To the Knife

by

Not exactly sure of where I read this distillation of Walter Russell Meade’s definition of the Jacksonian attitude to conflict – possibly at Ace of Spates HQ, or maybe Bayou Renaissance Man, but the phrase stuck with me as soon as I read it. Basically, the average middle-to-working class Jacksonian American who just wants seriously to be left alone has only two settings when it comes to threatened conflict: “Can’t we just work out a way to settle this?” and “War to the knife and no quarter.”

There is no dial setting, which can be moved up or down; there is only “off” and “on.” And it takes a hell of a lot of provocation to flip that switch from ‘off’ to ‘on’. I cannot help wondering of late how close that flip is, with regard to racial aggression – what with feral black hoodlums making certain cities and neighborhoods basically unlivable for all – black, white, Asian, whatever. Making public transportation a thing to avoid unless totally desperate – you know, like the New York City subway system. With teachers of color feeling free to display their vicious racism on social media. With the crushing hand of DEI in the corporate and academic worlds, with the blatant twisting of American history by the never-to-be-sufficiently-condemned 1619 Project, the national establishment media (and local affiliates) turning themselves into triple-pretzel knots trying to paper over the stats of which race is actually committing the out-of-proportion to their representation in the overall population numbers of robbery, rape and murder… even just all-hands brawls in fast-food restaurants and amusement venues. Read in the media headlines of a senseless shooting, a mass looting of a neighborhood corner store or a punch-out in a Waffle House or McDonalds? Yeah, we know with a high degree of accuracy the color of those involved, once we scroll past the headline, and say to ourselves, “Yep – about what I thought.”

I should add, for the benefit of progressives snorkeling through the pool of conservative bloggers and commentors in this corner of the internet searching for risible tidbits which can be construed as ‘the-most-raaaaacist-evah!’ to tantalize the woke mob with fresh meat; this soon-to-be-end-of-patience does most definitely not apply to those friends, co-workers, fellow parishioners, and neighbors who happen to be of that year-round dark tan color, but are alike in devotion to the principles of fair play, good manners, rewards based on ability, and the guiding precepts of our Constitution. Such fellow good citizens are not the problem. Trust me – we know the difference. It is that unholy and dysfunctional unity that we are close to being out of all toleration for; black urban criminality, the community leaders who give them cover and space, and the intellectuals who spin all kinds of airy justification for it in the media, in college lecture halls and in mandatory corporate and government DIE classes.

I don’t know where or when the precipitating incident will come, or even if there will be just one single event that galvanizes a response. In my opinion, it will be a cluster of independently-occurring events or small incidents: the pair of Sikh employee/owners beating the snot out of a serial robber in Stockton, California, the dentist who got internet-mobbed for allegedly hosting a back yard party mocking Juneteenth and has since filed a defamation lawsuit … small feathers in the wind. Comment as you wish, and while we still can.

24 thoughts on “To the Knife”

  1. Everybody knows, but few will admit it, that we are about out of time and and almost surely past the point of no return.

    1) There is no integrity in the electoral system, even if there were sufficient politicians who were not end-of-dynasty leaches.

    2) There is no rule of law and the Constitution, let alone a uniform rule of law and the Constitution that covers everybody the same. The Left is above the law, the rest of us are below the law.

    3) The ruling Nomenklatura detests us and loves to show it. The mechanisms of the Leftist state enforce that.

    4) There is no Social Contract and they are literally TWANLOC. This is not going to end well, but I’m pretty sure that it will end soon.

    Subotai Bahadur

  2. As Wizard of the Saddle Forrest is supposed to have said–war to the knife, knife to the hilt, hilt to the bone. It won’t be pretty.

  3. Sgt Mom, thanks for the switch from DEI to what it really is, DIE. I’m surprised that reading has not gone viral, even dismayed that it has not.

  4. I concur with your argument, Sgt. Mom. This foolishness has gone on for far to long. I fear we may be approaching a violent backlash against the evil of the Left.

  5. What if the actions of criminal elements in cities run by D are tolerated and encouraged by the party in power just to make the city unlivable to those voters who might vote against such a party thereby causing those affected to leave and take their vote somewhere else. The city still remains and the offices of the administration and government function still are filled. The city is hollowed out but the money and power are in different hands. Read this paper. You will see this happening all over.

    https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/curley_effect.pdf

  8. When everyone who can leave the unannounced war zones has left, and then gets followed by it to their new homes, when most of those whose sole source of information is the nightly 6 PM propaganda broadcast become convinced “all is lost,” when enough of the alternatives to Government Run Children’s Indoctrination Centers become abolished, then and only then, will the masses rise up.

