Consulting My Magic 8-Ball

So, last week the Daughter Unit asked me when the new civil war would kick into high gear. Note she said ‘when’ not ‘if’ – for we’ve been in a cold civil war for some time now. I’d say this cold civil war became manifest with upsurge of Tea Party demonstrations in 2009, and has rumbled along all through the Obama administration, building up reservoirs of bitter anger and resentment ever since. My personal SWAG is that things will get interesting (and even more interesting for certain values of interesting) late in the evening of November 3, 2020, when the polls close and the first election results are reported.

And no, it won’t make a particle of difference who wins; Trump or Biden, or whoever has replaced Biden as the Great Dem Party Hope. My sidebar prediction is that the higher echelons of the Democrat Party will realize, probably shortly following the party caucus to be held sometime this month, that Joe Biden has finally and definitively lost track of his single remaining marble, and that there is no possible and convincing way that he can be propped up as a viable candidate. Whoever has the VP nomination will move up to the top of the ticket and one of the remaining hopefuls will be a replacement. For all we know, the Dem Party higher-ups may even have decided that what the hell, they don’t have serious hope at all for 2020, and are only naming candidates for this year with an eye towards establishing visibility and a track record for 2024.

In any case, on election night, it will not matter a single particle if the winner is Trump or A Dem Candidate To Be Named Later. The knives will be well and truly out and on both sides. If Trump wins, the lefty wokerati will be outraged, insane with rage that they have been let down again. Their fury after Trump won in 2016 will be as a light thunderstorm compared to the Cat-5 hurricane of fury which will strike in cities which have already demonstrated an inclination to tolerate riots and mob action – all egged on my the national establishment press.

And if Biden, in combination or replaced by A Dem Candidate To Be Named Later, wins the election, I don’t think it will be any improvement. The blatant vote fraud in certain districts will overwhelmingly obvious. There will be unparalleled shenanigans in tallying the ballots, way too much for most Trump voters to countenance. I don’t image that they will react violently, in the manner made so very familiar by our dear Antifa-idiots – but they will protest, perhaps in the streets. In places where the Antifa-idiots and Black Lies Matter gangsters are protected by elements of local politicians and authorities, the Antifa-idiots and BLM gangsters will cry havoc and unleash hell … or they may just do so anyway, without being provoked, for the jolly destructive fun of it. The more respectable Democrat officials, as well as our dear mainstream news creatures will be outraged by any demonstrations of defiance in the streets or in social media by unhappy pro-Trump partisans. They will retaliate in nasty non-violent ways on pro-Trump partisans who have drawn their attention for defiance … and that’s when it will get interesting. For certain definitions of interesting. Discuss as you will, with the readings from your own Magic 8-Ball.

81 thoughts on “Consulting My Magic 8-Ball”

  1. I would find a listing of media figures and their actual home addresses quite useful.

    A blog would be doing a public service by disseminating this information, so that we can write up a sternly worded letter and drop it off to them.

    Everything from the big news talking heads, down to the local newspapers editors. That would be nice.

  2. First election returns on November 3rd? You’re an optimist! It’ll be weeks before all those mail-in ballots are counted (leaving plenty of time for further shenanigans).

  3. I honestly don’t believe a single Democrat under 40 and very few under 50 are “only naming candidates for this year with an eye towards establishing visibility and a track record for 2024”.

    That’s 20th century thinking, back when the two sides universally knew that there would be a ‘four-years later’. When the two sides actually had a lot of people on each side that truly cared about the United States of America, past, present, and future. When people in general read books instead of tweets, based policy and advocacy on intellect rather that feelz, and could unequivocably be called “adults” at age 28.

    I think the Left is pushing EVERYTHING to the center of the table for 2020. They are stuck with Biden because Bernie wouldn’t fly, and the rest of the field stunk up the joint, and now the flop sweat is pouring off of them for it. And because they collectively are drama queens who think they are Luke Skywalker, not business (or poker) strategists that see gives and takes for payoffs five and ten years down the road. Reading anything longer that 280 characters is enough to give them fits, you think they can possibly think to setting the table for four years down? I don’t think so.

    They are children in other words.

    BTW, ever notice how often in literature and film, when children are given full power and authority over (themselves, a town, a community….), they leap headlong into totalitarianism? I’m thinking Lord of the Flies, a large number of sci-fi offerings like Twilight Zone, Star Trek (TOS)…. etc etc. Even South Park, in brilliant fashion, did it up once when Cartman realized that South Park could be cleansed of adults by accusing them all of molestation. The entire second half of the episode became a spooky “Star Trek’-ish scenario of two wayard travellers stumbling into an abandoned town run by creepy, evil children, etc. Peak South Park.

    The artists are onto something. Maturity is about learning that there are no simple answers, and that there are backfires and downsides to EVERYTHING we do in life, social policy particularly. In essence, wisdom is to learn how dumb you are.

    Anyone seeing any wisdom out there in the Democrat Party? Just you wait til they are in charge this round, should they win.

  4. We are going to need for there to be a lot of circulating USB drives, not just lists. Not only media figures and home addresses, both public and behind the scenes political and financial figures, celebrities in all fields who work for the enemy, and their families.

    Daughter Unit spoke of hot civil war. That is what a hot civil war entails. No way around it. Consideration of the physical locations of the opposing side, and their logistics train there would possibly be rewarded.

    The ultimate military axiom is: Amateurs discuss tactics. Professional discuss logistics.

    One of our country’s big problems is that we have had several generations who have been sheltered from the reality of consequences for choices and actions. My dad’s generation and to a certain extent mine knew that sometimes there is an A- S–t! moment when you realize that no matter what you do you are going to pay for something you did, or something that someone else did. It is what it is.

    When you get a participation award for leaving the pooch walking bowlegged, you do not learn to think things through.

    Every society; ours and others, has some form of social and political consensus. When that breaks down, it breaks down completely. There is no one with a participation award who makes it all better. Who would want a society run by such people? There is no half-way point to stop at once the break comes.

    Things break down, they have throughout human history, and the only way they get better is for sufficient bloodshed to take place to make another consensus the preferable choice for all. That new consensus may not be free, or prosperous.

    And that is the Pollyanna-ish view.

    Subotai Bahadur

  5. Mandatory reading:. William S. Lind, 4th Generation Warfare Handbook. This war is already underway. Time to start fighting back.

  6. A plausible scenario of how a conflict could happen is written in Matt Bracken’s dystopian novel, “Enemies, Foreign and Domestic.”

  7. Come on people let’s be serious.
    There isn’t going to be a hot civil war.
    The Dems are going to cheat massively. “They can’t steal it if it’s not close.” Yawn. So they’re going to cheat enough so it’s not close. Then if Trump dares to complain they’ll accuse him of subverting democracy. And Mitt Romney and then most GOPe pukes will say the people have spoken and we must respect that.
    The question is will red states sit idly by as the Dems try to impose things like what they’ve done to completely consolidate power in CA on a national level. And my vote is basically yes, they will.

  8. If the Democrats loose “fair and square”, after cheating as usual, there might be nothing left to loose, so the outcome could turn brutal.

    But in Compton, California, the Hispanic “machine” drove out the Black corruptocrats and the Black gangs while the local, state, and Federal authorities looked the other way. Take what you have stolen and leave. No penalty. No pursuit. All very civil like. Those with empty pockets still approaching the till may be unhappy,but its just business.

    The balance between greed and ideology has yet to be determined.

  9. Ha! Gringo, that was my modest effort to strike back, long ago. Lot’s of fun. Note that I “doxxed” them – a term not in use back then — only after they’d published an interactive map showing the exact addresses of registered gun owners. “They started it” may not be a firm moral foundation on which to stand, but it did seem an appropriate response, and still does.

