“Because revolution—armed uprising—requires not only dissatisfaction but aggressiveness. A revolutionist has to be willing to fight and die—or he’s just a parlor pink. If you separate out the aggressive ones and make them the sheep dogs, the sheep will never give you trouble.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
And we know what the sheepfarmer does with dogs what attacks the herd; indeed, his other dogs may well do it for him.
As usual Rikard comes thru again. With a Heinlein quote no less.
I wish I had reflected more carefully on Heinlein when I was reading him, for fun, in college many decades ago.
The recent news that Biden has extended Fauci’s federal employment - in order to maintain his security detail - merely confirms Rikard’s (and Heinlein’s) take on our purported sheepdogs.
That said, I think the ‘sheepdogs’ are the weak link. Subverting law enforcement is the key.
And yes, subverting law enforcement is key. Instead of serving the public trust and upholding the principles of the law and the constitution, you gradually replace it with obedience to authority.
Try and do it to quickly and you'll have to do it Lenin-style, with purges. Be patient and do it slowly, and it will become self-generating.
(The same of course goes for doing the process in reverse.)
There's a reason all writers who like Heinlein point out the importance of Will have been thoroughly denigrated, age after age.
If we the people can be made to feel instinctively and intrinsically that what happens and how sciety is put together is fate, if we can be made into fatalists, then we won't know anything but how to obey: look at China and the sinosphere of civilisation. Pre-ordained fate as a foundational element of its weave of ideas; a docile population seeing obedience as a virtue and order as a goal of its own, not a tool.
I was thinking about undertaking the process in reverse. I witnessed something like that firsthand, back in the late 1980s in Afghanistan. It’s a very different state and society, of course: Not much of a state at all, or a very limited one, and a society that is explicitly tribal.
But I still think some of their lessons might be applicable here. In short, conscripts and other young men from the countryside who were serving the communist regime, or simply living and working in govt-controlled cities and towns, were a valuable source of insight and intelligence to the mujahideen who controlled the countryside.
Because Afghan society is so conservative - ‘you can take the boy out of the village, but you can’t take the village out of the boy’ - the regime’s police and intel professionals - though smart, energetic and KGB-trained - were never able to penetrate the countryside to the same degree.
In some ways our task might be easier here. Our FBI is smaller, spread much thinner than the Afghan national police, who were basically a parallel army under the Interior ministry. Also our society is not tribal and is much more open, so anyone can walk up to anyone else, start a conversation and buy him a cup of coffee or a beer. A lot of us know state or local cops, or know their family members.
I think the way to get started is to plant a seed, then keep watering it. I first started thinking about how to do it during the Covid lockdowns 2020. I was fortunate to live in a county whose sheriff refused to enforce the public-health fuehrer’s shelter-in-place order. But I had friends in Tucson who weren’t so lucky, the city and Pima county (including law enforcement) are run by progressives.
One friend owns a bar. She kept it open by buying blackout curtains, having patrons park around the block and slip in through the back. She got away with it, partly because the only time a snitch ever reported her, the cops called her first to ask if it were true! Sometimes a phone call is all it takes :) ...
I’d like to see conversations starting with street level cops, working upwards, targeting supervisors who might be susceptible:
‘You know, we’re the ones who still back the blue and don’t want y’all defunded. Shouldn’t you be a bit reluctant to enforce orders you know damn well aren’t lawful, against people who aren’t criminals? It’s not like everyone loves cops these days. Why alienate your remaining supporters? I’m not saying you should tell your boss to fuck off. I’m just saying, maybe you should tell THEM it’s a bad idea to turn good citizens against the police. In the meantime, a phone call would be nice before you show up at the door. How about 30 minutes notice? Here’s my number’
This approach can be modified for LOTS of situations. Kari Lake, in Nov 2021, said that if she were AZ governor, OSHA officials arriving to enforce vaccine mandates would be arrested by the state police!
If the governor isn’t on side - like next door in NM, where the Guv was using the state police as her personal lockdown-enforcement gestapo - the goal would be to drive a wedge between local and state cops.
The appeal to conscience can work on cops at all levels. I bet there are plenty of feds who are susceptible.
In any case, I believe FBI generally informs local agencies before they carry out raids. Wouldn’t it be cool, if the next time the feds decided to do ‘shock & awe’ on some pro-lifer, MAGA type or other dissident, they showed up to an empty house or business, because someone local had tipped off the target?
Are not military or quasi-military hierarchy founded and sustained on the discipline of biddability?
I do get the sheepdog analogy. The herd is protected by the dogs but by the command or instructions of the shepherd. The herd is kept not for its own sake and not for the sake of the protectors, although the protectors are given purpose by the vulnerability of the herd; but both herd and protectors are kept for the sake of the commander. And the commander is benevolent only to the extent to which his purpose for the herd and for the protectors is served. This disciplines the shepherd, also, with the feedback gained when a sheep is lost or a dog is ineffective; he must maintain order to match his purpose. But not too much order or order will be jeopardized.
Seems then that purpose is the key. The purpose of the herd, or the society of civilians must align with that of the shepherd.
UNLESS the shepherd is also a protector-servant of the herd whose flourishing gives purpose to both protectors and their instructor. And so the biddable must be biddable not to the commander but to the herd - the protectees - and the purpose that is the flourishing of those sheep.
This distinction may be one without a difference, but this seems the in-between zone that is so difficult to keep (a republic if you can keep it) peaceable and worth sustaining. And in that sense, again possibly a distinction sans difference, we are confronted with the elemental collectivist emphasis on The Greater Good for the prosperity of the State vs the natural law emphasis on the the wellbeing, the flourishing, of the individual and thus the society. The Commonweal.
The latter is in peril today. The watchdogs are shifting to become disciplined to serve their Commander as master rather than the herd as the entity that gives purpose to their watchdogging?
At the end of the day, my experience is that obedience is always going to be the FIRST trait required of anything resembling a soldier in any context- combat is too fluid for anything else. If I'm leading anyone into combat or a similarly dynamic situation, I want immediate, thoughtless responses to my orders or things are going to fall apart basically immediately and that probably means dead people.
The questions this raises then, are,
1) what is the SECOND trait, if any? Is it indoctrination into good principles? If there isn't, you're probably up to no good. Even if there are, are you sure the principles are good?
2) "UNLESS the shepherd is also a protector-servant of the herd whose flourishing gives purpose to both protectors and their instructor" this can stray into the way globalist elites see themselves (obligatory plug for the "Grown-Ups, Farmers and Monsters" post).
