Playing the Indian Card

Showing posts with label American civil war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American civil war. Show all posts

Thursday, July 05, 2018

The Coming American Civil War


Statehouse control by party as of 2018.


There are a lot of people saying that events are moving fast, and the US is on the verge of civil war. A poll shows that a third of Americans believe this. Who would have thought this five years ago? Not I.

But it is not going to happen. Or if it does, it will be a very short war.

To begin with, the Republicans control all three branches of the federal government. So the Republicans are not going to start it. It has to be the left. And the left, conversely, has no legal federal power base, then, does it? It cannot start as a dispute over power between the executive and the legislature, as civil wars have generally started in England or France.

Nor does the left have a decent power base in the statehouses, as was used to start the last US Civil War. Republican domination at state level is also overwhelming. The only area of contiguous states where Democrats are dominant and so conceivably might vote to separate is the West Coast: California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Hawaii.

Not a large base geographically; much smaller proportionately than the Confederacy. And they could be brought to heel in southern California pretty quickly by turning off their water, which largely comes from the interior. The rest is perfect for blockade.

There is a geographically smaller Democratic pocket in the Northeast: New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont—and not New York. Any part of it could probably be sliced through to the sea by a tank column in a day. Sherman never had it so good.

So there is no territorial base from which to launch a Civil War.

Someone suggested the dissident left coast might help themselves by joining Canada. This would be a suicidal move for Canada, so surely Canada would not consent. To begin with, the US West Coast would demographically swamp Canada, so that, being a democracy, Canadians would thereby lose control of their country. Secondly, it would give the rest of the US license and justification in international law to invade and take over Canada--something they could probably do militarily in a week. Canada as a communications and transportation network is one long thin ribbon that could be snipped by a force from below the border at any point.

The big cities might rise up in revolt, as municipal governments, at the municipal level. This can cause havoc in a nation like France, with One Big City and the government in residence. It is not going to hold up in a country like te US, with many large cities and none very dominant. If New York rose, Washington could respond in force. If Washington rose, New York could respond. If both rose, and Chicago and LA too, some of the ten largest cities are pretty conservative: Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio. Even if all the biggest cities rose at once, they could not coordinate. They could not supply. Each could be cut off and picked off fairly easily in turn. Any city, sans hinterland support, is easily subject to siege. The American Revolution was won with New York firmly in British hands.

The only way it could happen, therefore, is by someone on the left first staging a coup, or a revolution. Someone would have to illegally seize the levers of power in Washington. And hope, improbably, that others accepted this and went along, obeying orders.

Most times, when that sort of thing happens, it is the military who does it. Because it must be done by force, and force is more or less a militay monopoly. If it is not the military, if, for example, it is some angry mob, the military must at least stand down and not defend the government. This is always the critical point in any revolution: the government calls in the troops, and the troops refuse to fire on the demonstrators. Or, as in the case of Tiananmen, they do show themselves prepared to fire, and the revolt is over.

In the US, the military, and the police forces as well, can be assumed to have mostly Republican sympathies—both the brass, and the average man on the ground. The left has long been hostile to the military, and to the police, and now very vocally to ICE. If one faction or one cabal of officers tried anything, they would probably soon be crushed by the larger part of the force.

Okay, it is true, in the US, the military has less of a monopoly of force than in most countries. Thanks to the Second Amendment, America has an armed citizenry, able to protect its rights in extremis.

And what are the political sympathies of most US gun owners? Who is bigger on defending the Second Amendment?

Even if the military stood down, in the US the armed citizenry would likely rush in to defend the government.

Perhaps the civil service could try to seize power—the “deep state,” with their military arm being the secret service, the FBI. There are rumblings that the FBI has gone rogue, and has been acting illegally.

Yet if it came to that, FBI agents are basically cops, and many if not most will have shared sympathies with the cops on the beat, who tend Republican. Nor,even if united against them, could the FBI or civil service stand against the actual military in any open confrontation. Any more than Beria could have stood against Zhukov in the lunge for power after Stalin died. It would be handguns against tanks and bazookas and aerial bombardment, in effect.

So no, we are not going to see a civil war.