  10. I think truckers already don’t want to drive into Blue cities, and if their tires were blown out during those trips, hopefully when parked, they would become even more reluctant. I’d expect to see some of that.

  11. There will be a hot civil war within the next 10 years and the onset will be sudden and deadly.

    Everyone that thinks that Patriots won’t rise up and fight are mistaken.

    The Colonists endured decades of abuse at the hands of King George III until, finally, on April 19th, 1775, General Gage was foolish enough to try to sieze the Colonists gunpowder stores. That was the last straw.

    If the Democrats win in November, the war will happen sooner, if Trump wins it will likely be later but November 5th and the rest of 2020 will be brutal either way.

  12. A hot civil war means murdering your neighbour and his family because he works in the office of the local democrat representative. I simply cannot believe that people who are afraid of being called racists are going to turn around the following day and slaughter the enemy for “reasons”.

    What I find much more plausible is the democrats cheating and winning and “conservatives” doing absolutely nothing at all about it. “Next time” they’ll say. Because that’s what they always say.

  13. A Trump win will cause a surge of violence that will trigger some form of martial law in certain places. After that is tamped down, it will be a sporadic campaign of IEDs and roadside bombs.

    A Dem win will set off a pogrom and against Trump contributors, local GOP offices and LEOs. A local militia movement will resist and the Dem POTUS will call in the national guard against them. The national guard will in most cases refuse orders or outright mutiny.

    So, there will be blood…

  14. The problem with tearing down all the Confederate statues, banning Gone With The Wind and all that erasing history is that people then forget that ONE civil war was more than enough…

  15. I’ll play optimist. The Dems will realize that if they stick with Biden, they lose. They’ll also realize that if they replace Biden with anyone other than Bernie, they lose. So they figure, what the heck, put Bernie in, lose badly, and blame it on him for the next, oh, 28 years.

  16. The woke mobs are paid political pawns, Lenin’s useful idiots ..take away their funding and they vanish in a few weeks. Who are the woke mobs primary funders? The Ford Foundation, The The Tides Foundation, and Soros’s Open Society. Nationwide, there are around eight hundred and fifty suits (board chairmen and board members of a number of Marxist NGO’s) that are directly funding this unrest……

    If you find a rattlesnake in your backyard, shoot it with .410 shotgun and don’t aim at the rattle.

    But the MSM is criminally incurious in investigating these funders, as they to are simply hoping to be eaten last by the mobs that they glamorize.

    When does this all end? Lenin has told us how to stop this nonsense. “You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” America must find its steel or the woke mobs bayonets, (organized and paid for by these eight hundred and fifty funders) will never stop probing.

  17. Shall we again all get together for a late dinner and the watching of election returns, like in 2010? Methinks not. Any random street may suddenly be mobbed, and they won’t be so tolerant as they are now.

    You & the good sergeant been putting in your range time?

  18. When gathering personal info on media celebrities don’t forget their bosses — the owners (and board members too, don’t forget them) of media corporations and/or conglomerates. The time to gather and disseminate such data (if only to each other in advance of Der Tag) is now.

  19. Remember in the early 2000s when the Dems stole the WA governorship? Did the GOP complain at all? Even a peep? Compare how the Dems have reacted to a clear defeat of Stacy Abrams in GA. The point is to keep reinforcing their false narrative about GOP vote suppression/cheating/etc. Similarly remember when the Dems stole a senate seat for Al Franken? Did the GOP raise a fuss about it? No. What possible reason is there to think they would lift a finger no matter how brazen the cheating is in a presidential election? If Trump even tries to litigate a la Al Gore the GOPe en masse will tell him it’s time to accept reality and go home.

    There’s not going to be any person-to-person violence. Come on. What we may, and I stress only may, see, is something like the nullification efforts the Dems have been doing these last few years. When the Dems push through their gun control dreams, will red state GOP forbid any law enforcement cooperation with ATF? Possible, but honestly doubtful. It’s just not in conservative DNA to make blanket condemnation of law enforcement agencies. So they’ll say that these laws should be applied judiciously, etc., and basically just go along with it. When the Dems ban fracking, will TX, SD, etc., forbid the EPA from working in their states to do anything to enforce it? Of course not.

    Due to these sorts of policies rural voters will continue to flee the Dems. So what? They’re about to legalize 25 million new voters.

    (All of this is of course assuming the GOP goes down hard. I’m not saying it’s a sure thing. But the Dem cheating machine has had 4 years to make sure they don’t leave anything to chance.)

  20. I think if the Dems visibly steal the election, we are definitely going to see at least some ‘kinetic’ action (if Dems lose, violence is a given).
    The Tea Party types are all done listening to the GOPe, and the rising tide of violence in the cities means that there are a lot of twitchy gunslingers out there. All it takes is a couple of actual engagements between Antifa and militias (or attempts to seize weapons under red flag, etc.) and we’re off to the races.
    The pols may roll over, but I am hearing a lot of fear and anger from the ‘silent majority’.

  21. Some “Signs of the Times,” quite literally in this case —

    I live in a Democrat dominated up-scale area of Dallas and I am seeing something I have never seen before.

    Democratic Biden for President signs are being tagged with paint, defaced, or destroyed. And it is happening on the most public of roads and not inside the mostly white-liberal Democratic neighborhoods like the one I live in.

    Since I have never seen that happen to Democratic political signs in Dallas before. (Trump/GOP signs are destroyed/stolen quickly. GOP bumper stickered cars are keyed and it’s worse with Trump stickers) I have no frame of reference for its real meaning.

    My gut says some number of very angry people are expressing themselves, they are not GOP voters (they’d lose their job if they are caught and spray paint isn’t their thing), and they don’t live in white-liberal Democratic neighborhoods.

    Beyond that, I don’t have a clue. Anger is too irrational an emotion to guess at without knowing who is angry.

  22. Trent: I’m most amazed that you say there are Biden signs. I’ve not seen any, and didn’t think they existed.

  23. Election night is very possible. You don’t need actual results, you just need the voter polling and the pundits howling.

    Death6

  24. Street fighting was inspiring in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, under the Communist jack boot.
    It has the OPPOSITE effect in Seattle, Portland and other over-indulged-drone cities

    SO main branch predictopm 98% certainty.
    * President reelected
    * Left seeks to interfere with ANOTHER 4 years of American Comeback
    * Normal folks now see clearly the statist threat, ed up. And this time, criminal indictments against deep state blocks all efforts to waste ANOTHER four years.
    * That means at minimum ANOTHER 202 Article II judges and further corrections to intolerable regulatory intrusions.

    Any takers on the other side? Adult beverages to any winners — we’ll all need it.

  25. Brian,

    Regards this:

    A hot civil war means murdering your neighbor and his family because he works in the office of the local democrat representative. I simply cannot believe that people who are afraid of being called racists are going to turn around the following day and slaughter the enemy for “reasons”.

    You are playing Pollyanna games here and not facing reality.

    Eliminationist Rhetorical Hate Campaigns preceded the Rwanda Hutu/Tutsi genocide, The Wars of Yugoslav Succession and our own Murrah Building bombing in the 1990’s.

    The Left has been going all in on an anti-White/GOP media hate campaign for 20 years and it has set off the Left’s crazies. The volume of this current round of hate was upped to 11 in 2018 and drove impeachment in 2019.