2b) ". And so the biddable must be biddable not to the commander but to the herd - the protectees - and the purpose that is the flourishing of those sheep." And what you've just identified here is the bulwark to the first one being the problem. WE are ultimately the "bosses" of the military and the police, or should be, according to our alleged values.
3) "The watchdogs are shifting to become disciplined to serve their Commander as master rather than the herd" this is arguably the case in the military/police of MOST societies; America and the rare few similar cultures are held out as exceptions to this. So the questions here are
3a) Is American exceptionalism really a thing, or did we just believe it was?
3b) If it is, is it something that exerts a constant pressure on natural human coding of hierarchy that can only be pressed on for so long before reversion?
I believe there are many more lying in wait, undetected, ready to preserve our democracy. I also believe the 2nd amendment is the only reason they exist. May I present exhibit A, China, North Korea, Iran, et al.
Romans invented the standing army when they became rich enough to afford one and had enough enemies to require one.
In America, the draft was instituted (by both sides) only during the Civil War. Until then, all American soldiers were volunteers. It seems that we gave up our freedom to end slavery?
Does a government which seems intent upon taking away all of our freedom deserve our allegiance and patriotism?
That distinction, that a nation isn't its administration, was the root of all the revolutions in Europe during the 19th century.
Ethno-nationalism demanding autonomy for itself, where one people would rule its own lands according to their own traditions by elected officials of their own kind. The same ideas that echoed throughout all the colonies around the world.
Ethno-nationalism is after all the foundation of democracy.
You're thinking of the Marian Reforms. They came about for the opposite reason of what you say: not due to enough resources but instead due to depletion of resources.
In order to have a functioning military, it had to be reformed from the ground up, which Gaius Marius managed to do, and thus also paved the way for the empire.
If you want a parallell with the US, your inital inability to wage more than small colonial skirmishes is what set about your adoption of total war-principles of how the US - military and civil soceity both - is organised.
I think that every human instinctively has ideas about fairness and justice, and nearly all of them will agree that at some point you have to fight back in order to not become slaves.
The beautiful thing about America was supposed to be that government was such a small part of life --- and focused around protecting rights -- that we'd be free to basically ignore it for the most part. But now politics swallows up everything, and that leads to political contention.
Politics (e.g. the system by which shady deals are made to cover up for the inability to what is the right and honest thing to) has definitely been a cancer to the health of America and the west in general.
But maybe more directly related to Guttermouth's post, is the idea that we buy our freedom through paying taxes (being threatened with jail if we don't tithe to the church of state) to fund a standing army, instead of arming and conditioning ourselves to defend our home, property and country from criminals and invaders. We have outsourced our security and now all we get is a cheap imitation of real strength. And unfortunately, like those cheap CCP versions of almost everything these days, it often turns out to be toxic.
Well said. One thing I often wonder, since there isn't really any analogous example today, is could we indeed create an effective national defense without a centralized military, with all the implications of modern state- scaled warfare? And what would that look like?
It was what each state's National Guard was initially designed to accomplish. The National Guard is supposed to answer first to the governor of the state, then to the U.S. President in times where they are needed for collective national defense, but only after permission for use by the governor. This is very obviously slightly different now, but the infrastructure for this is still in place to this day.
Good question. Since just about any square meter of dirt can be turned into glass from halfway around the globe, not likely in the usual sense. But if you consider that the reason for most conflicts is to occupy and then use the resources (be they of the earth or human), most invasions don't go to that extreme (or until someone doesn't get their diaper changed on time, and decides, F it!, let's see what this button does....).
So, I don't know, but I'd sure be willing to give it a try. But to do so would mean going back a hundred years and not letting "the current thing" be "a thing". Or live through a period of painful re-alignment.
There are no navy or marine elements within that configuration, no; so power projection within each domain is lacking. However, "cruise missile diplomacy" would still definitely be possible, as there are Air National Guard bomber elements present within the force structure of the National Guard Bureau. So, yes, it exists. Also, within the Army National Guard are modernized maneuver combat arms elements, comprising multiple division level assets, so offensive operations are also definitely on the table. This ain't your grandpappy's National Guard.
I was aiming more for the "centralised military" part of our hostess' comment, but sure, if the US assets in play today are simply transferred to states instead, nothing much changes.
I was aiming for that part of her point as well, and I think we may be saying the same thing, just in a different way.
Her question was "could we indeed create an effective national defense without a centralized military, with all the implications of modern state- scaled warfare? And what would that look like?" A centralized military is already what we largely have now. My point was this: we have that infrastructure already in place. People don't seem to understand that around 60% of our current Army strength is National Guard/Reserve. The Reserves are federal, but the National Guard is state level, or decentralized already. Therefore, her question is answered that with the fact that you already have the framework in place for a serious decentralized military force. It already exists in the National Guard. You would just need to add forces from the third domain (navy/marines) to round it out completely. There is no transfer to the states needed - they already belong to the states. That's how the National Guard works.
"We are deeply frightened by the idea of violence wielded by people whose values do not resemble our own; we are deeply comforted when it is wielded by people who we are made to believe are closely aligned with our values, especially if they generously offer to wield it on our behalf so that our hands and consciences remain clean."
This disturbs me.
I'm probably the freak ( believe me, others have pointed out that I should Love watching MMA boxing, etc. I don't. Not at all) in that violence on my behalf doesn't " deeply" or in any way comfort me.
I see it as an occasional needful thing,but to be avoided if possible. For myself. For others.
I excel at violence! I teach violence- as a fall back position. I wish it wasn't necessary, but having been throttled by a bf until I went unconscious,etc etc..., I know for certain that it is,indeed, needful.
But no...I dont even like that I have others who use violence so I can remain ,for the time, clean.
I can be thankful they are willing to do so,and also gut-sick that they must.
January six should be Ashli Babbit day. Celebrate your government killing an unarmed civilian that posed no threat to the government. Celebrate capitol police as the killers they evidently are. Remember Ashli...
Here is an article in a local MN news site where the writer and most of the commenters think it should be illegal to spank your kids, which is another way of saying they want the heavy hand of the State to spank the parents, no matter what trauma State involvement might bring upon the kids.
I was thinking this morning, how could you even organize a rebellion? The FBI would know about it before you had a 100 people talking about it, and might already have someone inside by the time you got to ten.
That said, the country got a taste of State power during the pandemic, and about a third of the country at least wants to use the State to "save" democracy by traumatizing the other 2/3.
This reminded me of this thought I've had that an open, tolerant society based on rhetorical persuasion as the means to influence public policy is only possible if everyone is universally committed to it within that society. otherwise, the tolerance is just an exploitable system vulnerability for an ideology of any stripe that doesn't eschew force as a tool to win power to exploit.
