This is a profound crisis for America. In my view, it has reached the level of the question of slavery, which was too big an issue to be settled by conventional expectations for courts of law and social and political transactions.
In 1861, there were many Americans, as there are many today, who didn’t see the question as being that much beyond the scope of ordinary remedy.
But it was. For what it’s worth, I don’t foresee an armed battle erupting over the 2020 election, per se. That’s partly because there’s no obvious way to organize one. Unlike the situation of the Civil War, there’s no territorial division to make options plain.
But the spiritual divide between Americans who don’t perceive a crisis (or whose intention is to provoke one and benefit from it), and Americans who do perceive one, could not be deeper. Either there must be a fight, to authenticate the 2020 vote and ensure that it produces a new president only if it was really honest and fraud-free, or there need not be a fight, but only a formulaic consultation which cannot possibly establish the meaningful absence of fraud.
If the choice is supposed to be the latter, voting is meaningless anyway, and no one is under moral compulsion to agree to be governed by its “outcomes.”
Worth reading in full.
I believe this is missing the bigger picture. The real issue is, who is actually in charge? Are elected officials in charge, or not? Donald Trump was elected president, and unelected officials in the security/intelligence communities worked to sabotage his administration, military and intelligence officials worked to sabotage his policies to the point of collaborating with the opposition party to have him impeached and removed from office, etc. Rigging an election is just an additional step in the process of refusing to allow anyone but a select few to actually have any power. The entire point of elections is to peaceably decide the issue of who gets power. Everything that happened from 2016 until now is culminating right now, but it’s all just been escalating evidence that They don’t think that We get to be in charge, under any circumstances. In which case, as he says, We are under zero moral compulsion to listen to anything They say.
Also, in related-ish news, are we all supposed to pretend that it’s normal for an incoming president to “announce” his cabinet/advisor selections purely by press release, instead of by press conference? That it’s going to be totally normal for him to “govern” the way he campaigned, i.e., a few times a week, at most, when his brain is functioning enough for him to appear in public? We’re all just supposed to go along with this?
If the choice is supposed to be the latter, voting is meaningless anyway, and no one is under moral compulsion to agree to be governed by its “outcomes.”
A couple of thoughts.
For all of the, I think justifiable, complaints about how the Democrats treated their loss in 2016 and Trump when assumed the Office, once you separate rhetoric from actions the country in general agreed to be governed by Donald Trump.
That being said, I also don’t think “agreeing to be governed” by Joe Biden means that people opposed to his policies give up any legal ways or means of frustrating their implementation.
“Once you separate rhetoric from actions the country in general agreed to be governed by Donald Trump.”
He had to fire numerous top leaders in the DOJ for actively working against him, before the entire department was turned into an investigative unit of him and anyone who had anything to do with him, lasting the majority of his term.
He was lied to and obstructed from implementing his desired foreign policies by military and diplomatic leaders, as well as that DOJ farcical investigation.
Most of us go about our business, same as always, but let’s not pretend that he wasn’t opposed in unprecedented ways, far beyond what “Biden” and any other plausible future successor will face.
While not surprising, Biden’s picks appear to be the very people that I suspect the vast majority of Americans object to – the Podestas anyone?
Is it too conspiratorial to still wonder exactly who and how the e-mails that theoretically the Russians released were actually released? That Bernie is quite willing to work underground is a policy true to his beliefs – not a very attractive tradition but a tradition nonetheless. But did the Bernie Bros buy into that method or not quite understand its power in the swamp? And did one of them find 2016 just a little too much Hillary for them? This may seem ancient history but are we about to see these patterns emerge again?