    For which see:

    Progressive Tribalism Beats The War Drums
    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/progressive-tribalism-beats-the-war-drums/

    Again: Alexis Grenell is a Democratic Party strategist. The New York Times, the most important newspaper in the world, and the voice of the liberal Establishment, saw fit to publish this racist, sexist call to arms. This is what elite liberalism in America has become.

    If I were a person of color, and, following a major conservative political defeat, read an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal headlined “African-Americans, Come Get Your People/They will defend their privilege to the death;”

    … and that headline topped an opinion piece calling black people who voted in a way the author didn’t like as “traitors” who profaned a blood sacrifice by the righteous;

    … and that op-ed claimed that black people like this cannot be reasoned with, only destroyed, because they will defend their bigoted beliefs “to the death”;

    … I would be terrified about what the leaders of the Right had in mind for me and people like me. I don’t care how bad the Democrats might be, I would vote for them without even thinking about it, just to prevent blood-lusting Republicans like the author and the editors who published her from coming anywhere near power.

    Wouldn’t you?

    And see also:

    WATCH: Leftist Protesters FREAK OUT, Claw At Supreme Court Doors While Brett Kavanaugh Is Sworn In
    By Emily Zanotti
    Oct 7, 2018 DailyWire.com
    https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-leftists-protesters-freak-out-claw-supreme-emily-zanotti

    America is now in the grip of the politics and pathologies of several long term Leftist media incitement campaigns bearing their poison fruit. Borderline sociopath personalities in the White-Woke, African-American and Muslim communities are ‘detonating’ — AKA acting out issues with violence — because of these incitement campaigns.

    How we have gotten here is familiar to me. I’ve been in the target audience of one such political incitement campaign, on the American Political Right, between Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Murrah Building bombing in the mid-1990’s, and as such I was able to predict major violence about six-months prior the OKY City car bomb attack.

    This was not due to anything special on my part, mind you. I simply recognized a pattern from the domestic and over seas current events at the time. I had been paying attention to the Serb Nationalist Slobodan Milošević’s ethnic incitement campaign against Croats and Muslims in the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, which lead to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and also French actions in the the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

    So the signs of the ISIS/ISIL Muslim incitement campaign in the Obama Administration and the on-going BLM/American Left/LGBTQ incitement campaigns playing out in America now are all too familiar.

    The key to the violence that these incitement campaigns generate are toxic and dysfunctional people. They are the natural manure in which incitement campaigns seed, nurture, grow and finally motivate/detonate into hatefully & lethal actions. And dysfunctional cultures produce toxic and dysfunctional people.

    The root cause of toxic and dysfunctional people is child abuse.

    American urban single parent families and open-borders imported Arab-Muslim culture are rife with child-abuse. Abused children grow up into toxic borderline sociopath personalities more often than not.

    We know from our own Western culture that some of the worst serial killers, abusers and sociopaths are often individuals abused in their childhood. The causality is unavoidable. Cultures that tolerate or practice child abuse breed future abusers, and sociopaths, and mass killers. The pent up rage, hostility, and toxicity is then redirected against others, either those who do not conform to the culture, or those who are foreign to the culture.

    This thread of sexual abuse of male children turning into incited dysfunctional toxicity runs through the personalities of Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, Dallas police killer Micha Johnson, Pulse Nightclub mass murder Omar Mateen, and the Saudi hijackers on 9/11/2001.

    The UK Daily Mail reported that Anders Breivik had a sexually abusive relationship with his mother Wenche Behring.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2987762/Was-Anders-Breivik-driven-kill-77-people-frustrated-sexual-feelings-MOTHER.html

    Micha Johnson was drummed out of the US Army for being caught stealing female under garments from fellow soldiers and stalking a female Asian-American soldier in Afghanistan. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3682619/Pictured-female-soldier-pervert-Dallas-cop-killer-sexually-harassed-colleague-reveals-murderer-used-steal-girls-panties.html

    Omar Mateen was a bi-sexual 2nd Generation Afghan-American of Pashtun tribal extraction with a set of Taliban supporting Muslim parents. Pashtuns, as a tribal culture, are infamous for the sustained sexual abuse of young boys.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/14/omar-mateen-gay-men-terrorism-pulse-jackd-sexuality

    The Saudi hijackers came from a Arab tribal culture where there is wide spread suppression of women that has resulted in a high occurrences of both homosexuality and pederasty. http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/63234/psychiatric-conference-truthful-girl-jamie-glazov

    Dr. Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist who worked for several years with young criminal Muslims in a Copenhagen prison, was interviewed in a 18 June 2010 Front Page Magazine article titled A Psychiatric Conference on Truthful Girl. In it Dr. Sennels discusses the link between the devaluation and sequestration of women in Arab and many other Muslim societies, the associated suppression of women’s sexuality in those societies, and the high prevalence of homosexuality and pederasty in them.

    See:

    http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/18/a-psychiatric-conference-on-truthful-girl/

    Though IMO the sociopathic Arab culture is at least as much involved, and alluded to in this paragraph (my emphasis):

    “Dr. Sennels discusses the link between the devaluation and sequestration of women in Arab and many other Muslim societies, the associated suppression of women’s sexuality in those societies, and the high prevalence of homosexuality and pederasty in them. Where women are at once denigrated and sexually secluded, men are more likely to find other males not only more available but also more fitting as partners in intimacy. To the degree that this involves pederasty, which, along with the physical abuse of male children, is widespread in those societies, the culture generates another large sub-population predisposed to “identification with the aggressor” and thus to embrace the culture’s hatreds of others as a vehicle to such identification.”

    The consistent social pattern is that adults who were sexually abused as children are the ammunition of incitement campaigns.

    And, if you look closely at the violent LGBTQ community activists in Portland, Seattle and elsewhere, who are the shock troops of the White-woke, you are going to find a hell of a lot of child abuse.

    The thing is that such incitement campaigns not only send messages to detonate the toxic and dysfunctional people. They also warn their targets as to what is coming. The key indicator in this regards for America is gun sales.

    For which see:

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107651/monthly-unit-sales-of-firearms-by-type-us/

    When you look at long arm sales in the 1st six months of 2020 — rifles, shot guns and carbines — the total sales are 3.5 million, with hand guns in addition to that number. And the gun store operators estimate that 40% of these gun sales are to first time buyers.

    The armed confrontation in St. Louis between two white lawyers on their property — life long Democrats who specialized in police abuse cases, it turned out — and a black/woke mob and its aftermath will be looked at as a major cultural turning point. It’s when the debate on high capacity magazine rifles for self-defense against woke mobs were enshrined as the primary purpose of the 2nd Amendment in America.

    This is a “There is no such thing as a little bit pregnant” moment in U.S. politics.

    A decision to arm oneself with a high capacity magazine rifle, carbine or shot gun is committing to yourself a future where you see its use by you will be necessary. And if you are arming to confront and possible shoot down a violent woke mob. You are also arming to shoot down public officials or neighbors who are supporting violent woke mobs.

    This is the slippery slope on the road to hell.

  26. Brian says (August 3rd, 2020 at 10:30 pm):
    “Come on people let’s be serious. There isn’t going to be a hot civil war.”

    Really, friend? I think you’re most likely correct, but are you THAT certain?

    Remember that you don’t have to be interested in war; war is often interested in you. Let’s say you have no interest in punching a goose-stepping Antifa clown; are you so confident he has no interest in punching you?

    Or consider how it plays out if they win resoundingly: Taking the Senate and the White House and expanding their majority in the House. At this point what won’t they do in realms of education, technology, money, your job, your property, your religion, your children? Amongst all those things, isn’t there anything you care enough about to push back against their next big encroachment? And when you push back, and they push you even harder, what then?

    Again, I think you’re most likely correct that it doesn’t go hot.

