Usual Suspects, shocked to learn that one of their ilk could out-stupid them at their own game, Michael's original post (I suspect he's the former "Michael Gladius") is now unembargoed in Comments to the OP. Suck it, bitches. He's one of you. Own it.
When last we left our intrepid correspondent, he'd tied himself in knots asking pointless questions, making wild assumptions found nowhere in evidence, and bastardizing the basic concepts of language.
Fresh for the day, let us take a machete to whack our way through the next patch of verbal thicket he's laid down.
"How long do you think that's gonna last? Even if you had a group of friends, say 100-200 hard corp, well trained, all in, tough as nails MFers that don't have bad backs, knees, necks, or shoulders from their time in the military. Let's even say that none of your merry band of men or their families have a need of any type of prescription meds for their high blood pressure, PTSD, hypo/hyper thyroid or any other number of ailments. Then what? Do you think you're going to take on the world, the neighborhood, own the block?"
How long do you think that's gonna last?
How long do I think (all that Nothing that you assumed into existence in our last installment) is going to last? Well, that depends. Did you want the serious answer, or do we, like you, get to assume metric fucktons of things into being merely for the sport of gainsaying? Is this a game of Silly Buggers, or did you mean to apply children's make-believe game rules to a serious discussion? We await your reply most eagerly, as it will dictate the course of further exchange.
Even if you had a group of friends, say 100-200 hard corp[sic], well-trained, all in. tough as nails MFers that don't have bad back, knees, necks, or shoulders from their time in the military.
Michael, me lad, when last we looked, we have a group of well over 75,000,000 hardcore MFers. Get back to me at your soonest convenience on how your myopia and innumeracy has left your assumptions in a state our German friends would refer to as "upgefucht".
Blah, blah, blah, laundry list of sick, lame, lazy, blind, crippled, crazy problems... [we summarize here for brevity's sake - A.]
You don't know what you don't know. We're going to attempt to illuminate things for you in words, and then with pictures. Maybe something will get through.
First of all, we recount to you, briefly, the story of Samuel Whittemore, who mustered on Lexington Common one cold April morning in 1775, at the age of 80 years old. (This was back when 80 years of age was considered "old", and was something of a rarity.) He killed three British soldiers that morning, was shot for his trouble, then bayoneted, and left for dead. He recovered, and survived to the ripe old age of 98, living to see not only American independence from Britain, and the establishment of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights as the supreme law of the land, but seeing President George Washington re-elected for his second term after the Revolutionary War.
In case you're more of a visual learner than a textual one:
Then what? Do you think you're going to take on the world, the neighborhood, own the block?
The world will do what the world will do. But we're going to take on all the neighborhoods, and all the blocks. Since you asked. And we're going to do it the same exact way ants eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
Let's continue, shall we?
"Oh... you were smart and got out of the cities while the getting was good. Okay. So, is your merry band of men going to all come out to the farm with their families and are all of you are going to live happily ever after on the farm? Are you gonna grow a few potatoes, milk a few cows, hunt for dove, pheasant, deer or whatever wild game there is in the sticks? How long do you think that's gonna last?"
Oh...you were smart and got out of the cities while the getting was good.
1) What makes you think getting out of cities is "smart"?
2) When we've gone to war in past conflicts, did we bomb the countryside, or the cities? Did we march into wheat fields and declare victory, or the cities? Why d'ya suppose that is?
3) What makes you think leaving the Other Side any - or many - safe hives is a good idea? Why wouldn't you want to take the opportunity to kick the enemies of your blood in the crotch, even before they roll out of bed every morning, and five times a night while they attempt to sleep?
You really haven't thought anything through, have you? You're just spinning your next clever point, without realizing you're merely parading your own ignorance, of strategy, tactics, logistics, insurgency, and pretty much anything and everything covered in any treatise on warfare by von Clausewitz, Machiavelli, Musashi, or Sun Tzu, since ever.
The countryside is where you build insurgencies, shelter them, rest them, train them.
The cities are where your underground steals the enemy's food and arms, sabotages their industry, intercepts their communications, and generally f--ks up their plans, recruiting, training, communications, logistics, and generally makes their every waking moment a thousand living hells.
Okay. So is your merry band of men going to all come out to the farm with their families and are all of you going to live happily ever after on the farm?
Crack a friggin' book, and tell the class how many people HAD TO move to the countryside during the Revolutionary War; then how many moved there for the Civil War? How about during the Spanish-American War? WW I? WW II? Korea? Vietnam? Desert Storm? OIF/OEF?
