Everyone is entitled to MY own opinion
watch for the Spirit of God to enlarge your hearts in prayer
But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. 1 Peter 4:7
Be careful that you lift up your hearts with your hands to God; that you pray for such things as are agreeable to the revealed will of God;, that you pray in faith, and lift up holy hands without wrath and doubting; and watch for the Spirit of God to enlarge your hearts in prayer, and to assist you both as to the matter and manner of praying.
The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections
coups. They’re insane, random, and terrifying, like watching sports, except your political future depends on the score.
The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?
When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin’s crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin’s men, Alexander Rutskoi – who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin – prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the “criminals.”
We have long been spared this madness in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years.
That’s all over, in the Trump era.
News broke that two businessmen said to have “peddled supposedly explosive information about corruption involving Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden” were arrested at Dulles airport on “campaign finance violations.”
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman will be asked to give depositions to impeachment investigators. They’re reportedly going to refuse. Their lawyer John Dowd also says they will “refuse to appear before House Committees investigating President Donald Trump.” Fruman and Parnas meanwhile claim they had real derogatory information about Biden and other politicians, but “the U.S. government had shown little interest in receiving it through official channels.”
For Americans not familiar with the language of the Third World, that’s two contrasting denials of political legitimacy.
My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.
The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped.
However, we know from Comey’s January 7, 2017 memo to deputy Andrew McCabe and FBI General Counsel James Baker there was another explanation. Comey wrote:
I said I wasn’t saying this was true, only that I wanted [Trump] to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material or [redacted] and that we were keeping it very close-hold.
Imagine if a similar situation had taken place in January of 2009, involving president-elect Barack Obama. Picture a meeting between Obama and the heads of the CIA, NSA, and FBI, along with the DIA, in which the newly-elected president is presented with a report complied by, say, Judicial Watch, accusing him of links to al-Qaeda. Imagine further that they tell Obama they are presenting him with this information to make him aware of a blackmail threat, and to reassure him they won’t give news agencies a “hook” to publish the news.
Now imagine if that news came out on Fox days later. Imagine further that within a year, one of the four officials became a paid Fox contributor. Democrats would lose their minds in this set of circumstances.
The leak of the January, 2017 “meeting” between the four chiefs and President Trump – which without question damaged both the presidency and America’s standing abroad – was an unprecedented act of insubordination.
It was also a bold new foray into domestic politics by intelligence agencies that in recent decades began asserting all sorts of frightening new authority. They were kidnapping foreigners, assassinating by drone, conducting paramilitary operations without congressional notice, building an international archipelago of secret prisons, and engaging in mass warrantless surveillance of Americans. We found out in a court case just how extensive the illegal domestic surveillance has been, with the FBI engaging in tens of thousands of warrantless searches involving American emails and phone numbers under the guise of combating foreign subversion.
A shocking number of these voices were former intelligence officers who joined Clapper in becoming paid news contributors. Op-ed pages and news networks are packed now with ex-spooks editorializing about stories in which they had personal involvement: Michael Morell, Michael Hayden, Asha Rangappa, and Andrew McCabe among many others, including especially all four of the original “intel chiefs”: Clapper, Rogers, Comey, and MSNBC headliner John Brennan.
Russiagate birthed a whole brand of politics, a government-in-exile, which prosecuted its case against Trump via a constant stream of “approved” leaks, partisans in congress, and an increasingly unified and thematically consistent set of commercial news outlets.
These mechanisms have been transplanted now onto the Ukrainegate drama. It’s the same people beating the public drums, with the messaging run out of the same congressional committees, through the same Nadlers, Schiffs, and Swalwells. The same news outlets are on full alert.
I don’t believe most Americans have thought through what a successful campaign to oust Donald Trump would look like. Most casual news consumers can only think of it in terms of Mike Pence becoming president. The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.
Cold Anger does not gloat; it absorbs consistent vilification and ridicule as fuel.
There’s a level of anger far deeper and more consequential than expressed rage or visible behavior, it’s called Cold Anger.
Cold Anger does not need to go to violence. For those who carry it, no conversation is needed when we meet. You cannot poll or measure it; specifically, because most who carry it avoid discussion. And that decision has nothing whatsoever to do with any form of correctness.
Cold Anger absorbs betrayal silently, often prudently.
Cold Anger is not hatred, it is far more purposeful.
Cold Anger takes notice of the liars, even from a great distance – seemingly invisible to the mob. Cold Anger will still hold open the door for the riot goer. Mannerly.
Cold Anger evidenced is more severe because it is more strategic, and more purposeful.
Cold Anger does not gloat; it absorbs consistent vilification and ridicule as fuel. This sensibility does not want to exist, it is forced to exist in otherwise unwilling hosts – we also refuse to be destabilized by it.
Cold Anger is not driven to act in spite of itself; it drives a reckoning.
Cold Anger perceives deception the way the long-term battered absorb a blow in the hours prior to the pre-planned exit; with purpose.
those who made good use of their resources could be largely self supporting, coalescing into tribes, forming families with neighbors and partying like it was 1319.