EDIT: I realize this isn't particularly original or insightful analysis. What can I say?
We should all be frightened then as the people in control of wielding that violence have no values or those values are nowhere near aligned with most Americans or might I say most civilized societies. No normal human would desire a global tyranny, which is where we are or headed shortly.
DISCLAIMER: This comment is not intended to encourage, suggest, or incite political violence or criminal activity of any kind. Readers are admonished to obey all laws at all times without question or exception. All unlawful acts are immoral and are universally condemned.
"Insurrection" was also the name of a (objectively terrible) Star Trek TNG movie, in which the MiC officers of a starship disobey direct orders in order to help a bunch of JC Penney Fall Catalogue models retain their property rights to an invaluable fictional resource with the potential to ameliorate large-scale suffering throughout the known universe.
In the minds of its authors, their disobedience was not only seen as just, but worth sacrificing their lives for.
DISCLAIMER: the words of this reply should not in any way be mistaken, misconstrued or misaprehended as incitement of illegal activities, or as support for such incitement, or for the inciters of incitement themselves.
All of the TNG movies sucked donkey dong. But "Insurrection" at the very least contained an interesting moral question. It was also the most porn-able of the films (e.g. "His Erection"; "Jizz Injection", etc.)
Picard *was* based. Now he's just another ball-gagged Soy Boy, getting pegged in the back of Madam Slayqueen's Dungeon O' Intersectional Script Doctors.
"Americans as a majority are okay with the concept of political violence provided it is in service of ideologies they approve of and that it won’t affect them unless they choose to be involved in it."
Make that humans.
And it is normal, right and the way it should be given tha tthat is the way we functon. The opposite, to sympathise more with xenos [insert race, kultur, whatever as desired, it all fits] than with oikos is unnatural.
Which in no way /must/ mean institutionalised hatred, supremacism, or any other such things. Historically, that can even be said to be the aberration rather than the norm discounting matters of religion. Indeed, it isn't until after the Enlightenment, the advent of industry and capitalism that antipathy towards strangers on general principle becomes any kind of norm or necessary; before that the homogenity of societies ensured cohesion. With everyone under the bourgeois, the intellectual and the owning and ruling classes (i.e. some 85% at least of the population in the 16th and 17th centuries) made of equal worth before the trinity of Reason, Industry and Capitalism and thus equally worthless, something was needed to hold society together.
And few things unites as much as fearing and hating and looking down on The Other. Which is totally unnecessary unless that Other is a clear and present danger. It's no different than disliking a neighbour because [reasons]; you don't haul off and kill them unless you are deranged or part of a mob.
And that last word gives a clue to what modern society turned the demos into: a mob. And a mob is a highly emotional beast, always on the verge of panic, always looking for something to run away from or stampeded over and trample.
Family -> Kin -> Clan -> Tribe -> People -> Nation ->Kultur -> Race (and I object most sternly against the concept of race the wayit is used once again as it was 80+ years ago; ethnicity, cultural heritage or people of origin is much better simply because it is much more correct and clear what is meant).
But since we are also thinking creatures, with effort even capable of meta-cognition, we can jump up and down that scale on an individual basis.
Perhaps, I’m misinterpreting your premise Rikard, and forgive me if I am, but from my anthropology studies of yore, evidence from burial sites shows violence among early man, long before any kind of what we could call religion, the Industrial Age or capitalism. I don’t think they were aberrations. The move from the Paleolithic age to the Neolithic Revolution (Stone Age -10,000 BC) took early man from small bands to larger Ag settlements. Found remains show violence not just the typical accidents and/or maladies during the Neolithic time period. We know the indigenous people of No. America such as the Dineh (Navajo) refer to the Anasazi (750 yrs. ago) as Ancient Enemy. And the Aborigines are extremely violent even to their own women to this day and not just due to white man’s colonialism as remains from 400 to 500 yrs. ago show death by extreme violence for some 30% of the female deaths vs. 6% for males). I know No. American native tribes were kicking the crap out of each other well before white man came down the ship plank. It got worse for rival tribes when they managed to get rifles from the French trappers. My take is tribalism (little mobs) is one of the root causes of violence. It can be exacerbated by too little resources, weird rituals (Aztecs, etc), religion, but it may just be part of our human psyche to think it’s us vs them no matter the size of the us.
No no, I know full well that tribal societies were (and are) more violent than modern ones, statistically speaking. But not all tribal societies of old were equally violent, just as all societies of today aren't. Just look up the FBI database on race and violent crime in the US for hard evidence of that.
What I was going for are these parts:
"...institutionalised hatred, supremacism, or any other such things."
Institutionalised being key. You don't really find the kind of racialism or xenophobia of the modern age, where various groups of others were ranked, among cultures of old. Foreigners were foreigners and that was that, more or less, was the more common attitude. They come here, they better behave. You go there, make sure you behave so as not to embarass your family and people, was a very common stance. Which did not mean acknowledging any equality or something equally modernistic, but back then good manners and being able to carry yourself in a respect-creating manner was more important than money is for us.
Also, this part:
"...antipathy towards strangers on general principle becomes any kind of norm or necessary; before that the homogenity of societies ensured cohesion."
The social structures of older societies grew spontaeously, they weren't conciously shaped. The very idea to do so comes during the Enlightenment, and becomes more and more refined and codified; the French Revolution and then the American one followed by the democratic-nationalistic revolutions in Europe and the Russian revolution all are products of this. Something around which we can unite and gather must be created because all the old institutions have either been worn away, purposefully demolished and replaced or are so corrupt all that's left is said corruption (the catholic church being the prime example - plenary indulgences, simony, usury, and so on).
The US Bill of Rights is also a crystal clear example of that. The writers of it are the modern equivalent of the Homo Novus of anitquity, who armed with reason draw up the lines for a soceity based on said reason (erroneously thinking reason objctive or purely rational/logical) instead of one based on tradition.
And the horrors of communism hardly needs elaborating upon: for communism to work, all humans must be made communists in spirit. Therefore, everything else must be eradicated. The triumph of reason.
So the point was and is that by demolishing our natural foundations of societal organisation (for whatever moralist good reason, and limited by the speed/reach of communication), we make a need for hating the Other institutionalised in how our societies are constructed.