    But I’m not, y’know, confident enough to take it casually.

  27. This is what happened when Antifa “Protesters” showed up at Seattle police chief’s home in the unincorporated area Snohomish county where she lives.

    https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1290473037729587202

    Mike
    @Doranimated
    @carmenbest

    Protestors on their way to harass the Seattle police chief ⁦at her home, encountered locals who were not in the mood to host protests in their neighborhood.

    Protestor: “We are peaceful! You pointed a gun at my face!”

    Resident: “That’s why you are peaceful.”

  28. The GOP needs to pass a federal law against “protesting” in public wearing a mask, call it an anti-KKK law and dare the Dems to oppose that, in order to shut down antifa. The Dems using them as their private army has gone on for way too long. Shutting them down like was done against the mob should be a top priority in a 2nd Trump administration.

  29. Brian, California and some other states have such laws and they are called ‘KKK Laws.” The difference is that those states are run b y Democrats who choose not to enforce them.

    I will leave to your imagination the question of why these laws, that were directed at Democrats in the 1920s, are not enforced by other Democrats 100 years later.

  30. Things work until they don’t.

    I note both the English before the American Revolution and the Slavocracy of the Antebellum South were able to oppress their opponents through the law, before events overtook them. The English government of Lord North was shocked when that war broke out, and President Buchanan conspired with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney to write the Dredd Scott decision, to “settle” the slavery question. Oops.

    I can imagine they were consoled by the knowledge that nothing bad had happened before, when they set in motion events which led to catastrophe. That’s the thing about civil wars- it takes time for disagreements to harden into enough hostility to start the killing.

    I think the left hates me and wants me to die. If I don’t, they’d be quite happy to kill me. I have no rights they feel bound to respect, and they have taught me there is no point in trying to discuss it. Their hatred is real, visceral, and I think it has gotten much worse over the last few years.

    I can see where it will end, if they are not stopped. So can millions of other Americans. I think this is an important reason why so many people have bought so many guns, and so much ammunition. You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

    Don’t think because nothing has happened in response to the endless provocations from the left yet, nothing ever will. If nothing else, they’re too stupid to take their winnings and back away, and they have real trouble imagining consequences could ever come back to bite them.

    My magic 8-ball has been wrong often enough that I want to toss it in the trash. But right now it’s me telling that if Biden, or an as yet unnamed Ersatz-Biden, manages to win, then this is an extinction level event for the United States, to borrow from Scott Adams. I think the radicals will be unleashed, believing their moment has come- and then the guns will come out. Not because people want to kill, but in self-defense. And the authority of the Federal Government will dissolve, in fits and starts, perhaps like how the authority of the Soviet government did, or perhaps like that of Imperial China in the early years of the 20th century.

    If Trump wins, I see no particular reason why he wouldn’t use the full powers of his office to go after his enemies, believing himself to be vindicated. After all, they went after him with everything they had. Hence, I could see mass firings of the swarms of useless leftists who infect every bit of the government. Fauci will be gone, and a swarm of SJW generals and admirals- and goodbye Christopher Wray.

    And the left will go nuts. But they’re always going nuts. Insurrection Act, anyone?

  31. I haven’t formed an opinion on whether some sort of civil war is likely or not. Not that it maters.

    Something everyone should keep in mind is just how odd our Civil War was compared to most.

    The first was that the sides were pretty clearly geographically distinct. While there is some truth in the brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor narrative, it was an exception and the future opponents departed to their respective corners before the fight began. There was the North and there was the South. The Border States were somewhat messier and there were some rather nasty pockets such as the Texas Hill Country but most of the fighting was between organized bodies of uniformed troops.

    That is the second and possibly most unusual distinction. The Confederates were allowed the time to form there own army. They were aided by the widespread defection of U.S. Army officers and the existing state militias, the fact that the Union was hardly better organized and that the regional nature made the state militias relevant.

    That the troops were, for the most part, clearly identified largely prevented the worst depredations against civilians. The Union commanders also exercised great forbearance in dealing with guerillas. Sherman’s March to the Sea though often portrayed as a wanton debauch, made careful distinction between property and people.

    The presently contemplated conflict would have none of these features. The adherence of the duly constituted authorities is especially in doubt. Where exactly the U.S. military and even individual units would choose to stand. While We the People have a lot of guns, they have the organization and logistics.

  32. Let’s posit a really bad scenario:
    At midnight on election night the map looks just like 2016. Trump leads in all of the same states, with leads of several hundred thousand in FL, WI, MI, PA.
    Biden refuses to concede since there are so many mail in votes outstanding.
    Over the next month enough votes are “found” and counted to flip each of those upper Midwest states, perhaps even FL. Lawsuits are constant in all of them, i.e. it’s basically FL 2000 on steroids. At the same time so many votes are coming in from CA that Biden is clearly the national vote winner.
    The Dems and the media are constantly screaming that Trump is subverting democracy. The likes of Romney, Murkowski, etc, are at first quietly, then loudly saying Trump needs to face facts and concede.
    I don’t even want to relook up Electoral College details, but Biden is declared the winner. The Senate is even, let’s say.
    The Dems in the first month propose stuff like strict gun control, legalization of all “undocumented”, fracking ban, etc. Nothing gets passed. RBG resigns. The Dems confirm some lesbian Asian. They say that 51 is good enough for justices, it should do for legislation.
    They abolish the filibuster, and pass all the above. Lawsuits immediately start flying from red states. Mostly either lose or very slowly wind their way through the courts.

    I’m still trying to figure out where the “people start shooting each other” happens in any realistic scenario?
    The first time someone on the “right” does anything violent they’ll be held up as an example of violent insurrection and their victim made a martyr. Anything vice versa will be suppressed a la the Steve Scalise shooting.

  33. Brian,

    This is exactly the sort of scenario I envision that would lead to that extinction level event.

    That is, business as usual by the left, but yielding an unprecendented response. And since the leftist media refuse to cover any story that doesn’t back up their chosen narrative, you can bet any strong reaction against their endless vote fraud would be a stunning surprise.

    And about that violent insurrection claim surely to be made when people defend themselves- well, to be honest, I don’t give a rat’s anus about of the lies leftists tell. I’ve stopped paying attention to them and I don’t care what they have to say, on any topic.

    I’d say that’s another step on the road to war. When people stop talking to each other- and stop believing the other is acting in good faith- then something has already gone seriously wrong with the public discourse. I’ve already stated my opinions about leftists and their plans- and I think it is fair to say that leftists don’t have any better opinions about me.

    I think I have the advantage in that my ideas are based in reality- and I believe reality actual exists as well, unlike some fraction of leftists- so there’s that. To borrow from Scott Adams again, we’re living in two different movies. Mine is a news documentary, theirs is a deranged fantasy story.

    But I admit I can’t predict the future.

  34. The Confederates were allowed the time to form there own army.

    True- but note that some great fraction of the North was still seeking a political solution to the crisis while the South was creating that army. The North and South were watching different movies, etc.

    The Union commanders also exercised great forbearance in dealing with guerillas.

    Also true, I think. But I’ve read that the state of Missouri was partially depopulated by the guerilla war there as civilians fled the fighting, and I’ve also read that the Union troops marching through South Carolina were rather less restrained then in other areas. It certainly wasn’t all peaches and cream.

    While We the People have a lot of guns, they have the organization and logistics.

    For how long? What happens when some large fraction of the military defects? Again, I can’t predict the future, but I certainly think the left is too far gone to stop poking and pushing, and is too stupid to realize that their extremism isn’t really that popular in the country.