The US has historically used food as part of carrot-and-stick diplomacy, or said differently, bribes. During the Second World War, Great Britain and the Soviet Union relied crucially on American food, assuring a measure of their dependency in power negotiations. Germany, and particularly Japan, were nearly US territories after the war, both would have starved without prompt delivery of American food in quantity.
Wars are generally about food. Ancient Rome imported its food and fought epic wars to develop new sources and keep the ones it had. Medieval fiefdoms were agricultural enterprises, raiding their neighbors was common. The westward expansion of America in the nineteenth century was about food and the means to move it, as was Japan’s expanding empire in the early twentieth century. Germany explicitly cited food production to justify its aggression in the east. Their rants about fighting Bolshevism was pep rally stuff, Nazism itself was excessively patriotic Marxism.
History and cold calculation suggest food would be a weapon in a Civil War II, one of many, but of prime importance long term. Civil wars have long gestations, go kinetic suddenly and get complicated in a hurry. We have no firm knowledge what would set it off, who would be actively involved or how it would end. But the outlines are repeated well enough to guide our preparations.
The ruling class already treats middle America as this century’s Untermensch. Nothing is off the table in a civil war. Seizing the nation’s food would be an obvious move. Expect them to deploy troops to secure big ag and the necessary transportation facilities, destroy anyone who got in their way and terrorize potential troublemakers. But there’s a limit to even the deep state’s resources. Prudent survivalists in the far hills wouldn’t warrant their attention, they’d be more likely to trade shots with desperados than find themselves in a firefight with regular forces.
Food is the indispensable survival prep. At minimum this means a secure long-term stash of high calorie food sufficient to outlast the initial violence and privation without relying on resupply. Call it a year, maybe two.
Famine is a given in contemporary civil war. Those embedded in interior cities have no chance, so, next item. The ruling class would continue to work against middle America’s existence. As said above, they’d confiscate local stores of food on a continuing basis, seize major food producing areas intact and grab the needed transportation facilities. Make no mistake, their hirelings would be granted license for absolute ruthlessness. Free fire zones and minefields are not off the table. Skilled labor, if otherwise unwilling, would be arrested and compelled to work.
Feeding their base would guarantee the loyalty of supporters, inflict mass death on the deplorables by ‘no cost’ neglect and keep armed confrontation largely confined to flyover country. But note, as said here before, this is a precarious solution. The coastal megacities are fed from the outside by vulnerable arteries passing through what would be hostile territory. In the end, feeding them would stutter and fail. Even now they’re cauldrons of seething hatred, barely repressed, often organized. With real scarcity and hardship they’d fall on each other and tear the place apart.
Privation, disease, hunger, murderous chaos and high intensity combat would likely peak in the second year. This is the knothole which would separate the survivalists from dabblers and hopeful idealists. In the years that follow, when the maelstrom had largely exhausted itself and the situation clarified, those who made good use of their resources could be largely self supporting, coalescing into tribes, forming families with neighbors and partying like it was 1319.
Well placed and practiced survivalists could get by on a onesey-twosey basis. Two may survive where one wouldn’t. Three or four may be better, assuming an adequate reserve of food and supplies. With more than four the liabilities are likely to outweigh the advantages.
Be a survivor. The who and what of a civil war would matter only occasionally. Food would matter every hour of every week. Stack food high, wide and deep where it’s secure from looters and confiscation. Backup your stash with an MRE fallback stash. Stack seeds, garden tools, fishing and hunting gear to be prepared for self-resupply opportunities. Calories are life.
We have gotten so accustomed to this new “normal” that we forget how obscene it is. Functional governments do not act like this.
In thermodynamics there is a word, entropy, which identifies the inevitable and steady deterioration of a closed system. The theory is that it take a steady input of energy to a system to keep it orderly, and without that energy input the tendency is to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
Chile went from “a quiet, stable, peaceful country” to civil war-like chaos:
It can happen faster than anyone realizes.
… Friday, October18, 2019 was a particularly beautiful day. By lunchtime, people were out in the parks enjoying the weather. It was calm, peaceful, and joyful.
Within a matter of hours the city had turned into a war zone
And then it happened” …
Innocent people have died. And almost everyone else has had their lives heavily disrupted.
They can’t get to work. Schools are closed. Grocery store lines are crazy. There’s a curfew. Tanks are in the streets.
Pat Buchanan comments on Chile’s near-instant chaos and wonders if democracy is a dying species:
Chile is the most stable and prosperous country in Latin America.
Yet when its capital, Santiago, recently raised subway fares by 5%, thousands poured into the streets. Rioting, looting, arson followed. The Metro system was utterly trashed. Police were assaulted. People died. The rioting spread to six other cities. Troops were called out.
… Chile is the most stable and wealthy country in South America. Catalonia is the most prosperous part of Spain. Paris is hardly a hellhole of repression. And Hong Kong is the freest city of China.