    It, like all such things, will be dependent upon a Preference Cascade because all greatly fear being The First, but equally, no one wants to be The Last.

    When it does happen, though, it will happen so completely and thoroughly, encompassing all and leaving nothing, that those unaware of the origins will be stunned. No quarter will be given, no method of retribution ignored, no means of resurgence allowed. It will be intense but not brief because formerly stable, but thoroughly corrupt, institutions will, if not destroyed outright, be coarsely bludgeoned into compliance with the new standards because by then the obvious failure of pleasantries, compassion or trust cannot be hidden any longer and ignorance of that fact will earn its own punishment.

    It will be extremely interesting, and many of the survivors will have fascinating stories to tell, and amazing histories to record.

  9. Everybody, be careful of what you say online. The FBI just staged a Waco style raid on a 75 year old 300 pound white guy who had posted threats again Brandon on Facebook. He walked with a cane, so could have been arrested on his way to church but the FBI decided us deplorables needed another lesson.

  10. Lennin’s brother and Moscow trust fund, French edumaked friend tried to plan a revolution. Lennin later said revolutions aren’t planned, they happen.
    I cheer on every bad, depressing news. As I feel it’s more tinder for the fire.

    Been watching and reading since Posse Comitatus in the ’80’s. Ruby Ridge, drug war, serial FBI lying….
    I really feel the Deep State knows we know what they are. The consciousness of the masses awakens more every day. And they get desperate and more clumsy every year.
    They’ll be a Boston Massacre moment.
    Wait. There will be a moment when enough snap.

  12. No evidence suggests that we’ve achieved some pinnacle of “diverse” perfection that protects the USA from external wars and immunizes us from the civil wars that plague history everywhere.

    So any fool can predict that there will one day be another civil war. Maybe there will be, as sometimes happens, a single incident that catches the popular imagination and triggers a revolt. Or maybe we’ll get a popcorn buildup, where one nut provokes a crazed reaction, which stirs up some of the less radical, building up back and forth, until even the “just leave us alone” folks start joining sides.
    (Or maybe freedoms will end up irretrievably lost or twisted. I imagine that the ancient Moloch’s demands didn’t start out terribly expansive, but people got used to them, just as half of our country has. And the names of the tools of democracy may outlast their relevance–but as long as changes are slow enough, not enough people will care.)

    When civil war comes (next year or next century), the rallying cries probably won’t be anything we’re expecting, and the people who end up leading the sides won’t be anybody we’d want in the roles. And in a country as closely divided as ours, I can’t say for sure who’d win. I’ve a fair idea of what we’d lose.

  14. Okay I’ll bite.

    First as far Lenin goes, revolutions just don’t “happen.” Revolutionary opprtunities come and go, it is up to somebody to reach out and crystallize the moment into a revolution. Lenin was opportunitistic only in terms of his timing, he had a plan and tight revolutionary vanguard able to execute it when the time was ripe. Organization, planning, timing is key.

    I would feel better about all of this talk on our side if somebody, somewhere, could tell me lessons learned about January 6th because that’s the template going forward. We spend a lot of time whining about how it was miscontrued and exploited by the Left, that it was a “mostly peaceful protest.” We have spent zero time doing an after-action analysis and applying lessons learned for the next big fight (which will be at the latest Election 2024)

    Take Jan. 6 and throw in the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot, what can we reasonably surmise? That the feds had infiltrated the various right-wing militia groups involved and not only compromised those organizations but made them their puppets. The crowd was studded with agents and agent provocateurs, Ray Epps (the pride of Queen Creek) was not the only one caught on video.

    So what happened on Jan. 6? Go back to my discussion of Lenin above. The Left and the Deep State put in the prior planning and organization. They already had template from the post-9/11 reforms on how to infiltrate and provoke groups and then exploit them for political purposes. They already had years of close cooperation and planning with one another so they could move quickly and precisely toward common objectives. They did all of this so that when they were presented with the opportunity pf an emotional crowd marching in front an iconic American building they were able to put to use all that planning and organization to work to exploit it.

    They thinned out the security presence at the Capitol, or at the very least refused additional security, and used their agents to provoke an already emotional crowd. They got everything they wanted, beautiful images of crowds battling police and looting the Speaker’s podium. Presence of right-wing groups such as Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, already penetrated and led by federal agents, to push the insurrection angle,. Finally, in the spirit of Kirov’s murder (or if you like Horst Wessel), they cynically used the death of Capitol Hill Police Officer Brian Sicknick to create the myth of the dead hero protecting the Capitol (and America) A horrible, inexcusable act by the Left that leaves me very cold inside. They got the narrative that labeled every protester (and by extension everyone who questioned the election) an insurrectionist. Doesn’t matter how true it was… for the purposes of our next steps it’s part of History.