    If I had to pick a scenario right this moment, I’d guess this- the left steals the election, and everyone of the right knows it. The left gets busy writing law-words to fundamentally transform the country- and gets open defiance. They send in the troops, people shoot back- and away we go.

    Again, I can’t predict the future, and I’m out of time to keep writing more. But I simply do not believe the left will get away with otherizing 150 million people, plotting and scheming to bulldoze us into a ditch, without resistance.

    Too many people know about them their and evil nature.

  35. I’ve said here many times over the past 4 years that NY is going to indict Trump, his family, his business, etc. If they actually do it that’ll be a wild card that could have pretty horrific repercussions that could easily get out of control.

  36. they are a corrupt office, so probably so, what evidence do they have doubtful, but they’ll certainly try,

  37. Interesting scenarios. But we need also to incorporate the reactions of those outside the US.

    We all know that Canada is a joke. But if things turn violent, it is easy to imagine Mexico launching military operations into California, Arizona, Texas “to protect Mexican citizens in the US” — almost certainly with the backing (however toothless) of the UN. “Friendly” invasions of Florida by Cuban and Venezuelan forces would also be conceivable.

    Even without other countries landing military forces, the first impact of societal disintegration in the US would be the general cessation of imports. Who is going to send goods to a US which is falling apart and may never pay for those imports? Given the US’s heavy dependence on imports for everything from medications to cell phones to vegetables, this is going to hurt — and stimulate more problems.

    How long before Far Lefties in New York beg Communist China to send military forces to save them from their own stupidity? Meanwhile, what would Russia be doing? Canada is only a hop, skip, and a jump from eastern Siberia — and there are many Canadians who would welcome a Russian presence to protect them from whatever would be happening in the US.

    Lefties always assume that they get to keep what they already have, and then get more from their dirty tricks. They don’t understand how fragile the status quo is … or how easily it could be lost.

  38. Brian,
    I have no doubt that they’d like to, I suspect the fact that they haven’t managed it in four years indicates it is beyond the competence of the clown show, otherwise known as the government of New York State. There is also the non trivial risk on any day that Cumo could be the one indicted as they run out of “advisors” to indict.

    An indictment of the President would be tied up in the federal courts for years unless it was thrown immediately out as it should be.

  39. MCS: I’m sure they realize that trying to bring an indictment while he’s in office is a no-go legally, and quite likely to backfire politically. The question is whether they think it’d be worth their while doing so after he’s not in office anymore. Imagine my scenario from above and add in Trump going on trial, or at least where the Dems threaten to do so. I think it’s probably a can of worms they don’t want to open, but our “elites” aren’t really operating with clear minds these days…

  40. Just now on one of my increasingly rare forays onto Drudge, the banner was some sort of impending announcement supposedly tied to Trump’s Deutsche Bank records from the NY A.G. We’ll just have to see.

  41. MCS: LOL, the NY AG wants to break up the NRA. What a clown show. It’s hilarious to me that the left thinks that if they just force Rush off the air, and ban the NRA, that no one will oppose them. They really have no clue

  42. What I find unbelievable is that there are as many as six real people committed to voting for Trump in January that will now decide to vote for Biden. With someone that fickle, you’re better off flipping a coin than asking what they intend to do.

  43. > note that some great fraction of the North was still seeking a political solution to the crisis

    That’s because the “crisis” was almost entirely of the North’s doing. The Southerners just wanted to be left alone to maintain their status quo. Note that it was a entirely lawful status quo, backed by the Constitution, and that Lincoln only freed slaves in the South, not the North, and the much-vaunted 13th Amendment does not prohibit slavery; it simply reserves the right to create new slaves to the justice branch; it’s still perfectly legal to buy, sell, and own slaves.

    They declared war and attacked what they claimed were their own citizens, to resolve a “crisis” which, in fact, they never did much to address…

  44. Whatever happens, the crisis within institutions (where present day versions of the Weathermen preside – e.g., Chesa Boudin, etc.) will make the outcomes even more chaotic if not evil. The chance of a just order or even modesty in employing the power of institutions that brought the rule of law to all seems questionable. These powers will be held bythe same people who handle the charges of rape on campus. Any class half full seems naively optimistic. Ironically, those who sacrificed themselves when fraud had seemed provable now find the institutions they thought warranted such sacrifice run by those likely to “find” a box of ballots after all is in & counted.

  45. this article seems to assume that Trump (and his supporters) will behave in a linear fashion, based on the first term. I don’t think that is very likely. My sense is that Trump is going to drop the hammer — over and over — in his second term. If he is as smart as I think he is, he will go after deep state pols in both parties, and hopefully get a new party started that leaves the current two as sub-national rumps.

  46. They declared war and attacked what they claimed were their own citizens, to resolve a “crisis” which, in fact, they never did much to address…

    Actually, that is not what happened. The Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter and raided the Union armories. There was probably a plot to assassinate Lincoln as he entered Maryland.

    Had the South kept with a peaceful attempt to leave, I think they might have done it. Their problem, as was pointed out by Sherman in his famous letter, is that they thought they would easily win a war. The Confederates were the ones who violated the Missouri Compromise. They wanted to extend slavery to California and new territories on the way. Slavery was an inefficient economic system. It needed expansion.

  47. If the slave states had tried to secede under Buchanan or if Douglas had won, they might have been let go. They would not have been allowed any more Western territory, and possibly not Texas and Arkansas. Even so, Bloody Kansas had given a warning what the border lands of a slave country would be like for their free neighbors.

    Lincoln explicitly disallowed secession from the outset. There was more than enough pro-Union sentiment in Congress that once the Slave members had withdrawn, there was never a question.

    Access to the Western lands was the existential need that drove the Confederacy. They knew they were doomed hemmed in by free territory.

  48. MCS, I have a hard time imagining how slavery would have translated to the western states or territories. If you are farming intensively, as the South did with cotton and tobacco, slaves can work the fields. But in a ranch-based economy…? Or, as later emerged, an industrial one?

    What’s the western ecomomic activity that slaves could work profitably for their owners? I just don’t see it. And this reflects an argument I heard decades ago, that within bounds of the traditional South at the outbreak of the war, slave-based economies had pretty well hit their natural limit.

    What am I missing?

  49. PubliusII,
    For what it’s worth, I agree with you. I don’t think it was based on reason so much as hope. I doubt that many were aware of how quickly the annual precipitation declines once you’re west and north of Fort Worth. At the time Fort Worth was the outer edge and the plantations were much further south. What they needed was the Electoral votes from more slave states much more than they need more territory.

    Lincoln was elected without carrying a single slave state and hadn’t even paid lip service by having a Southern Vice President. Douglas would have probably been elected if the Democrats hadn’t split three ways, but the writing was on the wall. Unless more slave states could be formed, they would become politically irrelevant. Abolitionists were a minority in the North but slavery was generally unpopular with a majority. The slave state politicians foresaw a time when there would be more than enough sentiment in the North to end slavery one way or another and that they would lack the votes to stop it.

  50. What am I missing?

    Perhaps the consequences of the Dredd Scott decision?

    The slave state politicians foresaw a time when there would be more than enough sentiment in the North to end slavery one way or another and that they would lack the votes to stop it.

    This. The Dredd Scott decision was- according to historian Kenneth M. Stampp- arranged to by President James Buchanan and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney to settle” the slavery question. If that decision had stood, then the north would have been effectively unable to prevent the spread of slavery anywhere, because local law would have been made irrelevant. That is, slave owners could have brought their slaves wherever they wanted and had them do whatever they were told. And thanks to such laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act, Northerners would have been legally obligated to help them do it.