Wait-what?!? That NEVER happened?!? Unpossible!!
So why would everyone need to do something this time we've never needed to do once in nearly 250 years of existence? Show all work.
What makes you think the Other Side can infallibly sort the sheep from the goats? What do you think Mao meant when he wrote "The guerrilla moves in the sea of the people?" Or is this the first time you've ever heard that in your entire life?
And why wouldn't you want to take war to the enemy on THEIR home turf rather than fighting them in the sticks on YOUR own front porch? Doesn't that strike you like setting yourself on fire to wrestle hand-to-hand with your enemy? Don't you think that's a pretty stupid way to go about winning? In fact, forget winning, don't you think that's just plain stupid at all?
Are you gonna grow a few potatoes, milk a few cows, hunt for dove, pheasant, deer, or whatever wild game is in the sticks?
Are you a total moron? Or just totally and completely historically ignorant of the fact that the continent ceased to support the population like that in about 1800? About the time the entire U.S. population passed the 5,000,000 mark. How about if we let the farmers farm, and the ranchers ranch, like we've done for, oh, about 300-400 years in North America?
How long do you think that's gonna last?
I think it's never going to start, but you continuing to try to paint false dilemmas as the only possible choices just shows how wrapped up you are in delusional thinking, and trying to paint someone into a corner of a castle you built in the air, or just in your head.
Evidently it's news to you, but painting a dozen different scenarios, all of your own imagining, and then knocking them down is the essence of the Straw Man Fallacy.
You have yet to address one single thing I said in the post you claim to disagree with; so far, all you're doing is disagreeing with the dog whistles only you hear, and arguing with the voices in your own head. It's entertaining for me, but hardly productive for any point you were hoping to make. You've laid out all your imagined problems with things I neither expressed nor espoused. And - Lord love a duck! - we still aren't even at the end of your first paragraph.
In comment to our earlier post, Michael responded with the following epistle:
"Okay. I'll play your game.
After "it" hits the fan and things start to collapse, then what? Are you gonna be a "lone wolf" and the "alpha" in charge? I'll give you the supposition that you've put away all the bullets, beans, and bandages for a small army and have trained on all of your weapons and you have done everything necessary to prepare your AO. How long do you think that's gonna last? Even if you had a group of friends, say 100-200 hard corp, well trained, all in, tough as nails MFers that don't have bad backs, knees, necks, or shoulders from their time in the military. Let's even say that none of your merry band of men or their families have a need of any type of prescription meds for their high blood pressure, PTSD, hypo/hyper thyroid or any other number of ailments. Then what? Do you think you're going to take on the world, the neighborhood, own the block? Oh... you were smart and got out of the cities while the getting was good. Okay. So, is your merry band of men going to all come out to the farm with their families and are all of you are going to live happily ever after on the farm? Are you gonna grow a few potatoes, milk a few cows, hunt for dove, pheasant, deer or whatever wild game there is in the sticks? How long do you think that's gonna last? Are you planning on creating your own form of government, maybe start your own little country within the ruins of what was once the USofA? Or, are you gonna just hunker down and wait a few years and hope that some other George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin is going to pick up where the old USofA was meant to be and start afresh? What's your plan?
I hear a lot about how we need to get this Civil War started and how politicians need to be swinging from the lamp posts or introduced to the guillotine. I hear about how we all need to buckle up because we're in for a rough ride. I hear all of that noise, but nobody seems to have thought beyond that. Who do we rally behind in the aftermath that's ready to lead this once great country into a new era? I can't think of a single soul that I would trust or want to start a new government. Can you?
Do we really want a Civil War? Do we storm the government buildings and hunt down the good with the bad? Do we hang them all because they just happen to be in a government building when we happened to show up for the war? Do we actually hunt down the 3 letter agents that we know are living in our neighborhoods and hang them and their families because they just wanted to put food on their table and into the mouths of their children? Do you want to be both judge and jury? Do you have evidence that these people are corrupt or are you just lumping them all together because they still work for the govt. and if they're still working for the govt. at this point then they're all bad? Is that how you want to do this?
You talk big. You talk sedition. However, I have noticed that nobody seems to have a plan other than immediate violence. Great! Then what? Does everyone become a war lord? How does this work?
