The left has for some time been using the language "by any means necessary" It's become part of the dogma. It's permission to commit crimes against individuals, and to lose compassion for victims. "They had it coming . . . " It looks like the Ps have been in place on the left for a long time as the edifice of NGOs, violent groups like antifa and the trans were put in place, along with the corruption of the constitutional form of government (lawfare). If the right were to apply the left's current world view to the current situation it would be obvious that Pinochet was correct. By any means necessary.
They thought they would be beneficiaries of removing police and courts, and perhaps so far one could reasonably conclude they have been, as the mob ("the point of police and courts and due process is to stop the lynch mob"). But hard left progs ought to consider: "when the last law [is] down, and the [others] turned 'round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat? [...] do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?" [Man for all Seasons]
It will all be very tragic; the whirlwind is coming for all of us - those who pushed, those who conceded ground, those who have long seen it coming. We're teetering on the brink of choices that will shape what comes after. If the momentum isn't nipped in the bud, and very soon, we'll have tumbrils to the guillotine or 7Ps toward a new Constitutional convention. And the possibility exists that worse options than both can emerge..
I'm right there with you, as I understand this post. Mourning lost virtue and bracing for what's next. Praying to avoid it but eyes wide open regarding human nature. So far I have seen not one fragment of taking stock, stepping back, considering consequences, or a strategic thought on the (vocal) left. We are reaching or past the point that all sane choices become suboptimal.
Without supernatural intervention it's certainly going to be messy -- only Qs are whether it will be long or short, and just how messy.
my biggest fear is that by pulling the trigger on Charley, they will bring about exactly the sort of government they claim Trump is establishing right now. We start using 841-844 on the Democratic party as a whole, and it's not too far to getting to Pinochet for real. Power absolutely corrupts, and a one party government, even if governed by good, and well meaning people, will eventually slide over into tyranny. I have seen what modern civil war looks like, and I would really like to avoid it. Even more though, I would like to avoid a government that can arrest and disappear anyone it considers an enemy. That's a tool you can't put back in the box. Once you bring it out, it's going to get grabbed, sooner or later, by someone that you really don't want have it.
There was the "joke" in soviet Russia; "Look to the person on your left, look to your right, one of them reports to the Third Department." I repeated that joke to three friends in post perestroika Russia's Wild Wild East while we were siting, in the middle of nowhere, on the 6 foot thick ice on the Lena River. Two looked at the third one and nobody laughed.
In today's global west, I'll look left and right and think thrice about what I was going to say.
Yesterday they murdered the man that wanted to talk it out. I pray that we turn him into a martyr and unleash a million men that want to talk it out. I fear that what has happened is that a million men were just given an object lesson that the time to talk is over and it's now a time repay the enemies of the American idea with an object lesson of their own.
I have long thought that the only way out of the situation we Americans have allowed are ourselves to be put in is to go the the 4th box, the previous three repeatedly tried and failing to secure our freedom. Each day only confirms this in my mind.
Someone elsewhere reminded me of some analysis I did some years ago, about the rational for delaying the boogaloo (or avoiding it if feasible). Elsewhere had some very nice recapitulation of the argument for avoiding, so I won't repeat.
A key bit for all analysis of future American civil wars is the ACW, and particularly how on close examination it is surprising and unusual to see such an almost complete restoration of peace. If one wants the next American civil war to be relatively short, then one needs to think a bit more broadly and deeply about American culture, and understand the problem of building a victorious coalition that is able to restore peace. (The secondary issue is opposing factions, and any unity of command, and whether such can and would deliver on that part of peace following a defeat.)
'Victorious coalition' goal basically means that one of the more pressing priorities becomes not being a total fucking idiot. Americans are fickle. We don't want to be accountable for some idiot who does something that is not justified, so we distance ourselves. We also don't want to be on the losing side, and we are calculating the odds, so we are not just going to back some rando who is pissing people off with violence, and not accomplishing anything productive or just with the violence.
Against that, incentives for acting fast are pretty worthless.
One, the sides have not formed. We don't know who the other side is. Which means that both sides, or every possible faction, has an enormous amount of strategic depth. Which means that we cannot have a decisive first strike, that knocks the enemy out of the fight, and leaves them unable to continue battle.
Two, the other side can draw on people shaped by a lot of the same basic cultural influences. Which means that they are too American for us to be able to terrorize them into complete submission with the first act of horrific violence. We know things about talking other Americans into peace. The usual go to strategy of murderous savages, usually just hardens Americans in whatever resolve we started with.
So the optimal strategy was wait, do not be an idiot, and let the other guy be the fucking moron who alienates everyone. And maybe we are wrong, and will not have to fight at all.
Then almost nine years ago, Trump was elected. Which was a shock, and a surprise, and an early example of several reasons to doubt that the enemy faction has all that much real fighting power to work with. (Honest votes are a proxy for fighting power, and fighting power is the reserves that back the metaphorical political currency of a republic.)
It became increasingly certain that waiting and delay was not simply a gamble on a possible good, but the best way to obtain the most favorable outcome.
i) We might win without a fight.
ii) We can peel more people away from the enemy faction, minimizing the cost and revenge impetus for any actual necessary fighting.
2024 was actually quite shocking, all considered. I had known that Biden was a lunatic, and talking like someone who thought that this acts of terror stuff was effective strategically. I was not prepared for what may have been a calculated switching of sides by the blue collar unions, etc.
So, yes, I am an asshole, and I do want revenge, theatrics, etc. But, that defeats the victorious coalition goal, and that goal is more important than my own feelings.