The only way it will be Civil War is if BLM and Antifa are unleashed on suburban and middle America – and that may not be unlikely. The left’s rhetoric and the beginning of blood lust that comes with a few successful riots may be enough. I just don’t know who a conservative militia would actually attack, or where or how. The resistance is likely to be refusals to follow lock-down orders from Whitmer types but with the vaccinations on the way, I’m not sure the lockdowns won’t be impossible to do – and surely the Cuomos and Whitmers, etc. would understand lockdowns even more arbitrary would be a bridge too far. (Though sometimes it seems impossible to overestimate either’s stupidity.)
“Also, in related-ish news, are we all supposed to pretend that it’s normal for an incoming president to “announce” his cabinet/advisor selections purely by press release, instead of by press conference?”
You know there’s a pandemic happening, and that you are losing 1000+ a day? That Biden does not want to be a super spreader like Trump, is entirely reasonable.
Whatever trigger point there is, it will likely be something not intended as such, but definitely intended to harm the other side. It will probably involve attacks on not only the principal(s) but also friends and family. Which will bring in others.
Interestingly enough, Americans have a certain talent for organizing quickly and effectively. As far as this quote:
“But it was. For what it’s worth, I don’t foresee an armed battle erupting over the 2020 election, per se. That’s partly because there’s no obvious way to organize one. Unlike the situation of the Civil War, there’s no territorial division to make options plain.”
The closest thing to a territorial division is the Urban=Leftist and Rural=Conservative that holds pretty well. Mind you, being in the suburbs is gonna s-ck.
Rule of threes: You can live 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food.
Urban areas are far from self sufficient. They have usually a 3 day supply of food in stores AND WAREHOUSES. I suspect a bit less now. Resupply comes over limited routes that can be interdicted in various ways in and out. Water comes from the outside and can be cut off or adulterated. Electricity, natural gas, and petroleum come from outside the cities and can be interdicted.
Even without military action, life in a besieged city is going to be nasty, brutish, and short.
Subotai Bahadur
The resistance is likely to be refusals to follow lock-down orders from Whitmer types but with the vaccinations on the way, I’m not sure the lockdowns won’t be impossible to do – and surely the Cuomos and Whitmers, etc. would understand lockdowns even more arbitrary would be a bridge too far. (Though sometimes it seems impossible to overestimate either’s stupidity.)
The police in various cities are being mistreated and many are resigning. What of those that don’t quit? In Britain, the police are arresting and pepper spraying people for not wearing a mask. The days of the benign “bobby” are long gone. When I was last in London, a story going around was about a man in Chelsea who chased two boys that were throwing rocks at his windows. He was arrested.
What will our police be like once the ones who won’t put up with the politics have left ?
Even in NY and CA the police won’t enforce the stupid lockdown restrictions.
“the stupid lockdown restrictions.” The reason why so many of you are dying, and will die, is this attitude.
“The reason why so many of you are dying, and will die, is this attitude.”
lolgf Go away pedophile you bother me.
So what are the plainest options? Why not start with the options closest to the head of the rotten fish? Aren’t some of those options pretty obvious? What good is waiting for a trigger event? Isn’t it way past time to just react and be on defense? The President was on offense for 4 years, more or less on his own – has it done any good?
For what it’s worth, I don’t foresee an armed battle erupting over the 2020 election, per se.
Hilarious. No one else does either, per se.
I admit I can’t predict the future, but I will suggest that the set of people who have been working to steal the 2020 election have a long list of schemes they wish to impose upon the public and they have never been taught that the power of the government has any limits.
For example, these people have been issuing decrees that have been willfully ignored, in Virginia and elsewhere, about gun-banning, and they don’t even seem to have noticed they aren’t getting compliance.
At some point, having spent many years screaming about how much they hate America and Americans, these garbage people are going to give orders, to the police they hate, commanding them to enforce some decree no one respects. Shots will be fired, and people will die. The regime will decide, like New Zealand did, that no one should have a gun other than the minions of the regime. More violence will follow, etc.
That’s merely one scenario, but per se, the cause won’t be the 2020 election, I suppose. It will have been the astonishing arrogance of the political class, which has quite brazenly and proudly arranged to steal the 2020 election, and equally obvious, has long had no respect for the American people.