    Anyway, Stampp wrote an entire book- 1857 arguing that the slavery question was fading out until the Dredd Scott decision put it front and center, for the reasons I describe. He wasn’t arguing that it would not have come back absent that decision, but I think only that any eventual civil war wouldn’t have started when it did absent that brazen provocation from the Slavocracy.

    Bluntly, the crisis was set in motion by the South, not the North, TRX.

  51. Raymondshaw, MCS, Xennady –

    Thanks for your comments, which are illuminating.

    Raymondshaw, I’d forgotten about the Spanish mines. However, those were operated by the colonial powers, not individuals or companies in the modern sense. Thus the operators could keep slaves working with enforcement by the colonial army. Also, the products (gold, silver, mercury, etc.) were going into the royal treasury, not to market. In short, this wasn’t a commercial activity. That, I think, puts slaves-in-mines into a different economic category.

    The fact that mining in the western U.S. didn’t use slavery, even before the war, says that it isn’t economical under the conditions that prevailed.

    The economic activity that did use slavery in the U.S. was single-crop agriculture for national and global markets. Cotton and tobacco were available from other parts of the world, so southern planters had a ceiling on how much they could charge for the products, and that placed bounds on their costs. Slavery had to fit within those limits, or it was uneconomical to use.

    I don’t know enough about antebellum plantation crop returns and soils and productivity. But the fact that slavery occupied only a portion of the South — where soils and climate allowed — tells me that a slave-based agricultural economy had reached a limit set by economic return by the time the war started.

    Thus even Dred Scott didn’t really change the picture. Because even if a slave-owner could take slaves into free states, what were the slaves going to produce there that paid for their upkeep (which also included the costs of keeping them enslaved)?

    Again, I see natural conditions of climate and geology setting limits. The south was crazy not to realize that their system couldn’t be exported to other parts of the U.S.

    I’ll read Ken Stampp’s book — thanks for the tip!

  52. Beware of falling into the Far Left Academic trap of trying to explain everything about the US Civil War through the lens of slavery! It would be like some future historian combing through the archives of the New York Times and concluding that in 2020 mobs of mainly Upper Middle Class young white women rampaged through cities with black female mayors and black female police chiefs because Evil President Trump was forcing those officials to treat black lives as unimportant.

    Certainly, the Political Class of the South had an interest in preserving the basis of their wealth — just as the Political Class of the North had an interest in preserving their market in the South. But the overwhelming majority of Confederates who charged to certain death at Gettysburg did not own slaves. Equally, while there were Northerners who were prepared to die to end slavery, they were probably a very small minority of the people in the Northern armies.

    The Civil War is a complex story with many factors, including European encouragement of the South. Let’s not get fooled by Far Lefties into simplifying it into a black & white issue.

  53. I think the motivation of the many Confederates that owned no slaves, had never owned slaves, had no prospect of owning slaves and were actually harmed by the institution of slavery defies rational analysis. My feeling is that many were manipulated and stampeded by the political leadership. Especially by the bombardment of Fort Sumter.

    While overt Abolitionists were a minority, distaste for slavery was very widespread. What was near universal was support for the Union and Manifest Destiny. It is perfectly true that the great majority of the Union were fighting to preserve the Union, not to end slavery. The narrative becomes more complicated once it was clear to many that the only way to save the Union was to abolish slavery.

    It becomes even more complicated when you consider that it was perfectly possible to be an Abolitionist without conceding basic humanity and full rights to the former slaves. It’s well known that Lincoln seemed to favor returning the former sales to Africa, he seems to have changed his mind after becoming acquainted with Black Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass.

    The Confederate leadership started the war because they saw themselves being displaced from a position of power to near irrelevance. Support of slavery was the basis of their power and especially political support. The slave owners operated more through their network of dependents and clients to elect politicians in tune with their requirements than through disbursing money as today.

  54. “the motivation of the many Confederates that owned no slaves, had never owned slaves, had no prospect of owning slaves and were actually harmed by the institution of slavery defies rational analysis.”

    “And how can man die better
    Than facing fearful odds,
    For the ashes of his fathers,
    And the temples of his gods…”

  55. MCS: “I think the motivation of the many Confederates that owned no slaves, had never owned slaves, had no prospect of owning slaves and were actually harmed by the institution of slavery defies rational analysis.”

    The same case could probably be made for many of grunts in the Union army — people who had neve seen anyone from Africa, let alone a slave. Many of them were struggling immigrants themselves (often reluctant immigrants displaced from their native lands) or the descendants of recent immigrants who were facing a tough life.

    It seems unlikely that concern for the slaves figured that highly in the motivations of the average guy who went out to have his life disrupted, suffer dreadfully during the fighting, get wounded, and die for the Union. After all, the same Union Army that defeated the Confederates spent the next quarter of a century fighting native Americans, rounding them up, and confining them on dismal reservations where they clearly suffered. Why would the ordinary Union soldier feel so much more sympathy for African slaves than for Native Americans?

    There is no question that slavery was an issue in the Civil War — an issue which was very important to minorities of the populations both North & South. Slavery certainly was the match that lit the fire. But the Far Left academic fable that the Civil War was only about slavery does not pass the smell test as a matter of history. On the other hand, keeping the issue of long-abandoned slavery front & center has definitely served today’s Democrat politicians well — and Far Left academic historians are glad to do their bit for their team.

  56. MCS:
    I think the motivation of the many Confederates that owned no slaves, had never owned slaves, had no prospect of owning slaves and were actually harmed by the institution of slavery defies rational analysis.

    Be that as it may, there have been attempts at a rational analysis of why non-slaveowners fought for the Confederacy, and fought so tenaciously. Colin Edward Woodward’s dissertation at LSU tackles the point. (also available at Amazon.)Marching masters: slavery, race, and the Confederate Army, 1861-1865. From a review:

    Most Confederate soldiers were not slaveholders themselves, but they were products of the largest and most prosperous slaveholding civilization the world had ever seen, and they sought to maintain clear divisions between black and white, master and servant, free and slave.

    They had grown up in the master-slave society, and viewed their social standing in it as inherently tied to the divisions between master and slave, between white and black. “I may be low on the totem pole,but at least I am higher than the slave.”

    In addition many non-slaveholders hoped to rise in society and acquire slaves themselves. This may or may not have been a reasonable hope.

    And once the Union began to form an army after Fort Sumter, defense of the homeland became a reason for fighting. Recall from Ken Burns’s series, the Confederate prisoner who answered the question from his Union captor about why he fought: “Because you’re here.”

  57. Gringo…”They had grown up in the master-slave society, and viewed their social standing in it as inherently tied to the divisions between master and slave, between white and black.”

    Somewhat like the starving adjunct professor, without realistic hope of even gaining tenure, who identifies with the prosperous academic class rather than with semiskilled workers in his own income class.

  58. Gavin Longmuir:
    But the Far Left academic fable that the Civil War was only about slavery does not pass the smell test as a matter of history.

    My reading of the South Carolina Declaration of Secession is that for the state that led secession, slavery was THE reason.

    Absent slavery, there would have been no secession. Which tells me that while slavery may not have been the only reason for the Civil War, it was by far the leading reason.

    States’ rights wasn’t a valid reason for the South’s secession, insofar that the South strongly supported trampling of the rights of Northern states in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. That is, the South supported states’ rights only if convenient.

    https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/south-carolina-declaration-of-causes-of-secession/

  59. Anonymous fearlessly wrote: “States’ rights wasn’t a valid reason for the South’s secession …”

    Maybe in your mind, Anonymous. But that is neither relevant nor the issue.