Tangent:
And now, when the rulers insist hating strangers or other races (see initial post for more terms), the only Other left to hate are those the authority controlling communications ponts at: The Enemy Within. The splitters, dissenters, objectionists, populists, radicals, whatever label serves purpose. It's an old trick - anytime [group] is powerless against actual external enemies [group] turns upon their own weakest members, becoming ever more intolerant, supremacist and dogmatically intolerant:
Witness how the FBI and the police go after parents not wanting grooming and CRT in kindergarten. Or as I have witnessed many a-time; a political radical group disintergrating into infighting over petty details since the task ("Destroy ________!") is too big, too daunting. (There's a good reason the training you get when you go above ground level as a professional activist includes instructions how to narrow focus and work locally, and how to tie this together with the makro-scale issues. Actual knowledge isn't needed. Look at Antifa and Xtinction Rebellion for real-life examples.)
[Idea] is decreed objectively good, therefore it produces good consequences, therefore it is just and moral. Therefore anyone objecting is The Enemy. Therefore any acton against them is justified. It's the equivalent of 10 Go To 20; 20 Go To 10, really. A self-affirming recursive loop.
It is possible to not get stuck in the loop. Sadly, there's often more personal immediate and material gain to get/stay stuck in.
Ah, thanks for the fleshing out. Your premise makes sense.
Nothing seems to be organic these days. A lot of plotting, planning, scripting and calculating (perhaps due to living in the techno age of video games, movies, 24/7 bombardment on social media, etc ? .) seems to drive not just world events but local politics & even down to personal decisions. People in first world countries now have a lot of time on their hands more so than those living centuries before who were occupied with the daily grind of putting food on the table, not freezing to death. and not pissing off the ruler. This abundance of time allows for the more “consciously shaping” of what is going on around us to advance specific agendas, and the ends justify the means. Alinsky was brilliant in reducing the ways and means to a few rules that are easy to follow.
Very thought-provoking post, Guttermouth. The devil is in the details, however, and I'm an advocate for details. While violence was used to prevent the British from imposing their currency law on the colonies, the real revolution had been when the colonies, led by a young Ben Franklin, had issued their own currencies. That was, in his words, the true cause of the war not a meager tax on tea.
In the same way, the real war was won again by the British bankers and merchants in the bloodless coup of the Constitution, which enshrined slavery and made sure the states could never again issue their own currency--that being the express purpose, to quell any future Shay's Rebellion.
So I think our only lasting defense is hitting them where it hurts--in the pocket or a little east-west. I'm not talking about the morality of violence, with which I agree with you and the Zapatistas and the Maoists. I'm talking about practicality. If we got serious about the economics, we could change things in a way that no violence or voting ever will. Here's my episode on the Constitutional Coup, and the recent one looking at China's involvement in the Great Reset, for which that new info is very interesting. Hunter's connections to the Chinese oligarch are also interesting.
I cannot stop you from interpreting the intent of the disclaimer in any way you see fit, so long as you understand that I am not responsible for any interpretations that lead you to engage in unlawful activity.
Law is not inherently moral; morality > legality. I've no intention to go out of my way to break laws, but if the law is stupid and immoral, I'll be damned if I'm going to follow it.
When it comes to force, I’m of the pacifist notion mostly. The catch there being exceptions for direct threats to me, mine, and our property.
Beyond that, I absolutely condemn it in the most vitriolic terms possible. Especially if it’s supposedly done on my behalf. Fuck you people straight to hell.
That said, there’s a time and place to go Pastor Bonhoeffer and blow up Hitler. It’s a tricky thing though, cause you can really only try it once.
Who were TPTB , being 'attacked' on 1.6? I mean, the demonstrators certainly weren't attacking the sitting President. They weren't even attacking any elected official. All they appear to have done is tussled with a few capitol cops, and trespass (and in a couple of instances, died at the hands/feet/bangstick of same capitol cops). And once the demonstrators were co-existing in the same building-space as any elected official, did they even instigate any violence (other than that Sullivan guy and his crowd, who were plants)?
How would that be 'insurrection'? I don't get it, but then, I'm simple.
'Political violence' was widely allowed, and in some cases encouraged and materially supported by members of congress, for an extended period of time prior to 1.6. But I guess that was 'different'.
I think you might be unfamiliar with how the Army and Air National Guard in America function. There is no re-organization necessary (where you imply that the military would be placed under state control). Each state has its own National Guard Bureau, wherein there are Army and Air Force elements who answer to the governor. These are mobilized under Title 10 under federal active service when the DoD deems it necessary (with the consent of the state governor).
I'm not arguing your other points, insofar as the dangers of how Sweden has handled their National defense in the past. I'm simply stating that the U.S. already has what Mrs. Guttermouth herself was wondering about in her original question. That framework already exists within the U.S. DoD.
I'm not downplaying the quality of our soldiery (airmen, sailors, et c), they are very good at what they do, but the stupidity and lack of experience among our political caste, a problem I believe to be present in the US too - the higher one goes, the more politics come into play in appointments rather than actual experience and professional knowledge (or esprit de corps for that matter).
I'm trying to rember what professor Samuel Huntington wrote about the dangers of US adventurism in his "The Clash of Civilisations"; if I recall correctly he was very much opposed to the role of world-police and bringer of liberal democracy to other nations, claiming it would eventually ruin the US both financially and morally.
The great prophet observed, “We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us".
I suspect the decades long campaign to emasculate 'western liberal democracy' has significantly reduced the numbers of those "rough men".
There are still plenty of 'rough' 'men'. They've simply been pointed in a direction we find less comforting.
The ones who are biddable are valued commodities. The ones who are not biddable are being dealt with.
As the man said:
“Because revolution—armed uprising—requires not only dissatisfaction but aggressiveness. A revolutionist has to be willing to fight and die—or he’s just a parlor pink. If you separate out the aggressive ones and make them the sheep dogs, the sheep will never give you trouble.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
And we know what the sheepfarmer does with dogs what attacks the herd; indeed, his other dogs may well do it for him.
As usual Rikard comes thru again. With a Heinlein quote no less.
I wish I had reflected more carefully on Heinlein when I was reading him, for fun, in college many decades ago.
The recent news that Biden has extended Fauci’s federal employment - in order to maintain his security detail - merely confirms Rikard’s (and Heinlein’s) take on our purported sheepdogs.
That said, I think the ‘sheepdogs’ are the weak link. Subverting law enforcement is the key.
Thank you.
And yes, subverting law enforcement is key. Instead of serving the public trust and upholding the principles of the law and the constitution, you gradually replace it with obedience to authority.
Try and do it to quickly and you'll have to do it Lenin-style, with purges. Be patient and do it slowly, and it will become self-generating.
(The same of course goes for doing the process in reverse.)
There's a reason all writers who like Heinlein point out the importance of Will have been thoroughly denigrated, age after age.