    In short we got our butts kicked. Take the L folks and learn from it.

    So what do you think is going to happen the next time we hit the streets? We are way behind the Left not only in terms of organization and cooperation but in political sophistication . What do I mean by that? The Left understands that not only does every action have a political dimension that must be accounted for but that it has to be seen strategically as either positioning yourself (or not) for the next step. To give a very simple scenario, you get a group, bring your guns, and take over your state Capitol…. great, now what?

    Somebody mentioned the Boston Massacre. There was several years of political turmoil before the Massacre and it was several years after it before Lexington and Concord, What it did was throw the organization and planning efforts of the various Colonies through Committees of Correspondence into overdrive so that when the crisis of 1775 hit we could act with effectiveness. The arrival of the various colonial militias tn Boston didn’t just happen out of passion and patriotism, but were also the result of years of communication and relationship building.

    There’s some work emerging about next steps. N.S. Lyons has a great first of two parts outlining our current predicament with a promised second part on remedies. (https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence) If you want to get an idea of what the Left was thinking 3 years read the Transition Integrity Project (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16474/how-to-steal-an-election) and understand that was just the early outdated model.

    By all means personally prep and if you haven’t yet, what are you waiting for? However also strategically plan; understand the terrain and game out options and responses. Spend time building relationship with people in your local and governments, start with your town council or state rep. Find like-minded people in your local enforcement or National Guard, two can play at the infiltration game. If you haven’t already organize sympathetic people locally through civic-minded groups for say school curriculum protests or free speech issues and then integrate them both vertically and horizontally. You want to be a 21st Century Patriot? Create your own Committees of Correspondence so that you know who your allies are, you will be organized and have a plan when the time comes and not , when hours count, feeling whipsawed.

  16. Suppose you find one of these semi-mythical domestic terrorist organizations that’s recruiting. AT your first meeting, shake hands with the person on your right and left. There’s maybe a 90% chance you’ve now shaken hands with at least two, possibly three government agents or informants. Your “recruiter” is one, 99.9% sure.

    As Waco , Ruby Ridge and most recent incidents show, the most dangerous place in America is between a U.S. Attorney and a showy trial.

    As far as Jan. 6; your average homeless encampment has better organization and much more unified sense of purpose.

  18. I watched the entire interview. I suspect the chief was excluded from all the intelligence and planning because he became Chief in 2019 and therefore suspect. The whole thing was planned by Pelosi or her staff and the Pentagon, probably Milley. The DC Mayor, Bowser, probably had a hand in it too.

  19. I am reminded of the Spanish Civil War. The conventional narrative of the “democratically elected toppled by military Fascists” ignored a lot of details from the February 1936 elections to the military uprising in July . Such as both the military and civilians both being deeply divided between the left-wing Popular Front Republicans and the Right. It was far from civilians overwhelmingly for the left against the right wing military, as left and right were initially found in ample proportions on both sides of the civilian and military divide.Such as government police kidnapping and killing Jose Calvo Sotelo, one of the right wing leaders in Parliament. That was, in many ways, the bullet point for the uprising. Franco thought so, as he changed from the sidelines to supporting the military uprising (coup) after Calvo Sotelo’s murder.
    This may have too much detail, but here goes. From Stanley Payne’s book on the Spanish Civil War. the prrelude:

    The variety and volume of constitutional violations in Spain between February and July 1936 were without precedent in the history of parliamentary regimes. They included:
    ● The great strike wave, featuring many strikes without practical goals but seeking instead to dominate property, often accompanied by violence and destruction.
    ● Illegal seizures of property, especially in the southern provinces, sometimes legalized ex post facto. Between illegal seizures and the acceleration of the agrarian reform, the historian Manuel Tuñón de Lara has calculated that approximately 5 percent of all agrarian property changed hands within five months. The economic effects were in large part destructive, because they did not encourage modernization and productivity, but rather redistribution without capital or technical development.
    ● A wave of arson and property destruction, especially in the south.
    ● Seizure of churches and church properties in the south and east.
    ● Major economic decline, never studied in detail, with a severe stock market decline, flight of capital, and in some southern provinces the abandonment of cultivation, when costs became greater than market value. Thus several southern mayors sought to impose the “penalty of remaining” for proprietors, rather than exile.
    ● Broad censorship, with severe limitations on freedom of expression and assembly.
    ● Several thousand arbitrary arrests, culminating in the kidnapping of Calvo Sotelo.
    ● Virtual impunity for members of Popular Front parties, who were rarely arrested. Occasionally anarchists were detained because they were not members of the Popular Front.
    ● Politicization of justice through the creation of a special tribunal to censor and purge the judiciary, as well as through regulations and policies to facilitate political arrests and to place the rightist parties outside the law.
    ● Dissolution of rightist groups, beginning with the Falangists in March and the Catholic trade unions in May, and moving to the monarchist Renovación Española in July.
    ● Increasing electoral coercion, culminating in the suppression of opposition activity in the special elections of May in Cuenca and Granada.
    ● Arbitrary municipal and provincial government, with most local administration placed in the hands of appointees of the central government. Municipal elections originally scheduled for March 31, 1936 were postponed sine die.
    ● Politicization and subversion of the security forces.
    ● Growth of political violence, albeit very unequal in its extent in different parts of the country. Later historical studies arrived at a death toll from political violence between February and July ranging from a low calculation of approximately 300 to a high calculation of 444.