I know that what we have isn't perfect. I know what we have has been corrupted. Changes need to happen and they cannot happen soon enough. However, until there is a plan on how to progress from war to peace and someone that knows how to lead in both war and peace, you're just spitting into the wind and if you're lucky, you're stacking up bodies. That's about one of the dumbest plan, non plans, I have ever heard of. Call me a coward or whatever name you want. Tease me about voting moar harder. Warn me again about how we will all be fed into box cars and taken to the prison camps to be shot or burned. If that's what you think is going to happen, you really don't have a clue about what a Civil War is. What you have ain't a plan. It's a wish and a hope and tough talk. You have no clear vision of where you're going and you want everyone to follow.
Hard Pass "General"."
There's a lot to deal with there.
Firstly, let me give credit where credit is due: I don't think you made a single major error in that entire effort in spelling, punctuation, or grammar. Kudos.
Secondly, I just want to say that your effort was organized, succinct, and absolutely clear.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I think, whether you meant for it to be or not, that entire response was one of the most artful, clever, and painstakingly-constructed Straw Men I think I've seen on the internet since pretty much Ever. Bravo.
Fourthly, nota bene, there were some real nuggets in there, and be in no doubt that we shall dig every last one of them out. Some of them are absolute 24K gold. Some of them are pure stable nuggets. We will sort each and every one of them accordingly.
But given the length and breadth of your essay, this will be rather like the Lincoln-Douglas Debates: extended over some good period of time, and probably done in installments. But when we are finished, there will be nothing left behind.
I'm absolutely sincere on that: you raise no small number of genuine points in amidst the codswallop and gas, and we will deal with all of it.
So this is not, nor is intended to be, a fisking, as that would imply that the whole was nothing but nonsense, and what you wrote is not all that.
The preliminaries having been covered, it seems best to us to take it pretty much line by line, until we shall have gotten to the end, and sorted out the whole cow; the steak, the hamburger, and the bullshit.
For clarity to readers, we will accord Michael's words Bold print, and put our responses in italics.
__________
"Okay. I'll play your game."
In the words of Edith Keeler in the original series Star Trek episode City On The Edge Of Forever, "A lie is a poor way to say hello."
We note this, because you're about to undertake to illustrate for five long paragraphs that you'll be doing anything but that. Irony is a great thing, as Shakespeare demonstrated in Marc Antony's speech at Caesar's burial, where he damned Brutus while claiming to be doing just just the opposite. But when you economize with the truth right out of the gate, you're stepping off on the wrong foot.
We furthermore note the first stuffed pantlegs (probably inadvertent) in your Straw Man construction project by telling you what we were told by the pit boss at a Las Vegas blackjack table when they swapped from the affable dealer to the one who did her level best to bust everyone repeatedly, and as quickly as possible, after we told the pit boss we didn't like how his dealer played: "She's not PLAYING."
Neither was I in the post with which you think you disagree. Things have not been so glaringly heart-attack serious in this country since 1861. If you disagree with that assessment, show your work.
"After "it" hits the fan, and things start to collapse, then what?"
I have no idea what you're talking about there. Neither does anyone else. By design. What scenario are YOU contemplating? The linguistic value of that sentence is a portmanteau, containing a range of values inclusive of "anything and everything". There is no way to answer it, until YOU tell us what "X" is. After WHAT hit WHAT fan? Biden falling down the steps of Air Force One and going into a coma? Putin initiating global thermonuclear war? Godzilla emerging from the sea to smite Tokyo in real life? The Cubs winning another pennant? ???
As for things "starting" to collapse, news flash: you're speaking of past events. Is an openly stolen presidential election the start of the collapse? What about double-digit inflation while the Treasury printers run three shifts a day? How about millions of illegal aliens streaming across the borders unchecked for months on end? What about a show trial in a kangaroo court where the leading presidential candidate and presumptive opposition nominee is railroaded into felon status weeks before his party's convention, and bare months ahead of the election, when he's leading the sitting president in the polls by double digits? That sounds to me like you want to talk about history, not the future. And if those aren't the start of the collapse, how far over the cliff would you mark as the starting line?
"Are you gonna be a "lone wolf" and be the "alpha" in charge?"
You're speaking gibberish, again. In so far as, by definition, if a pack is only a single wolf, he is, by default, the alpha in charge. Of himself. And nothing else. So unpack that, and figure out which of two or three or four questions you MEANT to ask that was the one you really wanted to ask.
"I'll give you the supposition that you've put away all the bullets, beans, and bandages for a small army and have trained on all of your weapons and have done everything necessary to prepare your AO."