No good will come from any of that.
Meh. We haven’t even had a serious nullification crisis yet.
Meh. We haven’t even had a serious nullification crisis yet.
Are you sure about that?
The endless examples of the left ignoring laws they don’t like seems rather serious to me, but ymmv.
They have taken their toy back. It will be very hard to get it away from them again. Trump did freak them out and the efforts to nullify, impair and impeach him were impressive, and very entertaining. Obama set the ball rolling shortly after Trump was elected with the Russia bullshit and it rolled on from there.
They have it back and will kill anyone who seriously opposes them, should it come to that. They have a global agenda that Trump interrupted and will now go back to that. They consider this agenda existential as they are trying for continued dominance. Again if you seriously threaten them, they will interpret that as a kind of treason. These are very twisted people with immense resources.
Xennady: Biden will put forth anti-gun edicts that will be declared null and void in red states. Probably ditto for anti-fracking rules–TX, SD, PA, etc, aren’t going to let him destroy their economies. It’s going to be required by the base for any GOP politician to be as Resistance-y as the left has been if they want to stay in office. It’ll be sanctuary cities times a million.
“the stupid lockdown restrictions.” The reason why so many of you are dying, and will die, is this attitude.
Pengun, bringing the stupid. I’m so glad you’re not an American. But I’d have thought you’d be pleased that “so many of us” are dying. Although in fact that’s not true.
But it was. For what it’s worth, I don’t foresee an armed battle erupting over the 2020 election, per se. That’s partly because there’s no obvious way to organize one. Unlike the situation of the Civil War, there’s no territorial division to make options plain.
The election per se won’t trigger armed combat; it just sets the stage. The actual trigger will be something initially appears inconsequential, such as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, or that of José Calvo Sotelo in Spain in 1936, after years of assassinations, murders of clergy, bloody leftist riots bordering on insurrection, and increasingly leftist policies in Spain.
In 1931, per Wiki:
Sound familiar?
Armed combat here, if it should occur, will not resemble the American Civil War, but will be much more like the Spanish Civil War.
“Pengun, bringing the stupid. I’m so glad you’re not an American. But I’d have thought you’d be pleased that “so many of us” are dying. Although in fact that’s not true.”
I do not enjoy anyone’s death. It is true. I would bet your numbers are rather seriously underrated. Its 900 and change today which for almost the same infection rate, in the 170,000s, was nearly 2000 a few days ago. You are losing war levels of casualties but still insist its all OK.
re Covid-19, let’s look at some actual comparative data. Here are graphs of comulative death rates (population-adjusted) for the US, France, Sweden, Czechia, the UK, Spain, and Italy:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64630.html#comment-1041736
The current cumulative numbers from Worldometers, which I believe are a week or two more recent than those in the graphs, are:
US 750
UK 760
Spain 900
France 710
Czechia 600
Italy 770
Germany is a major outlier on the low side, currently at 174.
We all wonder when the deluge will hit – or if we will with some screaming and suffering be slowly cattle-car-ed into deeper and deeper banana-state socialism, with our voices increasingly stifled, our allies (those we know and don’t know) dragged off to gulags, our churches increasingly shuttered, and our leaders increasingly selected from amongst the political elite by faceless people in back rooms, calculating differential payoffs from various corporates and international entities in order to make their pics.
The control of information is a key factor. Much of our country was happy to buy the SCARY COVID story, which WAS very scary at first. And then happy enough to let a couple weeks of oppression turn into months, and now apparently, years. Much of our country is happy to have their speech controlled, be fed what are often laughably obvious lies, and expresses little or no surprise upon being told today that Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia, or that the video of candidate Biden bragging about stopping an investigation into his Son’s fantastic Ukrainian moneypot isn’t the problem, it is Trump asking questions about it. …That the mind-boggling election irregularities aren’t a problem, its some blessed (or by most, cursed) few asking questions about it and trying to insist upon elections carried by actual legal votes.