What we are seeing, accordingly, is hysteria on the left. Because they are acting violent, calling for violence, and talking civil war despite the fact that they could not win one.

They have visibly lost touch with reality.

And it looks as though the general public has begun to notice: this emperor is exposing his nakedness, and folks are starting at last to point and snicker. There seems to be a big movement in just the last few days or weeks, on YouTube, of people videoing explaining why they are “walking away” from the left.

Soon, I suspect, it will no longer be socially acceptable to be openly leftist: it will be like publicly declaring immaturity or stupidity.



Saturday, April 22, 2017

Storm Warning






In addition to Anne Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos has now announced an intention to head back to Berkeley. He intends to hold a “Free Speech Week.”

The right is itching for a fight now.

In the meantime, the hackers at 4Chan and elsewhere on the net have been taking up the challenge of identifying some of the masked Antifa brawlers at the last Battle of Berkeley. The guy who was filmed reaching an arm out from behind a woman to hit someone on the head with a bicycle lock turns out to be a college professor. A woman next to him is a public school teacher. It turns out the mayor of Berkeley follows her Trotskyite Facebook group. A woman who was punched in the forehead is a nude model.

These are not members of the proletariat. These are often people who have their hands on the levers of power. They are all upper or upper middle class.

It is staggering arrogance and cluelessness on their part to nevertheless try to take it all to the streets and use mob force. It seems almost deliberately suicidal.

Now, inevitably, discussion on the Reddit anarchist forum is that Antifa needs to get guns and a strong leader.

Some comments:

“A shocking number of our comrades went in there with absolute no combat training. We need to set up seminars or something of the sort.”

“what is our opinion on a ‘leader’ someone to rally our troops, direct the flow and keep everything organized?”

“Having a leader could immensely improve tactical organization and can prevent the amount of disorganization that happened today. Having someone to help with the commandeering of resources could help us greatly.”

You may have heard of this notion before. It is the Fuhrer principle.

“we need more than flags and bats. We need to take notes from the John Brown Gun Club and get firearms and training.”

Great. Armed battles in the streets. It has worked so well for Syria.

At this point, and given that the local authorities are in on the fight, it seems to me that the only chance to avert civil chaos, not to say civil war, is for Trump to send in the National Guard.





Wednesday, April 19, 2017

The Battle of Berkeley






Although it does not seem to have been covered in most media, there is a lot on YouTube about the recent “Battle of Berkeley.”

Somebody held a “Free Speech” rally featuring pro-Trump speakers. Antifa showed up—you have heard of “Antifa”? They’re the guys who show up in gangs all in black, just so everyone knows they’re the bad guys, and wearing masks, so nobody knows who they are, like the KKK, and try to disrupt any right-wing events. The name is supposed to be short for “Anti-fascism,” but they seem themselves to be fascist in their thinking and tactics. Their black and red flag suggests communism and anarchism. I guess they are “anti-fascist” in the same way the Berlin Wall was “anti-fascist.” “Fascists” has long been the communist word for anyone who is not communist.

Whoever staged the rally surely expected Antifa to show up. They always show up, and especially in a place like Berkeley. There have been two previous “Battles of Berkeley,” notably the one about a month ago where a guy was shot and a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos was cancelled. But this time, it seems, the right wing was prepared. They were organized for this, they fought back, and, as they tell it, they drove the Antifa guys off.

And so it begins. The other side has now finally begun to organize. After years of provocation by Antifa and Black Lives Matter and students shouting down speakers on campus. How does this not end in a Weimar Republic, or a Northern Ireland, rival gangs fighting in the streets, situation? Each side, to defeat the other at the next confrontation, must get better organized. They must bring stronger and stronger weapons.

People are going to get killed, and politics will no longer be possible. It will be might makes right. You can see in the YouTube videos that the right wing is now excited. They have tasted blood, and it is thrilling. They want more.

It seems to me almost a certainly that the left will lose. But they brought this on. And the right wing organization that wins is almost sure to involve some elements of fascism, given fascism’s taste for violence. It will not be the religious right, nor the libertarian right, which rises through this.

I swear, I have seen this one coming since the early 1970s. And it was always the left’s doing. This was inevitable as soon as a large body of people embraced moral relativism.