1) Why on earth would anyone assume that for anyone else??
2) If I was there, now, - hell, if ANYONE was there - there would already be a rapidly-spreading area where freedom reigned, and TPTB would hesitate to enter except in overwhelming numbers, and even then, only with the certain knowledge that less of their men would leave than originally entered, to a metaphysical certainty. NTTAWWT. But for reference, that didn't even exist anywhere in France or Holland after FIVE YEARS of the Allies dropping supplies to the respective undergrounds in both countries, in an actual shooting war against actual Nazis.
3) Assuming what is self-evidently the case nowhere, and at no time, in this country is where you're packing another few handfuls of straw into your rapidly growing edifice. I am and have been, in fact, hammering at the exact point that NO ONE is there, and you pretend it's exactly opposite to that reality. That's like trying to grow corn by pulling on the stalks. It also underlines why you've put the cart before the horse in this entire essay, as we're going to see, over and over and over again.
3) Do you have any wild idea how large is the Manhattan phonebook-sized OpPlan of "everything necessary to prepare your AO"?!? I'm serious there. Personnel? Intelligence? Training? Operations? Logistics? Communication? Civil Affairs? Vertical and lateral liaison? Operational Support? Friendly units? Enemy units? (Clever readers of a certain background may notice a familiar trend here.) Why on God's green earth would you spot ANYONE what has manifestly NOT happened anywhere in the entire nation, not even once, for even five minutes, despite all the signs it's overwhelmingly going to be vital for survival? FFS, they didn't have 5% of this in place just for the Capitol Rally/ZOMG Insurrection!!! on 1/6/21.
4) I've literally typed my fingers numb - and so have at least a baker's dozen others - for nearly a decade telling people they have NONE of that, and a decade later, most readers still have most of that nothing left.
Which is exactly the problem, and why you, assuming anyone has it, keep trying to charge off in all directions, before you even have a saddle or a horse. Or at least, the front half of one.
___________________
Michael,
That's only the fitting response to three lines into the first of five paragraphs you wrote, which minimal response is longer already than everything you wrote, and the only thing you've done in them is show how far from reality you're starting off, with only a metric fuckton of wild unfounded assumptions and vague generalizations. This is going to be like getting all the dove shot out of an entire sack of doves with just a single pair of needlenose tweezers.
All this while we're working this weekend.
To do your essay justice may very well be a task of days to weeks. Usually we fret a bit, trying to generate an average of a post a day. You've pretty much solved that for us for the entire month, even if literally nothing else happens in the world. But don't worry, Michael, you're worth it. At this rate, you've given us blog-fodder for at least the next week or two, give or take. Maybe multiple posts daily, some days. And I suspect you're going to get tired of reading what you wrote long before we get tired of responding to it. But it's going to have to be in bite-sized chunks, if only out of deference to the average reader's attention span and tolerance.
We almost removed the rest of your essay for now, because we're likely going to be halfway to the 4th of July from here before we get to the last of it. But we didn't want to deprive you of your moment in the sunshine, nor listen to cries that we took you out of context or edited you, so we leave it here intact.
Future installments may see us truncating it down to just the relevant section in each succeeding post, now that we've posted the entirety here.
Feel free to tap out at any time, otherwise we'll continue until the bitter end. You probably won't be able to help yourself from adding more here for a second bite at the apple, but we're going to get to the very end of your first diatribe before we start branching off into all the thickets and weeds you'll doubtless be adding to this original briar patch.
And there really will be some worthwhile points to make along the way, when you aren't busy jumping to conclusions.
Pure genius folk rock from Simon & Garfunkel in 1966, too short for much radio airplay, sandwiched as filler onto an album and which never charted as a single, but a neat little confection nonetheless.
This is where the Never Trumpers alwayshoped we'd/they'd be : they'll clutch their pearls pro forma for about 15 seconds, just to pay homage to the ancient platforms, oaths, and deities they long ago abandoned.
Then they'll start clawing tooth and nail to become the Jeb3.0 Savior Of The Party, and try to make a pitch to last-minute supplant Trump on this year's nomination ballot, aching to lose gloriously (a la Dole, McCrazy, and Romney) fighting Emperor Poopypants and his puppet masters with one hand tied behind their back, and wearing a full blindfold to the manifest gang-raping of our Constitution and the republic (when they're not busy participating in it themselves gleefully).
They occupy the second tier of People Who Need An Appointment With Madame Guillotine.