    And the reaction of Gil Robles, one of the two most prominent Parliament members on the Right:

    Gil Robles sharply protested such unprecedented abuses, observing that every day he read in leftist newspapers declarations that “the enemy must be smashed” or one must “practice a policy of extermination.” He continued:
    I<i. know that you are carrying out a policy of persecution, violence, and extermination against everything that is rightist. But you are profoundly mistaken: however great may be the violence, the reaction will be greater still. For everyone killed another combatant will rise up. . . . You who today are fostering violence will become the victims of it. The phrase that revolutions, like Saturn, devour their own children is commonplace, but no less true for being so. Today you are complacent, because you see an adversary fall. But the day will come when the same violence that you have unleashed will be turned against you.16

    In the first two months of the war, the left killed 6800 Roman Catholic clerics.

    And got upset when the Right responded in kind.

  21. The biggest mistake we make is to assume the good faith of the average Democrat voter. Far too many conservatives are willing to condemn the abuses of ALL the leaders of the D party but give a pass to their friends and family who vote for the abusers. “It’s not the fault of our friends and family, they have been fooled by the news media.”

    The reality is that these D voters know full well how awful their party leaders are. They simply like what they are doing. That’s why they vote for it. And they fully and completely support the nasty, vile, vicious slanders that are used relentlessly to describe conservatives. The racist, white supremacist, Nazi slanders work because the rank and file D voter hates. That hatred is the source of their feelings of moral superiority. It’s part of their identity.

    They are the enemy of the American experiment. They are the enemy of the constitution, the rule of law and the spirit of the declaration of independence. They aren’t fools.
    —–

    I agree with the sentiment that conservatives need to stop whining and start planning.

  22. Vivek Ramaswamy has said something about pardoning Hunter, not going to be picking up a lot of Trump supporters. Short of selecting Romney as his V.P., it’s hard to think of anything to kill his candidacy deader.

  23. …assume the good faith of the average Democrat voter.

    Had similar thoughts regarding most siblings. My greatest disdain for D’s comes from their absolute accepting the failure to educate that their NEA leaders seem to think is fine.
    I find failing to educate in order to have conforming and easy to manipulate voters is hateful. All those HS graduates that cannot read, write, spell, or do basic math, at the hands of D promoted teachers, is a horrible sin upon those kids. And, in short, they are but cannon fodder in the eyes of the D’s, easy to control, reliable voters at the cost of sentencing them to lives of penury and struggle.
    It is hateful to do what they do to inner-city school kids. And my sibs apparently have no problem with that. Some make fun of people who cannot balance a check book. Some make fun that they don’t have a bank account, much less a checking account, but have to go to check-cashing stores with their paychecks. And pay for the privilege. And they don’t give a fig that the reason for that is the NEA that gives so much to their campaign coffers.
    Kind of like 30 pieces of silver, if you accept the comparison.

  24. There’s a lot to admire in the Jacksonian approach, and it has its place. But even in the life of a man, let alone a nation, it has problems.

    There should be, and is, a vast gulf between situations that can truly and genuinely be settled fairly on terms of going all in on “can’t we all just get along” and situations that can only be settled by war to the knife.

    Even individuals should be able to conceive of conflict in their lives on subtler terms than that. Nations would do well to conceive of a whole range of politics and war between knuckling under and committing genocide or throwing nukes around [or both at once].

    For example, there are times and places for military doctrines like total victory and political ones like unconditional surrender. They’re not that common. Nor, as it happens, does the former always mean the latter.

    It IS, alas, a natural position for a people who are any or all of free, democratically governed, egalitarian in impulse, motivated by private life and private goals, and desiring most of all to be left alone to do these things. These virtues do create challenges.

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