Let's give them all a whiff of the grape
The left has for some time been using the language "by any means necessary" It's become part of the dogma. It's permission to commit crimes against individuals, and to lose compassion for victims. "They had it coming . . . " It looks like the Ps have been in place on the left for a long time as the edifice of NGOs, violent groups like antifa and the trans were put in place, along with the corruption of the constitutional form of government (lawfare). If the right were to apply the left's current world view to the current situation it would be obvious that Pinochet was correct. By any means necessary.
They thought they would be beneficiaries of removing police and courts, and perhaps so far one could reasonably conclude they have been, as the mob ("the point of police and courts and due process is to stop the lynch mob"). But hard left progs ought to consider: "when the last law [is] down, and the [others] turned 'round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat? [...] do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?" [Man for all Seasons]
It will all be very tragic; the whirlwind is coming for all of us - those who pushed, those who conceded ground, those who have long seen it coming. We're teetering on the brink of choices that will shape what comes after. If the momentum isn't nipped in the bud, and very soon, we'll have tumbrils to the guillotine or 7Ps toward a new Constitutional convention. And the possibility exists that worse options than both can emerge..
I'm right there with you, as I understand this post. Mourning lost virtue and bracing for what's next. Praying to avoid it but eyes wide open regarding human nature. So far I have seen not one fragment of taking stock, stepping back, considering consequences, or a strategic thought on the (vocal) left. We are reaching or past the point that all sane choices become suboptimal.
Without supernatural intervention it's certainly going to be messy -- only Qs are whether it will be long or short, and just how messy.
my biggest fear is that by pulling the trigger on Charley, they will bring about exactly the sort of government they claim Trump is establishing right now. We start using 841-844 on the Democratic party as a whole, and it's not too far to getting to Pinochet for real. Power absolutely corrupts, and a one party government, even if governed by good, and well meaning people, will eventually slide over into tyranny. I have seen what modern civil war looks like, and I would really like to avoid it. Even more though, I would like to avoid a government that can arrest and disappear anyone it considers an enemy. That's a tool you can't put back in the box. Once you bring it out, it's going to get grabbed, sooner or later, by someone that you really don't want have it.
Government is not the answer, especially as it has long been so corrupt. There are only two paths to take; one leads to hell, the other through it.
You have to play the hand you're dealt.
There was the "joke" in soviet Russia; "Look to the person on your left, look to your right, one of them reports to the Third Department." I repeated that joke to three friends in post perestroika Russia's Wild Wild East while we were siting, in the middle of nowhere, on the 6 foot thick ice on the Lena River. Two looked at the third one and nobody laughed.
In today's global west, I'll look left and right and think thrice about what I was going to say.
This is so true.
Yesterday they murdered the man that wanted to talk it out. I pray that we turn him into a martyr and unleash a million men that want to talk it out. I fear that what has happened is that a million men were just given an object lesson that the time to talk is over and it's now a time repay the enemies of the American idea with an object lesson of their own.
You cannot negotiate with those whose terms are your death.
https://youtu.be/WChcIrQz8-E?si=PXXNZdmBN3w57Pt-
I have long thought that the only way out of the situation we Americans have allowed are ourselves to be put in is to go the the 4th box, the previous three repeatedly tried and failing to secure our freedom. Each day only confirms this in my mind.
Someone elsewhere reminded me of some analysis I did some years ago, about the rational for delaying the boogaloo (or avoiding it if feasible). Elsewhere had some very nice recapitulation of the argument for avoiding, so I won't repeat.
A key bit for all analysis of future American civil wars is the ACW, and particularly how on close examination it is surprising and unusual to see such an almost complete restoration of peace. If one wants the next American civil war to be relatively short, then one needs to think a bit more broadly and deeply about American culture, and understand the problem of building a victorious coalition that is able to restore peace. (The secondary issue is opposing factions, and any unity of command, and whether such can and would deliver on that part of peace following a defeat.)
'Victorious coalition' goal basically means that one of the more pressing priorities becomes not being a total fucking idiot. Americans are fickle. We don't want to be accountable for some idiot who does something that is not justified, so we distance ourselves. We also don't want to be on the losing side, and we are calculating the odds, so we are not just going to back some rando who is pissing people off with violence, and not accomplishing anything productive or just with the violence.
Against that, incentives for acting fast are pretty worthless.
One, the sides have not formed. We don't know who the other side is. Which means that both sides, or every possible faction, has an enormous amount of strategic depth. Which means that we cannot have a decisive first strike, that knocks the enemy out of the fight, and leaves them unable to continue battle.
Two, the other side can draw on people shaped by a lot of the same basic cultural influences. Which means that they are too American for us to be able to terrorize them into complete submission with the first act of horrific violence. We know things about talking other Americans into peace. The usual go to strategy of murderous savages, usually just hardens Americans in whatever resolve we started with.
So the optimal strategy was wait, do not be an idiot, and let the other guy be the fucking moron who alienates everyone. And maybe we are wrong, and will not have to fight at all.
Then almost nine years ago, Trump was elected. Which was a shock, and a surprise, and an early example of several reasons to doubt that the enemy faction has all that much real fighting power to work with. (Honest votes are a proxy for fighting power, and fighting power is the reserves that back the metaphorical political currency of a republic.)
It became increasingly certain that waiting and delay was not simply a gamble on a possible good, but the best way to obtain the most favorable outcome.
i) We might win without a fight.
ii) We can peel more people away from the enemy faction, minimizing the cost and revenge impetus for any actual necessary fighting.
2024 was actually quite shocking, all considered. I had known that Biden was a lunatic, and talking like someone who thought that this acts of terror stuff was effective strategically. I was not prepared for what may have been a calculated switching of sides by the blue collar unions, etc.
So, yes, I am an asshole, and I do want revenge, theatrics, etc. But, that defeats the victorious coalition goal, and that goal is more important than my own feelings.