    What we are trying to address here is the question raised by MCS upthread — Why did ordinary white non-slave-owning Southerners pick up their rifles and go to fight the Northerners?

    The ordinary Confederate soldier had some reason for putting himself in harm’s way — a reason which seemed valid to him at the time. MCS noted that this “defies rational analysis”. If it defies our rational analysis, then the problem most likely lies in us — we are failing to recognize the reasons which motivated those people at that time. In their minds, they were making a rational decision to fight and risk death.

    All I am suggesting is that very few people put their lives on the line to protect someone else’s right to own slaves. And very few put their lives on the line to destroy someone else’s right to own slaves. The motivations of the majority of the fighters on both sides lay somewhere else.

  60. Because even if a slave-owner could take slaves into free states, what were the slaves going to produce there that paid for their upkeep (which also included the costs of keeping them enslaved)?

    Pretty much whatever their owner told them to, I’d guess. And I think slave labor- paid very little if anything- would work pretty well to lower wages in the North, which would help make pro-Slavocracy Northerners rich in the same fashion “free trade” has made globalist Americans rich. I consider the present day political success of Donald Trump roughly analogous to the political success of Abraham Lincoln in that both were the reaction to a failing elite that sought to “fundamentally transform” the country to maintain their grip on power.

    I note that one aspect of the so-called “transpacific partnership”- the “TPP” Trump campaigned against- would have allowed foreigners to be brought in en masse to the United States to work all those myriad “jobs Americans just wouldn’t do.” Meanwhile, the local taxpayers would have been on the hook for all the services these people needed to live in the US- medical care, schooling, welfare, etc. I expect the localities in the North would have been similarly on the hook to maintain slavery in their location- via the Fugitive Slave Act and whatever else would have followed it, had the Slavocracy maintained its grip on power. I further expect this knowledge was what motivated the Northern electorate to turn so strongly against the South when it did.

    But that’s my speculation about why the Dredd Scott decision mattered when slavery’s viability as potential agricultural labor in the North was questionable, which Stampp’s book may not necessarily endorse. After all, this book predated Trump.

    The fact that mining in the western U.S. didn’t use slavery, even before the war, says that it isn’t economical under the conditions that prevailed.

    Wasn’t just about all pre-war mining in the West in free states or territories? If so, then I submit that the conditions that prevented it being viable were eliminated by the Dredd Scott decision. I admit I may be wrong or ignorant here.

    I’ll read Ken Stampp’s book — thanks for the tip!

    If you do, I hope you find it worthy of your time- and that I didn’t do to badly at representing its thesis.

  61. Absent slavery, there would have been no secession. Which tells me that while slavery may not have been the only reason for the Civil War, it was by far the leading reason. States’ rights wasn’t a valid reason for the South’s secession, insofar that the South strongly supported trampling of the rights of Northern states in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. That is, the South supported states’ rights only if convenient.

    Bingo.

    The Confederate leadership started the war because they saw themselves being displaced from a position of power to near irrelevance. Support of slavery was the basis of their power and especially political support. The slave owners operated more through their network of dependents and clients to elect politicians in tune with their requirements than through disbursing money as today.

    Also bingo.

    Somewhat like the starving adjunct professor, without realistic hope of even gaining tenure, who identifies with the prosperous academic class rather than with semiskilled workers in his own income class.

    Awesome.

    The ordinary Confederate soldier had some reason for putting himself in harm’s way — a reason which seemed valid to him at the time

    Much like how the average antifa thug today thinks he/she/xir has a valid reason to scream racist obscenities at black cops because black lives matter.

    The problem was, I think, that Southerners hadn’t figured out how thoroughly they had been betrayed by their leadership. I remember David P. Goldman wrote a while ago that the problem with the South wasn’t that everyone owned slaves, but that everyone aspired to own slaves. Most never had a chance, just like how most adjunct professors today never realize that’d be better off working for Walmart instead of their futile efforts at tenure.

    I can’t go as far as Goldman went in condemning the South, because I do take notice of the fact that the it was in fact invaded by the North. Plus, I note that the statues in the South lately targeted by the left are (to my knowledge) invariably of military officers. That is, Southerners didn’t build statues to the political leadership that led them to disaster and focused upon something else.

    That speaks well of the survivors, I think. I recall reading someone, somewhere, arguing that the real reason peace followed that war was because too many of the real fanatics were killed to keep it going.

    Hopefully modern leftists will learn to back off before the killing reaches that threshold. I suspect not.

  62. There is also a significant argument that Dred Scott and his wife had an incompetent lawyer and the case should never have reached the Supreme Court. There is a recent book making that argument.

  63. When I said that the motivation of the Confederate soldier defied rational analysis, I should have pointed out that this is hardly unique. What did the German privates that marched off to attack France in both World Wars have to gain? Politicians don’t seem to have much trouble manufacturing reasons to go to war or much problem finding enough men, at first.

    The Dred Scott decision should have been an example of the danger of the judiciary trying to impose a fait-accompli on the nation. The laws freeing slaves kept in free states were universal as far as I know. They were popular and slavery was unpopular, working along side and in competition with saves was especially unpopular. The slave states were nearly bereft of industry and had only a sparse rail network because skilled people would much rather work in a free state than among slaves. The capital tied up in slaves was huge and helped starve other enterprises of money for investment. Many slaves were mortgaged to banks in the North and internationally. When Washington died, only about a third of his slaves were productive, the others were either too young, too old or infirm from injury or chronic illness.

    Those who joined the Union side did so explicitly to defend and especially preserve the Union. As I said, slavery was not popular but there wasn’t a large constituency for ending slavery as long as it was confined to the South. Very few were concerned with the slaves as people, very few had any real exposure to Blacks either slave or free. In fact, while Lincoln saw ending slavery as necessary, he felt he had to hold the Emancipation Proclamation until he could proclaim it in conjunction with a Union victory.

  64. The laws freeing slaves kept in free states were universal as far as I know. They were popular and slavery was unpopular, working along side and in competition with saves was especially unpopular.

    This was the case with Dred Scott. He and his wife were taken by the Army officer who owned them to Minnesota. That made them free. The Army officer then took them back to Missouri, as I recall. He seemed to have no great objection to them being free. I’ve forgotten why it ended up in court.

  65. Again, I should have said they were popular in the free states, seen as a major affront to law and proper order in the slave states. States rights, don’t you know.

    Washington had to engage in some shenanigans with his slaves while he was President. Pennsylvania freed slaves after they had been continuously in the state for six months and the Capital was in Philadelphia for most of his term. He shuttled slaves back and forth between his household in Philadelphia and Mt. Vernon.

    The Wikipedia entry on Dred Scott says they were freed by a private arrangement in 1857, a year before he died of TB.

  66. MCS: “What did the German privates that marched off to attack France in both World Wars have to gain?”

    That is the kind of issue that causes lots of head scratching in symposiums of Far Left academic historians — but is intuitively obvious to normal human beings.

    In World War II, France declared war on Germany — not the other way round. Fighting age German males had suffered personally, and had seen their families & communities suffer, because of the harsh conditions imposed primarily by France in the Treaty of Versailles. There knew about the long history of conflict between France & Germany. The French wanted war, and the ordinary German rationally thought “Let’s have the war the French started on their homeland, not on mine”.

    There may have been a few German soldiers who were fighting for the victory of National Socialism — but the great majority were fighting for something that most academic historians can’t understand — patriotism.

    The situation was probably much the same for the US soldiers in WWII. Japan attacked the US, and yet US soldiers found themselves fighting Germans on the other side of the world in North Africa — and getting the worst of the battle at Kasserine Pass. Did those US soldiers think they were there to make Europe safe for democracy? Or were they fighting for their own country?