Whence the deluge? As I work in a school system where no students are allowed to be physically present, try to attend a church where no more than 10 people are allowed to attend (but which remains irredeemably leftist anyway), as I watch vast leftist protests and celebrations pass uncommented while conservative and religious gatherings are condemned and halted – while I watch conservative voices silenced, demonetized, sued, threatened, attacked, and in some cases jailed for their opinions with little apparent outrage or pushback, I wonder if we aren’t doomed to the cattle-car end.
In a couple days I will head off to a small Thanksgiving gathering in another state. Don’t rat me out to the Thanksgiving Stasi.
I don’t agree it would be so hard to find defensible battle lines. Essentially, if we are able to isolate and cut off the head of the Boston to Washington DC metro zone, the rest of the beast would follow along. Geeography is our friend.
The Appalachian Mountains can provide some pretty good chokepoints. Somewhere along the route of interstate 81 just stop all truck traffic coming from the west and down from Canada. Somewhere south of Richmond, we would have to march to the sea to cut off I-95.
Similar blockades along I-5 on the West Coast, could isolate every city from Seattle to LA.. Again you could use the Sierra Nevada and other mountain ranges if you need something more defensible
If that is not enough, smaller blockades could be thrown up around larger Midwest cities such as.Chicago, Detroit etc. I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed but it’s doable!
I disagree about the organizing bit. While it may be difficult to find some rationale around which to organize armed resistance at the strategic level of war, it is quite possible to self-organize at the tactical level. I can easily imagine some “direct action” against local party officials and perhaps judges. Such may seem more like revenge, but might also be seen as shaping actions for the next elections, i.e., removing corrupt officials to ensure a clean election.
There’s also value in maintaining a constant low level of violence. Much like the IRA in Ireland, a small number of violent acts will demonstrate that the government can’t maintain peace, which undermines its legitimacy. (Not unlike the BLM/Antifa violence.)
The worst outcome of on-going, low-level violence would be a preference cascade that decides that violent action is acceptable, especially since clean elections are off the table.
At any rate, it seems the soap box and ballot box are no longer available to the average citizen, and they are opening the cartridge box to see what’s in there.
I would bet your numbers are rather seriously underrated. Its 900 and change today which for almost the same infection rate, in the 170,000s, was nearly 2000 a few days ago. You are losing war levels of casualties but still insist its all OK.
Several points.
First, you’re probably not aware of this (most people aren’t), but hospitals receive additional subvention for each Covid death, i.e., they have a direct financial incentive to report someone who was hit by a truck, but Covid positive, to be a Covid-related death.
In this respect direct comparison of numbers is confounded by the differences in reporting between countries (much like infant mortality statistics). (Who takes China’s statistics at face value?) The U.S. counts as a death every infant born alive, for however a brief period, as an infant mortality. Most countries only count those who lived at least three days. That makes a considerable difference, especially in premature births.
Second, a second confounding fact is that different countries are at different stages in the epidemiological cycle. For a while American liberals were castigating Trump because Mexico’s numbers were a lot lower, as the epidemic first spread there. Once it really took hold, Mexico’s numbers shot northward (so to speak), and American liberals didn’t bring up Mexico any more.
Last, how many deaths per day occur normally out of a population of 330 million? How many deaths per day occur normally during flu season?
Per the CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6826a5.htm
For those who might be interested, The new Kurt Schlicter novel is out.
It is called “Crisis,” and is about the separation of blu and red states. I haven’t read it yet. I did like the first one, “People’s Republic.”
Seems timely.
I don’t agree it would be so hard to find defensible battle lines. Essentially, if we are able to isolate and cut off the head of the Boston to Washington DC metro zone, the rest of the beast would follow along. Geeography is our friend.