DeSantis and Haley were never cut to fill Trump's shoes. Everyone knew that, including the Enemedia pimping both, in turn, to try and head off a Trump electoral stampede at the pass. When it became obvious even to Stevie Wonder from space that strategy was doomed to fail, the prosecutors started dropping indictments. You could look it up.
Maybe no one else is cut to fill Trump's shoes, ever again. He may have been our last, best, and only shot, and now everyone will realize - far too late - they pissed away their final chance to stop the train before the abyss.
Because we just wanted to be left alone.
But rot, like rust, never sleeps.
So the Left, and their cronies in the Uniparty on the other side of the aisle, Quislings to a man, have stood by as the soap box has been denied us, and those in the professional soapbox class were suborned wholesale and willingly, in service of their long-suffering communist leanings.
Then they stole the ballot box, with everyone looking.
This week, they took away the jury box.
That leaves only one option, and those who ignore that calculus are going to end up in standing room only accommodations, in a boxcar, in total shock, with a surprised look on their faces.
The Left has told you - for years, for the dipshits in the class - that they wanted you unemployed, broke, shunned from society, rounded up, put in camps, re-educated, and finally, dead, Dead, DEAD.
Fucktard Wake-Up call: THEY MEANT EVERY LAST WORD.
If you stand around gawping and hoping until your only choice, like Christians in the arenas millennia ago, is to resolve to taste bad as the lions' cages are opened, you have already massively and terminally fucked up, and are so far from Screwed you can't even see it in your rear-view mirror with a telescope.
The GOPe isn't coming to save you.
Trump isn't coming to save you.
Neither Jesus nor Almighty God himself is coming to save you.
You have only your own arms and legs, and your own heads to rely on.
That's what you were given them for.
You're going to have to do the hard things yourself.
We, and many, many others, have told you, and Told You, and TOLD YOU. And many thought we were wrong. Maybe not you, but too many people we know. They convinced themselves we were kidding.
They whinged, and mewled, and flung their feces, convincing themselves it was all fed-posting. They kicked, and screamed, and soiled themselves, with their fingers jammed into their ears to the third knuckles, rather than taking it to heart, and doing hard things.
That's been true always, and Ever. Most folks just didn't want to believe it. BELIEVE IT.
Don't you think it's about damned time you figured that out, got off your ass, and stopped waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting?
Forget another savior coming in on a white horse. It isn't going to happen. You're going to have to do this one yourselves, on foot. War to the knife, and knife to the hilt.
It's the only way they finally learn the lesson. The. Only. Way.
And we don't mean metaphorically.
Even consummate bench-warmers Richard Blaine and Captain Renault realized that to get rid of the Major Strassers of the world, they were going to have to do it themselves.
Catch a cluebat there, before the 2x4 Of Reality pays your head a visit In Real Life.
There will be no unsigned Anonymous responses to this post. Don't waste the time. Own your work, or stay on the porch with the yappy little dogs.
"You're too harsh. We need to work within the system." = "We're afraid, Blutto! We might get in trouble!"
"Nothing will happen." = "Fuck you, Aesop. I'm going to sit on my ass! La! La! La! I can't hear you."
"You first." = "I'm a pussy, Aesop. I'm too chickenshit to even sign my post. And I'm going to do NOTHING."
"You're a fed." = "I'm a fed, sent here to make people think nothing will happen. And it's sooooo easy to get them shitting their drawers in fright with just my keyboard from here in D.C."
All - ALL - you have to do, for starters, is start by telling yourself "I'm not going to stand impotently by and watch this bullshit continue any longer!"
If even that little is "too hard", you're the exact problem. And always will be.
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are fully moderated, due to idiots and trolls. Grown up discussion here will appear just as soon as I have the time to push it through. ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE AUTO-DELETED WITHOUT MERCY, and the url added to the spam filter, or mercilessly mocked at the bloghost's sole discretion. If you're too chickensh*t to come up with an alias for online purposes, you're not tall enough for this blog. Pick a name, and stick with it, and you're good. Get cute, and you're wasting your time and my electrons, and your masterpiece will never see the light of day. No warning shots will be fired. If you can't maintain decorum and polite behavior, I won't toy with you, I'll squash you. If one of your comments disappears, YOU f**ked up. If all of them do, it's time for you to go. Disagree with the points made, on the merits, and you're good. Go after me personally, or other commenters, and your comment will never see daylight here. My tolerance for skirting the line is at absolute zero, and will remain there. Don't f**k up.
