Quote of the Day
once again, while you’re at the range taking tactical carbine for the 7th time,
leftists are getting civil disobedience and resistance training
and they’re going to use those tools a lot more effectively over the next 18 months than you’ll get to use your training over the next 18 years.
you have to be armed and dangerous to remain safe and credible, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that it’s the best solution to our political and social problems.
the left views violence as a dial that can be turned up or down, while the right views it as an on/off switch.
which view has been more effective over the past 10 years? which will remain more effective over the next 10?
Mike Shelby | Do Your Area Study @grayzoneintel
Tweeted on October 4, 2023
This is an interesting assertion..I can see it being true in certain timelines and not in others. But which timeline is most probable? And would it be appropriate to push events in the direction of certain timelines? And how do you know your actions will have the desired effect? It is such a complex system…
Mike would seem correct if the right/left dynamic were on equal political footing, they aren’t.
The left can use violence as a dial because they own the political/legal system. And prosecute only their enemies. (A candid look at J6, or how the Hammonds were treated, vs antifa.)
We have to think of it as a switch because we don’t have any other choice.
That, and the fact that communism always overreaches. As the border invasion/monetary dysfunction will certainly lead nowhere but violence.
And when the communists are outright calling for violence against us. White supremist, who just happen to let every other race on the planet use us as doormats, go figure.
One doesn’t need to be a psych major to know what happens when someone allows themselves to be abused. Especially by whole groups with, shall we say, low impulse control? (Rather than calling them out for violent-dumb-asses they are.) You’ll get a lot more abuse.
So, ya. About all I can do is go to the range and practice. And reload, lots of reloading. And pray. Lots of praying.
“You have to be armed and dangerous to remain safe and credible, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that it’s the best solution to our political and social problems.”
Well, I guess one could try voting again? Armed and dangerous is all we have left. And it scares the crap out of them. As it should.
I think it’s a fair assessment that progressive/socialists have been using political violence as a continuous dial, and classical liberals/conservatives treat political violence as an switch with settings “Talk, lawsuit, vote” and “Burn down to bedrock”.
And that makes sense, because the civil values of our nation consist of orderly process, abiding by honest elections, neutral arbitrators with equality before the law, and persuasiveness over compulsion. The nature result of these civic virtues is to eschew violence until violence is the only remaining option, then drop Mjolnir until peace is re-achieved and go back to a polite, high-trust social order.
When faced with dial-a-riot activism, however, civil society needs more options than TALK/NUKES. We still need a high activation energy for individual violence in support for civil order, but we need to recognize some stages:
0) Nothing: assemblies are lawful, protests should be heard, but this doesn’t mean they are assumed to be justified
I) Pistols in holsters: The cops issue tickets and arrest those exhibiting non-peaceful behavior at otherwise protected peaceful assembly and protest; individual self-defense law applies
II) Shotguns and teargas grenades: Engage specific violent persons at close range; arrest co-conspirators acting to conceal and shield violent persons, i.e. wearing Black Bloc uniform to unlawful riot.
III) Sniper rifles with thermal overlay and incapacitating grenades: Lighting a Molotov cocktail is a good way to catch a bullet, survivors will be prosecuted.
IV) A whiff of grapeshot: Belt-feds and HE grenades used on formations of enemy combatants.
The progressive/revolutionary socialists need to know that “Beyond here, there be bullets”, and that level needs to be below the point of level IV: civil war boogaloo. They engage in criminal activity allegedly in aid of political goals because there aren’t enough cops to take them all in, so risk is low and the disruption results in discontent in the regular people, so good reward for their political purposes. Meanwhile, that disruption is a great cover for more mundane criminality, which further disrupts civil order.
I am referring to the private, organized responses of individual citizen and businesses in defense of themselves, their property and their lawful activity. The continuum of force for public servants is a different thing, but the PTB should know that their failure to act is making wider private justified violence inevitable.
You have to throw the switch to measure it’s effectiveness.
Correct! And is it appropriate to push things such that the switch gets thrown when you don’t know for certain the conventional means are going to fail?
There was a lesson I learned in my hitchhiking youth. It was very difficult for me to learn:
I started out life as a pacifist. I saw violence as a desperate act of the intellectually weak. I was full of shit, and it took the work of bullies, and a great deal of time for me to learn that the best way to avoid violence was to be good at it: to talk softly, and carry a big stick.
So I thought… be good at violence, and folks will see that it’s in their interest to appeal to your interests instead. Reason and logic instead of violence…. but only *because* the shortcut of violence was likely to fail, since you’re good at it.
As I learned the martial arts, I saw that it was far easier to kill when you only meant to harm. That defense was a major advantage over offense. And I learned not to fight unless you are prepared to kill. There’s that switch. But there’s a problem here, the slippery slope.. the boiling frog:
I learned that a lot of folks learned their social skills in jail. They saw the world as a pecking order, to be established. They engage in “punking”. It starts out as “can I bum a cig off ya?”, and progresses through “got any spare change”, to “gimmee two bucks!”, all the way to “bend over or else”.