If we the people can be made to feel instinctively and intrinsically that what happens and how sciety is put together is fate, if we can be made into fatalists, then we won't know anything but how to obey: look at China and the sinosphere of civilisation. Pre-ordained fate as a foundational element of its weave of ideas; a docile population seeing obedience as a virtue and order as a goal of its own, not a tool.
I was thinking about undertaking the process in reverse. I witnessed something like that firsthand, back in the late 1980s in Afghanistan. It’s a very different state and society, of course: Not much of a state at all, or a very limited one, and a society that is explicitly tribal.
But I still think some of their lessons might be applicable here. In short, conscripts and other young men from the countryside who were serving the communist regime, or simply living and working in govt-controlled cities and towns, were a valuable source of insight and intelligence to the mujahideen who controlled the countryside.
Because Afghan society is so conservative - ‘you can take the boy out of the village, but you can’t take the village out of the boy’ - the regime’s police and intel professionals - though smart, energetic and KGB-trained - were never able to penetrate the countryside to the same degree.
In some ways our task might be easier here. Our FBI is smaller, spread much thinner than the Afghan national police, who were basically a parallel army under the Interior ministry. Also our society is not tribal and is much more open, so anyone can walk up to anyone else, start a conversation and buy him a cup of coffee or a beer. A lot of us know state or local cops, or know their family members.
I think the way to get started is to plant a seed, then keep watering it. I first started thinking about how to do it during the Covid lockdowns 2020. I was fortunate to live in a county whose sheriff refused to enforce the public-health fuehrer’s shelter-in-place order. But I had friends in Tucson who weren’t so lucky, the city and Pima county (including law enforcement) are run by progressives.
One friend owns a bar. She kept it open by buying blackout curtains, having patrons park around the block and slip in through the back. She got away with it, partly because the only time a snitch ever reported her, the cops called her first to ask if it were true! Sometimes a phone call is all it takes :) ...
I’d like to see conversations starting with street level cops, working upwards, targeting supervisors who might be susceptible:
‘You know, we’re the ones who still back the blue and don’t want y’all defunded. Shouldn’t you be a bit reluctant to enforce orders you know damn well aren’t lawful, against people who aren’t criminals? It’s not like everyone loves cops these days. Why alienate your remaining supporters? I’m not saying you should tell your boss to fuck off. I’m just saying, maybe you should tell THEM it’s a bad idea to turn good citizens against the police. In the meantime, a phone call would be nice before you show up at the door. How about 30 minutes notice? Here’s my number’
This approach can be modified for LOTS of situations. Kari Lake, in Nov 2021, said that if she were AZ governor, OSHA officials arriving to enforce vaccine mandates would be arrested by the state police!
If the governor isn’t on side - like next door in NM, where the Guv was using the state police as her personal lockdown-enforcement gestapo - the goal would be to drive a wedge between local and state cops.
The appeal to conscience can work on cops at all levels. I bet there are plenty of feds who are susceptible.
In any case, I believe FBI generally informs local agencies before they carry out raids. Wouldn’t it be cool, if the next time the feds decided to do ‘shock & awe’ on some pro-lifer, MAGA type or other dissident, they showed up to an empty house or business, because someone local had tipped off the target?
Are not military or quasi-military hierarchy founded and sustained on the discipline of biddability?
I do get the sheepdog analogy. The herd is protected by the dogs but by the command or instructions of the shepherd. The herd is kept not for its own sake and not for the sake of the protectors, although the protectors are given purpose by the vulnerability of the herd; but both herd and protectors are kept for the sake of the commander. And the commander is benevolent only to the extent to which his purpose for the herd and for the protectors is served. This disciplines the shepherd, also, with the feedback gained when a sheep is lost or a dog is ineffective; he must maintain order to match his purpose. But not too much order or order will be jeopardized.
Seems then that purpose is the key. The purpose of the herd, or the society of civilians must align with that of the shepherd.
UNLESS the shepherd is also a protector-servant of the herd whose flourishing gives purpose to both protectors and their instructor. And so the biddable must be biddable not to the commander but to the herd - the protectees - and the purpose that is the flourishing of those sheep.
This distinction may be one without a difference, but this seems the in-between zone that is so difficult to keep (a republic if you can keep it) peaceable and worth sustaining. And in that sense, again possibly a distinction sans difference, we are confronted with the elemental collectivist emphasis on The Greater Good for the prosperity of the State vs the natural law emphasis on the the wellbeing, the flourishing, of the individual and thus the society. The Commonweal.
The latter is in peril today. The watchdogs are shifting to become disciplined to serve their Commander as master rather than the herd as the entity that gives purpose to their watchdogging?
Absolutely fucking fascinating comment.
At the end of the day, my experience is that obedience is always going to be the FIRST trait required of anything resembling a soldier in any context- combat is too fluid for anything else. If I'm leading anyone into combat or a similarly dynamic situation, I want immediate, thoughtless responses to my orders or things are going to fall apart basically immediately and that probably means dead people.
The questions this raises then, are,
1) what is the SECOND trait, if any? Is it indoctrination into good principles? If there isn't, you're probably up to no good. Even if there are, are you sure the principles are good?
2) "UNLESS the shepherd is also a protector-servant of the herd whose flourishing gives purpose to both protectors and their instructor" this can stray into the way globalist elites see themselves (obligatory plug for the "Grown-Ups, Farmers and Monsters" post).
2b) ". And so the biddable must be biddable not to the commander but to the herd - the protectees - and the purpose that is the flourishing of those sheep." And what you've just identified here is the bulwark to the first one being the problem. WE are ultimately the "bosses" of the military and the police, or should be, according to our alleged values.
3) "The watchdogs are shifting to become disciplined to serve their Commander as master rather than the herd" this is arguably the case in the military/police of MOST societies; America and the rare few similar cultures are held out as exceptions to this. So the questions here are
3a) Is American exceptionalism really a thing, or did we just believe it was?
3b) If it is, is it something that exerts a constant pressure on natural human coding of hierarchy that can only be pressed on for so long before reversion?
alleged values ...
It's a fair skepticism at this point, wouldn't you say?
Indeed. And they're likely to apply more rigorous methods, if they can batten down the alterna media hatches.
That and making sure all of us 'things' are sufficiently plugged into the net thereof.
I believe there are many more lying in wait, undetected, ready to preserve our democracy. I also believe the 2nd amendment is the only reason they exist. May I present exhibit A, China, North Korea, Iran, et al.
You are more correct than you may know.
When freedom comes, it’ll come from the shadows.
Obligatory plug for Leonard Cohen's "The Partisan"
God I hope you are right!
I’ve never liked that quote. If you rely on rough men for your protection, you’re not free.
You’re a hostage.
Well, we didn't always have a standing army.