The Appalachian Mountains can provide some pretty good chokepoints. Somewhere along the route of interstate 81 just stop all truck traffic coming from the west and down from Canada. Somewhere south of Richmond, we would have to march to the sea to cut off I-95.
Similar blockades along I-5 on the West Coast, could isolate every city from Seattle to LA.. Again you could use the Sierra Nevada and other mountain ranges if you need something more defensible
No need. The Viet Cong effectively never established defensive lines. They operated all over the country, including in Saigon itself. Once they tried to fight set piece battles, in the Hue offensive, they were wiped out.
The problem is not to find out who won and whether there was fraud. We already know there was massive fraud. The 73 million who voted for Trump know their votes were stolen from them by crooked Democrats. The Democrats should have to pay dearly for this. No one should reap and keep something of great value to them if they stole it. No one should be allowed to profit from his own wrongdoing.
If you look at Biden’s announcement of his national security team picks (and there’s a rumor that Hillary wants SECDEF!), he’s tapped a slew of ardent globalist lefties. If he keeps on this tack with the rest of his staff picks, by the time the next election rolls around, there will be nothing left of the US to save.
When I wargamed out what would happen, I didn’t see a classic field army civil war either. I saw it more like Northern Ireland on steroids or as someone else said the viet con.
Likewise people putting cities under siege via infrastructure attacks. Electrical substations, water and gas. Attacks on the transportation networks. City and rural being the only semi clear division. All will be done either by lone wolf or semi organized groups.
They keep saying that people are too comfortable for a civil war. Yet they forget the Hillbilly Eulogy book and other article in a like vein. There are large segments of the country that are not doing well and feel like strangers in their own country. These same people are also of the Jacksonian political mindset, which means they live by an honor code. If they believe Trump lost due to fraud, it is probably not going to go well.
I think the government already knows this. Remember how the federal agencies focused on right wing groups and symbols after 9/11. The big question is why, when obviously Islamic extremists were who was attacking us. The swamp knew that sooner or later they would push people too far. Remember the huge arms purchases by all the agencies even the Department of Education. They know that they are too many Jacksonians in the military.
It feels like we are now in a holding pattern,with both the left and the right prepared to go ballistic when this election is finally decided. The left with TDS, and the right with righteous anger.
“In 2017, an average of 7,708 deaths occurred each day. January, February, and December were the months with the highest average daily number of deaths (8,478, 8,351, and 8,344, respectively).”
Well yesterday you lost 2,332 to Covid19.
Had a woman tell me to do something anatomically impossible today, when I told her she needed a mask to go in our post office. I was pleased. ;) You may have noticed getting in people’s faces is fun for me.
“When I wargamed out what would happen”
How did you do that? I have played so many, both board and digital that I ooze tactics. Now strategy is my weak point, but my general is not bad, nothing like my colonel though. The problem I see is finding a board war game set in the US. The civil war is easy, but nothing modern have I found. Now we can just use a map of the US and look at it, I would chose Googleearth myself, and go from there, but that’s a huge job.
Oh, you would lose right away, and they would not be gentle. Probably not Russian ‘not gentle’ but something not far from there. Its always good if you can wipe out both the fighters and where they came from, to achieve peace. ;)
This whole article is an excellent read but this part caught my eye with regard to a sectional divide
“Considering the Senate, the journalist Ronald Brownstein made a striking observation in the wake of the Biden victory. As recently as the Reagan administration, he pointed out, the Senate hovered above partisanship: the states Reagan won twice had almost as many Democrats as Republicans. But in the 25 states that voted for Trump twice, 47 of the 50 senators are Republicans. In the 20 states that voted against Trump twice, 39 of the 40 senators are Democrats. (The exception is Susan Collins of Maine.)”