I’t just a cigarette. It’s not worth fighting over. It’s certainly not worth killing over…. but once you comply, even to the cigarette, they see you as an asset, as income, a resource, a possession, territory… an investment to be protected. The further you comply, the more invested they are. The more motivated to protect that investment.
Had you said “no” to the cigarette, the cost might have been a dirty look…. but by waiting until he says “bend over” before you resist, now you’re going to have to kill him.
I still struggle with this. The trick, of course, is to predict their behavior, but that involves knowing their objectives, their motives, their values… their world view.
Sometimes it’s better to fight early over trival crap, on *principles*, than to wait until it comes to your gate and you’re forced to “throw the switch”. But, in the moment, how can you know which case this is without the luxury of “hindsight”?
Another lead in is “Can you tell me what time it is?” The naive person pulls out their phone or looks at their watch and tells them. Then it’s off to the next thing, as you described.
Knowing that every single cell phone automatically syncs perfectly accurate time and local timezone from the cell towers, and pretty much everyone has a cell phone, even if it’s an Obama phone (technically a Bush phone), the last time a random male in the street asked me the time, I did not pull out my phone.
Instead, I looked him dead in the eyes, bladed off a little, and without looking away or referring to anything, said, “It’s about 10 minutes before 2.” He said, “thanks” and I said, “have a nice day”, still looking at him. He found somewhere else to be.
It’s not like I was particularly intimidating. I just wasn’t playing to the script.
Excellent point! I hadn’t thought that out before: Asking the time in modern times is a threat of violence, go off script:
The reason defense is such an advantage (besides the home-court advantage) is that offense must vanquish, while defense need only survive. Offense is driving the interaction, and has choice. It can call it off, stop and regroup. Defense has no choice, it’s all in, committed, free of doubt or hesitation. Offense has a plan, an agenda, defense is purely reactive. When you go off script, offense loses confidence and regroups, because it can.
Maybe to sum it up better:
If you *know* they’re not going to stop until you throw the switch, the sooner you do so, the better. So how do you “know”?
Solzhenitsyn didn’t know, and submitted to arrest, thereby losing his last chance to defend himself before being thrown in the gulag, hoping vainly to prevail by “conventional means”. He wrote “how we burned in the camps”. And wished he had fought back when he still *could*, even if it had been killing government agents with fire pokers… had he seen what was inevitable.
What he ultimately said was that he was too resistant to violence, to doing what should have been obviously called for…. that he “simply didn’t love freedom enough”.
Fido mostly beat me to it.
which view has been more effective over the past 10 years? which will remain more effective over the next 10?
For the former, the Left’s “dial” has been more effective. For the latter, it depends on whether or not the Right’s on/off switch gets thrown in the next 10 years. Then we’ll see, but I’d be willing to bet when the dust settles the Left won’t be so eager to crank that dial anytime soon.
“the left views violence as a dial that can be turned up or down, while the right views it as an on/off switch.”
I suspect we – the non-Left – will not be taken seriously until it is demonstrated that, first, “the switch” really exists and second, that we know how to use it and use it effectively.
Until that point is reached the Left will continue to “rotate the dial” to get what they want.
It was suggested that the atom bomb not be immediately used on Japanese cities but that we first demonstrate how powerful it was so that the Japanese government could see that we had a ferocious weapon that could be used on Japanese cities.
Kind of like buying another tricked-out AR-15, a case of ammo and taking that 7th carbine training class.
The American Left, financed, managed and massaged from overseas and here at home, used violence in cities in 2020 to affect and control the election; it is not unreasonable to expect the possibility of a repeat performance in 2024. Were that to occur, and were it to directly threaten the property and lives (which are inseparable) of citizens, were store owners and those physically attacked to apply those “7th carbine class skills” to the Rioting Class it would be – with full and legal justification of personal self defense and protection of property – a valid demonstration of The Switch.
Treating Antifa rioters to the downrange experience of a 3-Gun Stage would be brutal, shocking, horrible, and all the other adjectives Leftist Media could dredge up from its thesaurus. It would also, at the expense of several dozen, or maybe a hundred, bodies demonstrate that yes, The Switch exists, now you know that it really exists and we know how to use it, and will, if the threat warrants.
A hundred dead, brutal as that may be, is a great deal better than a half a country’s worth. Just like the street criminal who asks for a light, or what time is it, the Left will escalate as long as escalation works to their advantage. Stopping the escalation works.
Japan could have thrown in the towel after the March 9, 1945 devastation of Tokyo, or the nightly burning-out of other Japanese cities, or even Hiroshima, but it took both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the threat of “plenty more” for them to be convinced. Such is human nature.