I believe this is historical fact:
Romans invented the standing army when they became rich enough to afford one and had enough enemies to require one.
In America, the draft was instituted (by both sides) only during the Civil War. Until then, all American soldiers were volunteers. It seems that we gave up our freedom to end slavery?
Does a government which seems intent upon taking away all of our freedom deserve our allegiance and patriotism?
A government, no. But the sovereignty of a country we love does.
My allegiance and patriotism belong to America, not its federal government.
That distinction, that a nation isn't its administration, was the root of all the revolutions in Europe during the 19th century.
Ethno-nationalism demanding autonomy for itself, where one people would rule its own lands according to their own traditions by elected officials of their own kind. The same ideas that echoed throughout all the colonies around the world.
Ethno-nationalism is after all the foundation of democracy.
You're thinking of the Marian Reforms. They came about for the opposite reason of what you say: not due to enough resources but instead due to depletion of resources.
In order to have a functioning military, it had to be reformed from the ground up, which Gaius Marius managed to do, and thus also paved the way for the empire.
If you want a parallell with the US, your inital inability to wage more than small colonial skirmishes is what set about your adoption of total war-principles of how the US - military and civil soceity both - is organised.
If you rely on the 'genteel' you're dead.
Rely on your own road, genteel, rough, or otherwise.
I think that every human instinctively has ideas about fairness and justice, and nearly all of them will agree that at some point you have to fight back in order to not become slaves.
The beautiful thing about America was supposed to be that government was such a small part of life --- and focused around protecting rights -- that we'd be free to basically ignore it for the most part. But now politics swallows up everything, and that leads to political contention.
Politics (e.g. the system by which shady deals are made to cover up for the inability to what is the right and honest thing to) has definitely been a cancer to the health of America and the west in general.
But maybe more directly related to Guttermouth's post, is the idea that we buy our freedom through paying taxes (being threatened with jail if we don't tithe to the church of state) to fund a standing army, instead of arming and conditioning ourselves to defend our home, property and country from criminals and invaders. We have outsourced our security and now all we get is a cheap imitation of real strength. And unfortunately, like those cheap CCP versions of almost everything these days, it often turns out to be toxic.
Well said. One thing I often wonder, since there isn't really any analogous example today, is could we indeed create an effective national defense without a centralized military, with all the implications of modern state- scaled warfare? And what would that look like?
It was what each state's National Guard was initially designed to accomplish. The National Guard is supposed to answer first to the governor of the state, then to the U.S. President in times where they are needed for collective national defense, but only after permission for use by the governor. This is very obviously slightly different now, but the infrastructure for this is still in place to this day.
Good question. Since just about any square meter of dirt can be turned into glass from halfway around the globe, not likely in the usual sense. But if you consider that the reason for most conflicts is to occupy and then use the resources (be they of the earth or human), most invasions don't go to that extreme (or until someone doesn't get their diaper changed on time, and decides, F it!, let's see what this button does....).
So, I don't know, but I'd sure be willing to give it a try. But to do so would mean going back a hundred years and not letting "the current thing" be "a thing". Or live through a period of painful re-alignment.
National defence yes. Power projection and cruise missile-diplomacy abroad, no.
There are no navy or marine elements within that configuration, no; so power projection within each domain is lacking. However, "cruise missile diplomacy" would still definitely be possible, as there are Air National Guard bomber elements present within the force structure of the National Guard Bureau. So, yes, it exists. Also, within the Army National Guard are modernized maneuver combat arms elements, comprising multiple division level assets, so offensive operations are also definitely on the table. This ain't your grandpappy's National Guard.
I was aiming more for the "centralised military" part of our hostess' comment, but sure, if the US assets in play today are simply transferred to states instead, nothing much changes.
I was aiming for that part of her point as well, and I think we may be saying the same thing, just in a different way.
Her question was "could we indeed create an effective national defense without a centralized military, with all the implications of modern state- scaled warfare? And what would that look like?" A centralized military is already what we largely have now. My point was this: we have that infrastructure already in place. People don't seem to understand that around 60% of our current Army strength is National Guard/Reserve. The Reserves are federal, but the National Guard is state level, or decentralized already. Therefore, her question is answered that with the fact that you already have the framework in place for a serious decentralized military force. It already exists in the National Guard. You would just need to add forces from the third domain (navy/marines) to round it out completely. There is no transfer to the states needed - they already belong to the states. That's how the National Guard works.
I note that you use the past tense, as in, "WAS supposed to be". Which may be one of the saddest epitaphs for a formerly great nation.
I took that to mean that the moment of that conception was a past event, but I take your meaning.
"We are deeply frightened by the idea of violence wielded by people whose values do not resemble our own; we are deeply comforted when it is wielded by people who we are made to believe are closely aligned with our values, especially if they generously offer to wield it on our behalf so that our hands and consciences remain clean."
This disturbs me.
I'm probably the freak ( believe me, others have pointed out that I should Love watching MMA boxing, etc. I don't. Not at all) in that violence on my behalf doesn't " deeply" or in any way comfort me.
I see it as an occasional needful thing,but to be avoided if possible. For myself. For others.
I excel at violence! I teach violence- as a fall back position. I wish it wasn't necessary, but having been throttled by a bf until I went unconscious,etc etc..., I know for certain that it is,indeed, needful.
But no...I dont even like that I have others who use violence so I can remain ,for the time, clean.
I can be thankful they are willing to do so,and also gut-sick that they must.
Hopefully that made sense. 😐
You are an example of someone willing and able to employ violence to protect yourself rather than outsource it.
That you are able to do so doesn't comfort you? I'm not referring to taking pleasure in the act of exercising it.
January six should be Ashli Babbit day. Celebrate your government killing an unarmed civilian that posed no threat to the government. Celebrate capitol police as the killers they evidently are. Remember Ashli...
Here is an article in a local MN news site where the writer and most of the commenters think it should be illegal to spank your kids, which is another way of saying they want the heavy hand of the State to spank the parents, no matter what trauma State involvement might bring upon the kids.
https://www.minnpost.com/mental-health-addiction/2023/01/more-harm-than-good-book-details-spankings-negative-impact-on-children-and-parents/
I was thinking this morning, how could you even organize a rebellion? The FBI would know about it before you had a 100 people talking about it, and might already have someone inside by the time you got to ten.
That said, the country got a taste of State power during the pandemic, and about a third of the country at least wants to use the State to "save" democracy by traumatizing the other 2/3.
This reminded me of this thought I've had that an open, tolerant society based on rhetorical persuasion as the means to influence public policy is only possible if everyone is universally committed to it within that society. otherwise, the tolerance is just an exploitable system vulnerability for an ideology of any stripe that doesn't eschew force as a tool to win power to exploit.