And they are pretty contiguous – NC, SC, WV, OH, IN, KY, TN, AL, FL, MS, LA, AR, MO, IA, ND, SD, NE, KS, OK, TX, MT, WY, ID, UT. AK is the outlier, along with GA but that would likely join the Free Republic of America as well.
https://newrepublic.com/article/160338/biden-popular-front-doomed-unravel
Brownstein’s comment is mostly just about the South at the time being still 100% Democrat at every level except for president. And states Reagan won twice just means ones he won in 1980 lol.
It’s amazing how many people don’t know how recently the South flipped. In the 90s the TX leg was still overwhelmingly Dem. I recall Obama, who is an ignorant idiot, making a comment that the Dems had historically never won anything in the South.
Pengun: “Had a woman tell me to do something anatomically impossible today, when I told her she needed a mask to go in our post office. I was pleased. ;) You may have noticed getting in people’s faces is fun for me.”
Canadian women have just gone up in my estimation!
Pengun, you were born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Saudi Arabia used to be burdened by “Religious Police”, self-appointed nuisances who would walk the streets carrying sticks and beat women whose dress did not match what those busybodies thought was appropriate for a Muslim woman. Even in solidly religious Saudi Arabia, those anti-social pains were eventually told to take a hike, and the “Religious Police” were disbanded.
“You may have noticed getting in people’s faces is fun for me.”
We never would have guessed, Penny. Never in a million years.
Brian – It wasn’t just the South. Between 1980 and 1988, California had a Republican Senator (S. I. Hayakawa, 1977 – 1983, and Pete Wilson, 1983-1991) as well as a Democrat one (Alan Cranston), and Regan won CA in both 1980 and 1984. Going the other way, Iowa briefly had two Republican Senators (Roger Jepsen and Chuck Grassley) but swapped Jepsen for Democrat Tom Harkin in 1985. Since 2014 Iowa has had two Republican Senators (Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley).
“Canadian women have just gone up in my estimation!”
They are generally wonderful its true. Had a guy try to get into the post office with no mask yesterday. Keep in mind that the postmistress is an old friend and has to deal with many people every day and its the time of year that her work is greatest. I told him he was not going in there like that, he called me something, I forget what, and the next woman in line, who works in health care and has watched people die from the pandemic, was less restrained. He wandered off babbling about the flu.
“On Monday President Trump’s campaign lawyer and former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova said that fired Trump cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs should be executed for saying that the election was the “most secure in United States history.”
Indeed, the strange is strong in America these days. ;)
The internal divisions necessary for CWII have been developed over the past 8+ years.
Some part of this election, or its’ aftermath will be the trigger.
If Trump beats the steal, the Left will riot, cry, wreck major cities, and try to trash the economy.
Trump will try to fix what he can of the systems and the economy, against even more media hatred and Uniparty / bureaucratic state resistance.
If the Left succeeds in the steal, their victory will be hollow, as the conservatives will recognize that as they are no longer protected by the law, they are equally no longer bound by it.
“I will not bow down” may well be the new motto.
The Left will think they have a mandate to impose forcible control over a population more numerous and more individually capable of resistance than they. This will not end well.
I do not expect battles. The violent left is ” organized”, in Antifa, in Soviet-style cells. The conservatives are not, at least not yet, but are individually more capable of self-determined and self-motivated actions. These are much harder to predict, and almost impossible to block.
I think that the violence to come will look more like Bloody Kansas, the Balkans, or the Spanish Civil War than any organized Westphalian conflict.
I also expect that the power of access to information as to who the controlling actors and persons of influence are will make head-hunting a thing.
As far as military forces directed against red states in a suppressive role, I think not. Should this happen, infrastructure and anti-logistics attacks on the major blue cities would force the recommitment of forces to supply and control the cities.
N.B. Absent constant supply, Los Angeles has about fourteen hours suppky of water, and about thirty hours of food. Just-in-time supply has its’ drawbacks.
Prepare as you can, survive as you must, and seek to restore our Constitutional Republic afterwards, should that be possible.
John in Indy