Fundamental logic flaw here. Throwing the switch will wreck us even if we win. It will wreck them too but that will be cold comfort. We have to move on from trying to control the United States because that is not happening. A more realistic goal is to control America aka the Heartland. In America, we can use the dial. Step One is the Great Sort which is already happening. The dial can be used to encourage this.
Step Two is to split and recombine states with the goal of getting Big Blue Cities out of the states where our people live. Step Three is the National Divorce.
I respectfully disagree. Human nature rarely allows us to do the right thing. That being said, once we look at a real red/blue map. They don’t have a country to live in. They have a few big cities that become unlivable in a matter of days if the supply lines get clogged.
They live totally at the rural communities leave. So we just keep allowing them to use us?
Sorry, in a national divorce ain’t going to be no child support/alimony crap going on. and they can’t make it any other way.
To me, we need to use that power to limit theirs. And their governments. You either live by the constitution, and a few wholesome laws made pursuant thereof. Or you get hung, shot, deported, horsewhipped. Or some version of all four.
All our problems stem from the fact we refuse to admit to ourselves were at war with very evil people. And always will be.
And then plan/treat them accordingly.
We have about 6000 years of history that says that the cities usually win. Quantity has a quality all its own which remains true across all types of governance systems. Take out the incursions from horse nomads and other external barbarians and the score gets even more lopsided.
Agree that a fundamental problem is that “we” won’t admit that we are at war but I think you are looking at only one element of the correlation of forces.
Absolutely. But then on the other hand were always planning to fight the last war.
The first civil war worked in the norths favor because cities and factories had clear supply lines with which to feed their war machine in the south.
CWII will be a mixed bag of tribalism. With no one able to resupply or make anything.
Chinese and globohomo have paid for an American collapse/population reduction.
Those twins are proving out in debt and immigrate invasion. (Like we really need another 5 million landscapers in this country?)
History is instructive and should never be ignored. But we won’t be fighting our father’s wars.
CWII is planned for mass-murder of western civilization. And possibly a foreign mop-up op or two. And anyone trying to restart civilization is going to be a target for a long time to come. In fact anyone having anything will be.
Cities only work in civilization. In my estimation, we’re not going to have one of those soon.
That is the collapse scenario which can’t be discounted with or without CW2. Economic disruption alone (Green New Deal) could get us there.
Cities do work only in civilization but it doesn’t take much civilization. That was why I picked 6000 years. That would be Mesopotamia. All it takes really is the countryside generating enough surplus for the cities to expropriate for their own purposes.
I have to disagree as well:
The reason to “throw the switch” is that the opposition will not stop escalating until we are dead or capitulate to slavery. This “wrecking us” which you speak of is already a done deal, at least in the eyes of any who “throw the switch”.
This “heartland” strategy sounds cool, until you realize they will use the full force of a communist controlled federal occupational government to slap you down, so the “heartland” strategy is just another name for “secession”. Maybe that could work, but history points to problems there, and then there’s the issue of your communist neighbors importing chinese military bases and besieging you.
One potentially good side-effect of the woke takeover of our military is that it should make them less effective at their jobs. They might be more inclined to try acting tough, but reality should end up biting them in the ass when push comes to shove. Really didn’t want to live in “interesting times”…
I’m afraid it may not be the “woke” forces wearing the skin of the US goverment which will be our primary adversaries.
I’m expecting to fight “technicals” like we saw in Israel, and then eventually, forces of an invading foriegn goverment. (whichever one(s) is/are wearing the skin of the US government).
I would like to ask what your definition of “wreck” is.
And, does it extend to what the Leftist idealogues in Washington and elsewhere intend for Americans?
If being polite and “not wrecking” means “life in a pleasantly run government gulag” I’ll go for all the wrecking we can possibly achieve, and more.
A reasonable definition of wreck is destruction of the economy to the point where you are living in ruins, wondering how to feed your children tomorrow and where to find clean water.
If you read my whole post, I am definitely not advocating business as usual. The National Divorce is anything but.
When the left views violence like a rheostat while the right views it as a switch the left will always win as long as the right refuses to flip that switch. However…once that switch IS flipped all bets are off. As the saying goes….when black people are angry cities burn. When white people are angry countries burn. The left is aware that we are reluctant to flip that switch. They count on our innate revulsion at violence and the resulting disorder. So, they push the envelope. So far, they’ve been very successful at pushing it without suffering any consequences. Eventually we are going to have to flip that switch. Because the left will never stop pushing till they achieve an incontrovertible irrevocable victory.
The idea is to show competence at violence, as a means of detering violence. This only works if they take you seriously. Remember the guy in interviewed in Texas with an AR saying the right are pussies and won’t actually do anything…. shortly before being killed by an uber driver he raised his weapon to? To prove you’re not bluffing to those of short memory, the tree of liberty must be fertilized with the blood of patriots and tyrants from time to time.