    Common sense suggests there was a similar dynamic in the Civil War. Ordinary Southerners were much more attached to their own States than to the nebulous concept of the “United States”. When Northerners invaded, they fought back — as a man should. It is silly to suggest that ordinary Southerners fought thinking that this was the route to them becoming rich slave-owners. Academic historians try to over-simplify and make the war all about slavery. They don’t like the term “War of Northern Aggression”, even though that gives a much better frame in which to understand the entirely rational motivations of the ordinary citizen soldiers.

  67. As I’ve said, wars are easy to start, hack politicians that have never accomplished anything in their lives outside of accepting bribes seem able to do it without any trouble. Ending them is much harder. You need to be very careful who you elect.

    You sort of glossed over the invasion of Poland which served the same purpose as Serbia in the first one. The only difference was that the Kaiser had been selected by Holy Providence rather than a ballot box. It worked out well for Germany both ways.

    Our own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan should serve as a warning. This time we were going to do it right; that worked out really well.

  68. Common sense suggests there was a similar dynamic in the Civil War. Ordinary Southerners were much more attached to their own States than to the nebulous concept of the “United States”. When Northerners invaded, they fought back — as a man should.

    Oh, I agree with this. It was the southern politicians who thought they would prevail in a war and set off the conflict by seizing US armories and bombarding Fort Sumter. Sherman knew them well and was asked to stay and be part of the Louisiana state. He liked Louisiana and his job at what became LSU but he was far too savvy about the bigger picture. His brother was a Senator and he knew national politics.

    It was The Civil War that destroyed the 10th Amendment.

  69. The fugitive slave law did give impetus – a northerner could feel untouched until the local law (with a more immediate sense of the results, the responsibility of a vote and the duty to align values may have been more obvious then – consequences were not vague) apprehended, jailed, and prepared for re-enslavement slaves who had thought themselves free in the north. Jails were mobbed and many editorials and much literature followed. That is a central to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe’s father had started a seminary in Ohio (where she also met her husband) and she had witnessed the flights northward of slaves; returning with her husband to Bowdoin, she her work that combined her beliefs and experience in a border state, while understanding her northern audience.

    Perhaps the most powerful work was the Quaker Whittier’s Ichabod. He described the speeches that led to the bill’s ratification and his reaction.

    Though sometimes they seem to be searching for reasons to rename buildings, etc., the contemporary “reasoning” for Buffalo’s reconsideration of Millard Fillmore’s legacy goes back to Fillmore’s signing that compromise. (A nice thing about teaching in Texas was the ability of a few students in every class to “get” the religious allusions – one I was less likely to, to be honest. And they are clearly what gives this poem some of its greatest power.)

    I suspect I’ve mentioned this poem before; sorry for repetition.

  70. MCS: “You sort of glossed over the invasion of Poland”

    Well, which invasion of Poland are you talking about? The German invasion of Western Poland? Or the near-simultaneous USSR invasion of Eastern Poland, under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact?

    What was the motivation of the British soldiers sent to France after the UK & France declared war on Germany over the invasion of Poland … but not on the USSR over their invasion of Poland? Did those British soldiers rationalize that they were putting their lives on the line to make the world safe for Communism? Or was their rationale simply patriotism — answering the call of the leaders of their country?

    Were the actions of ordinary Polish citizens who resisted both the invasion by Germany and the invasion by the Soviets any less rational than the actions of ordinary Southerners who resisted the invasions of their States by Northern armies?

    There is no question that slavery was an important issue to the Political Classes both North & South, and was the trigger for the conflict. But it does not explain the motivations of the citizen soldiers who fought on both sides.

  71. My apologies — the above Anonymous was me.

    It would be nice if the site could be modified to give a prompt before posting an Anonymous comment. :)

  72. There is also a significant argument that Dred Scott and his wife had an incompetent lawyer and the case should never have reached the Supreme Court.

    Fascinating. Changing that could have potentially changed history in a rather significant manner.

    Per the thesis of Stampp’s book, the case could have been unavailable to be used to “settle” the slavery question, thereby saving the Slavocracy from inadvertently setting in motion the events that led to the Civil War, and presumably it would not have happened when it did or perhaps not at all.

  73. The slave states were nearly bereft of industry and had only a sparse rail network because skilled people would much rather work in a free state than among slaves. The capital tied up in slaves was huge and helped starve other enterprises of money for investment. Many slaves were mortgaged to banks in the North and internationally.

    In other words, they made political choices that made their society poorer, more backward, more indebted, and yet was still unsustainable, inspiring continual efforts to expand. That required even more political choices- or rather reckless gambles- which eventually were disastrous to the entire nation.

    Much like how the political left has operated today, I think.

    It is silly to suggest that ordinary Southerners fought thinking that this was the route to them becoming rich slave-owners.

    Of course. But I don’t think it is silly to suggest that they might have had ambition to be able own a slave or two to save them from manual labor on their farm, or some such. Today, I’m pretty sure the average leftist realizes that they all aren’t going to be the president of some major college or head of their state DMV. Hence they are also quite happy to get a sweet government job with a great pension or become an academic with tenure. But many of these folks don’t even manage that, like the starving adjunct professor mentioned above.

    Academic historians try to over-simplify and make the war all about slavery.

    No one should expect much competence from academics today, I’m afraid. That said, most people know very little about the war, and what they do know is mostly that it involved slavery. Thanks, academics.

    They don’t like the term “War of Northern Aggression”, even though that gives a much better frame in which to understand the entirely rational motivations of the ordinary citizen soldiers.

    The South lost, so the Southern description of the war didn’t take. Victors write history. And I think what motivated ordinary men to take arms was roughly the same thing that motivates men to do so everywhere- the fight to maintain their society. But I also think their society was awful, and their leadership was foolish enough to take actions that got Southern society destroyed.

    That’s what failure looks like With better leadership, the South would never have degenerated into the Slavocracy, and their society wouldn’t have become awful in the first place. I’m reminded of Venezuela, or Cuba. Those societies have been essentially destroyed, with catastrophic consequences for almost all of the inhabitants. But for a tiny few, it’s been glorious. That’s the future the Slavocracy was working towards, and I’m not a fan. The people of the South were betrayed, in my opinion, and no one should have fought for that.

    But hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it?

    Also, I’m the anonymous who made the comments at 5:21 yesterday and 5:20 today. Oops

  74. Also, I’m the anonymous who made the comments at 5:21 yesterday and 5:20 today. Oops

    The site lost the ability to remember IDs about a year ago.

    Firefox is better than Chrome at this

  75. If anybody is wondering how I will rationalize the Soviet invasion of Poland, you can stop. I will however point out that by the time it occurred, England and France were in the let’s start only one war at a time mode. I suspect the Churchill assumed, rightly as it happened, that any alliance between Hitler and Stalin would last only until one of them turned his back.

    Way up yonder I pointed out that our Civil War was a remarkably civilized affair, especially by the standards of the 20th Century. The aftermath, as messy as Reconstruction was, also by the same standard, very restrained. Once the last organized Confederate units surrendered, there was only minor, sporadic and generally disorganized resistance that soon degenerated to pure brigandage. There were no concentration camps, no mass executions or incarcerations, no mass dislocations.

    The history is of substantial if imperfect reconciliation with resistance largely confined to words and gestures. The war didn’t extend to a second and third generation as many, both before and since, have. Fifty years on, the survivors of Gettysburg from both sides were able to meet, talk over old times and part as friends. When we eliminate the monuments to that time, we erase the record of that rather singular legacy.

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