EDIT: I realize this isn't particularly original or insightful analysis. What can I say?
We should all be frightened then as the people in control of wielding that violence have no values or those values are nowhere near aligned with most Americans or might I say most civilized societies. No normal human would desire a global tyranny, which is where we are or headed shortly.
Everyone has values. It’s a mistake to think otherwise.
Those in power value their own power. And so they seek more as power demands. Nothing else matters.
But it can be fought.
DISCLAIMER: This comment is not intended to encourage, suggest, or incite political violence or criminal activity of any kind. Readers are admonished to obey all laws at all times without question or exception. All unlawful acts are immoral and are universally condemned.
"Insurrection" was also the name of a (objectively terrible) Star Trek TNG movie, in which the MiC officers of a starship disobey direct orders in order to help a bunch of JC Penney Fall Catalogue models retain their property rights to an invaluable fictional resource with the potential to ameliorate large-scale suffering throughout the known universe.
In the minds of its authors, their disobedience was not only seen as just, but worth sacrificing their lives for.
Discuss, plebeains.
DISCLAIMER: this reply is not intended to connote approval or assent to any unlawful content expressed in the previous comment.
I actually rather liked the story even if I hated the movie.
DISCLAIMER: the words of this reply should not in any way be mistaken, misconstrued or misaprehended as incitement of illegal activities, or as support for such incitement, or for the inciters of incitement themselves.
All of the TNG movies sucked donkey dong. But "Insurrection" at the very least contained an interesting moral question. It was also the most porn-able of the films (e.g. "His Erection"; "Jizz Injection", etc.)
I'm very pleased we were able to work a dong into the discussion at this early hour.
I am generally pleased to work a dong into anything at that hour.
Picard is based. I expected nothing less from him and the crew.
Picard *was* based. Now he's just another ball-gagged Soy Boy, getting pegged in the back of Madam Slayqueen's Dungeon O' Intersectional Script Doctors.
I haven’t seen Picard Season 2. Lol.
"Americans as a majority are okay with the concept of political violence provided it is in service of ideologies they approve of and that it won’t affect them unless they choose to be involved in it."
Make that humans.
And it is normal, right and the way it should be given tha tthat is the way we functon. The opposite, to sympathise more with xenos [insert race, kultur, whatever as desired, it all fits] than with oikos is unnatural.
Which in no way /must/ mean institutionalised hatred, supremacism, or any other such things. Historically, that can even be said to be the aberration rather than the norm discounting matters of religion. Indeed, it isn't until after the Enlightenment, the advent of industry and capitalism that antipathy towards strangers on general principle becomes any kind of norm or necessary; before that the homogenity of societies ensured cohesion. With everyone under the bourgeois, the intellectual and the owning and ruling classes (i.e. some 85% at least of the population in the 16th and 17th centuries) made of equal worth before the trinity of Reason, Industry and Capitalism and thus equally worthless, something was needed to hold society together.
And few things unites as much as fearing and hating and looking down on The Other. Which is totally unnecessary unless that Other is a clear and present danger. It's no different than disliking a neighbour because [reasons]; you don't haul off and kill them unless you are deranged or part of a mob.
And that last word gives a clue to what modern society turned the demos into: a mob. And a mob is a highly emotional beast, always on the verge of panic, always looking for something to run away from or stampeded over and trample.
Family -> Kin -> Clan -> Tribe -> People -> Nation ->Kultur -> Race (and I object most sternly against the concept of race the wayit is used once again as it was 80+ years ago; ethnicity, cultural heritage or people of origin is much better simply because it is much more correct and clear what is meant).
But since we are also thinking creatures, with effort even capable of meta-cognition, we can jump up and down that scale on an individual basis.
Perhaps, I’m misinterpreting your premise Rikard, and forgive me if I am, but from my anthropology studies of yore, evidence from burial sites shows violence among early man, long before any kind of what we could call religion, the Industrial Age or capitalism. I don’t think they were aberrations. The move from the Paleolithic age to the Neolithic Revolution (Stone Age -10,000 BC) took early man from small bands to larger Ag settlements. Found remains show violence not just the typical accidents and/or maladies during the Neolithic time period. We know the indigenous people of No. America such as the Dineh (Navajo) refer to the Anasazi (750 yrs. ago) as Ancient Enemy. And the Aborigines are extremely violent even to their own women to this day and not just due to white man’s colonialism as remains from 400 to 500 yrs. ago show death by extreme violence for some 30% of the female deaths vs. 6% for males). I know No. American native tribes were kicking the crap out of each other well before white man came down the ship plank. It got worse for rival tribes when they managed to get rifles from the French trappers. My take is tribalism (little mobs) is one of the root causes of violence. It can be exacerbated by too little resources, weird rituals (Aztecs, etc), religion, but it may just be part of our human psyche to think it’s us vs them no matter the size of the us.
No no, I know full well that tribal societies were (and are) more violent than modern ones, statistically speaking. But not all tribal societies of old were equally violent, just as all societies of today aren't. Just look up the FBI database on race and violent crime in the US for hard evidence of that.
What I was going for are these parts:
"...institutionalised hatred, supremacism, or any other such things."
Institutionalised being key. You don't really find the kind of racialism or xenophobia of the modern age, where various groups of others were ranked, among cultures of old. Foreigners were foreigners and that was that, more or less, was the more common attitude. They come here, they better behave. You go there, make sure you behave so as not to embarass your family and people, was a very common stance. Which did not mean acknowledging any equality or something equally modernistic, but back then good manners and being able to carry yourself in a respect-creating manner was more important than money is for us.
Also, this part:
"...antipathy towards strangers on general principle becomes any kind of norm or necessary; before that the homogenity of societies ensured cohesion."
The social structures of older societies grew spontaeously, they weren't conciously shaped. The very idea to do so comes during the Enlightenment, and becomes more and more refined and codified; the French Revolution and then the American one followed by the democratic-nationalistic revolutions in Europe and the Russian revolution all are products of this. Something around which we can unite and gather must be created because all the old institutions have either been worn away, purposefully demolished and replaced or are so corrupt all that's left is said corruption (the catholic church being the prime example - plenary indulgences, simony, usury, and so on).
The US Bill of Rights is also a crystal clear example of that. The writers of it are the modern equivalent of the Homo Novus of anitquity, who armed with reason draw up the lines for a soceity based on said reason (erroneously thinking reason objctive or purely rational/logical) instead of one based on tradition.
And the horrors of communism hardly needs elaborating upon: for communism to work, all humans must be made communists in spirit. Therefore, everything else must be eradicated. The triumph of reason.
So the point was and is that by demolishing our natural foundations of societal organisation (for whatever moralist good reason, and limited by the speed/reach of communication), we make a need for hating the Other institutionalised in how our societies are constructed.
Tangent:
And now, when the rulers insist hating strangers or other races (see initial post for more terms), the only Other left to hate are those the authority controlling communications ponts at: The Enemy Within. The splitters, dissenters, objectionists, populists, radicals, whatever label serves purpose. It's an old trick - anytime [group] is powerless against actual external enemies [group] turns upon their own weakest members, becoming ever more intolerant, supremacist and dogmatically intolerant:
Witness how the FBI and the police go after parents not wanting grooming and CRT in kindergarten. Or as I have witnessed many a-time; a political radical group disintergrating into infighting over petty details since the task ("Destroy ________!") is too big, too daunting. (There's a good reason the training you get when you go above ground level as a professional activist includes instructions how to narrow focus and work locally, and how to tie this together with the makro-scale issues. Actual knowledge isn't needed. Look at Antifa and Xtinction Rebellion for real-life examples.)
[Idea] is decreed objectively good, therefore it produces good consequences, therefore it is just and moral. Therefore anyone objecting is The Enemy. Therefore any acton against them is justified. It's the equivalent of 10 Go To 20; 20 Go To 10, really. A self-affirming recursive loop.
It is possible to not get stuck in the loop. Sadly, there's often more personal immediate and material gain to get/stay stuck in.
/tangent.
Ah, thanks for the fleshing out. Your premise makes sense.
Nothing seems to be organic these days. A lot of plotting, planning, scripting and calculating (perhaps due to living in the techno age of video games, movies, 24/7 bombardment on social media, etc ? .) seems to drive not just world events but local politics & even down to personal decisions. People in first world countries now have a lot of time on their hands more so than those living centuries before who were occupied with the daily grind of putting food on the table, not freezing to death. and not pissing off the ruler. This abundance of time allows for the more “consciously shaping” of what is going on around us to advance specific agendas, and the ends justify the means. Alinsky was brilliant in reducing the ways and means to a few rules that are easy to follow.
"especially if they generously offer to wield it on our behalf so that our hands and consciences remain clean."
and our bank accounts untouched
Not untouched, per se, just not charged directly. They bundle the cost in with Pakistani gender studies and NATO club dues.
Maybe we should remember January 6th in the same way Guy Fawkes is remembered for November 5th?
Magnificent.
I love it when we can do this in one sentence.
Very thought-provoking post, Guttermouth. The devil is in the details, however, and I'm an advocate for details. While violence was used to prevent the British from imposing their currency law on the colonies, the real revolution had been when the colonies, led by a young Ben Franklin, had issued their own currencies. That was, in his words, the true cause of the war not a meager tax on tea.
In the same way, the real war was won again by the British bankers and merchants in the bloodless coup of the Constitution, which enshrined slavery and made sure the states could never again issue their own currency--that being the express purpose, to quell any future Shay's Rebellion.
So I think our only lasting defense is hitting them where it hurts--in the pocket or a little east-west. I'm not talking about the morality of violence, with which I agree with you and the Zapatistas and the Maoists. I'm talking about practicality. If we got serious about the economics, we could change things in a way that no violence or voting ever will. Here's my episode on the Constitutional Coup, and the recent one looking at China's involvement in the Great Reset, for which that new info is very interesting. Hunter's connections to the Chinese oligarch are also interesting.
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-constitutional-convention-coup
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-reset-and-ukraine-same-or-different
Mostly liked this, but for part of the disclaimer.
I will question the law at all times, and obey it only so long as doing so does not require me to discard my personal and/or religious moral code.
I cannot stop you from interpreting the intent of the disclaimer in any way you see fit, so long as you understand that I am not responsible for any interpretations that lead you to engage in unlawful activity.
Law is not inherently moral; morality > legality. I've no intention to go out of my way to break laws, but if the law is stupid and immoral, I'll be damned if I'm going to follow it.
Perhaps there are multiple ways to interpret the presentation of the statement in question.
OK I don't usually talk like that, too good a chance to over-hammer a point though.
heh I crack myself up some days
When it comes to force, I’m of the pacifist notion mostly. The catch there being exceptions for direct threats to me, mine, and our property.
Beyond that, I absolutely condemn it in the most vitriolic terms possible. Especially if it’s supposedly done on my behalf. Fuck you people straight to hell.
That said, there’s a time and place to go Pastor Bonhoeffer and blow up Hitler. It’s a tricky thing though, cause you can really only try it once.
Who were TPTB , being 'attacked' on 1.6? I mean, the demonstrators certainly weren't attacking the sitting President. They weren't even attacking any elected official. All they appear to have done is tussled with a few capitol cops, and trespass (and in a couple of instances, died at the hands/feet/bangstick of same capitol cops). And once the demonstrators were co-existing in the same building-space as any elected official, did they even instigate any violence (other than that Sullivan guy and his crowd, who were plants)?
How would that be 'insurrection'? I don't get it, but then, I'm simple.
'Political violence' was widely allowed, and in some cases encouraged and materially supported by members of congress, for an extended period of time prior to 1.6. But I guess that was 'different'.
It wasn't an insurrection. It's very simple.
It was a public demonstration that included some felony trespass.
Calling it anything more than a crime gives it power beyond what the acts themselves provide.
Those braying about it thusly are first and foremost fucking morons.
I think you might be unfamiliar with how the Army and Air National Guard in America function. There is no re-organization necessary (where you imply that the military would be placed under state control). Each state has its own National Guard Bureau, wherein there are Army and Air Force elements who answer to the governor. These are mobilized under Title 10 under federal active service when the DoD deems it necessary (with the consent of the state governor).
I'm not arguing your other points, insofar as the dangers of how Sweden has handled their National defense in the past. I'm simply stating that the U.S. already has what Mrs. Guttermouth herself was wondering about in her original question. That framework already exists within the U.S. DoD.
I'll take your word for it.
I'm not downplaying the quality of our soldiery (airmen, sailors, et c), they are very good at what they do, but the stupidity and lack of experience among our political caste, a problem I believe to be present in the US too - the higher one goes, the more politics come into play in appointments rather than actual experience and professional knowledge (or esprit de corps for that matter).
I'm trying to rember what professor Samuel Huntington wrote about the dangers of US adventurism in his "The Clash of Civilisations"; if I recall correctly he was very much opposed to the role of world-police and bringer of liberal democracy to other nations, claiming it would eventually ruin the US both financially and morally.
But that's from memory, so caveat as need be.