If the beneficiaries of freedoms and democratic rights come to regard them as insufficient to produce the political, economic and social results they demand, what does that portend for democracy’s future?
As a partial answer to Mr. Buchanan, democracies don’t die, they kill. We’re a republic. Republics die.
The lesson in all this isn’t the lunacy of the left, it’s how quickly civilized societies can devolve into chaos, and how unchecked chaos can just as quickly devolve into civil war.
The anti-gun taxes now in effect in Chicago and Seattle is under consideration by Tacoma, Washington.
Under the Tacoma proposal, a tax of $25 would be assessed for every firearm sold within the city, plus 5 cents for each centerfire round of ammunition and 2 cents for every rimfire.
Guns ‘n ammo are being nudged into the “sin tax” category. It’s a safe bet these taxes will also be ratcheted up to the highest levels they can get away with. As with all abolitionists, their object is total elimination, so we can walk shoulder to shoulder into that golden dawn of untainted brotherhood … under their benevolent leadership.
We have gotten so accustomed to this new “normal” that we forget how obscene it is. Functional governments do not act like this.
Aside from weaponizing food shortages in a civil war, consider this
“Global Authorities Brace For Worldwide Protein Shortage After “Quarter Of Earth’s Pigs Wiped Out” … up to 70 percent of China’s pigs could eventually end up dead “
China is importing huge amounts of pork and soy, running up prices world wide. In Asia people are turning to beef and poultry, and those prices are rising. In the US, the grain crop is down about 10% and there’s a record shortfall of corn and soy beans. So far it’s a matter of price increases for scarce commodities, their substitutes and those products which use them.
Be aware numbers vary, both official numbers and commodity futures estimates.
Updated numbers on Chinese hog losses vary considerably from previous totals. According to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, Chinese hog losses in the first nine months of 2019 from African Swine Fever totaled 28.5% of production. This is a considerable difference from the country’s Ag Ministry claim that 41% of hogs have been lost. This lower number would answer the question as to why China has been importing less pork that expected.
Next year’s growing season will be better, the same or worse. Which one of these are you prepared for? And how much are you willing to bet African Swine Fever—it’s similar to Ebola—won’t show up here? It’s already spread to the Philippines, South Korea and Viet Nam. Outbreaks have been contained, so far, in Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria and wild boars in the Czech Republic.
There is only winning or losing when it comes to war and if you’re not willing to do whatever you must in order to actually win then there is only losing.
The damage that African swine fever has wrecked on China’s pig population is hard to overstate. The country is home to half of all the pigs on the planet, and its herd has shrunk by around 130 million since the outbreak began about 13 months ago
2019 has been an incredible year for a niche industry: alternative meats.
Impossible Foods announced partnerships with Burger King, Qdoba, and dozens of other restaurants and franchises. Their competitor Beyond Meat started selling at restaurants including Del Taco, Subway, and most recently KFC. Both companies started the year primarily selling burgers but have since launched new products — from Beyond’s ground beef to Impossible’s sausage to Beyond’s KFC chicken.
Many restaurants and food manufacturers had been waiting to see whether the popularity of plant-based meat was a fad. As consumer interest has grown, “companies have become more aware that this is here to stay” — and they’re placing their own orders. That generates more publicity, which makes more consumers interested in the products and convinces other companies that the trend is for real.
Plant-based meat is absolutely safe — but it’s not a health food. Plant-based means it’s of ingredients that come from plants, but that doesn’t mean you’re eating a salad — they are processed foods.
The bugaboo of “global warming” has been used as a marketing tactic to push plant based meat substitutes as a protein source, but could there be a different, more troubling reason?
African Swine Fever is killing millions upon millions of pigs all over the world, and this threatens to create a crippling global shortage of protein as we head into 2020.
This epidemic began in China last year, and it is now also running wild in North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines. But this crisis is certainly not limited to Asia. According to the Washington Post, so far in 2019 there have also been outbreaks “in Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.”
African Swine Fever is extremely contagious, there is no vaccine, and there is no cure. Once it starts spreading in a certain area, there isn’t much that can be done “other than culling herds and loading carcasses into hazardous waste sites”. Literally, we are talking about an unstoppable global plague that is an existential threat to our food supply. Of course, many of us don’t eat pork, but there will also be an immense strain on supplies of beef and chicken as those that eat pork are forced to turn to other alternatives. This is an exceedingly serious situation, and with each month it is just getting worse.
China is the epicenter for this crisis, and CNN is reporting that the Chinese herd has “shrunk by around 130 million” since this epidemic first began last year…
The damage that African swine fever has wrecked on China’s pig population is hard to overstate. The country is home to half of all the pigs on the planet, and its herd has shrunk by around 130 million since the outbreak began about 13 months ago, according to a CNN Business analysis of data from the Chinese agricultural ministry. Many farmers are reluctant to restock pigs after they are slaughtered, fearing they’ll catch the disease.
To put that in perspective, there are only about 70 million pigs in the United States.
Yes, that number is for the entire country.
So, the damage that has already been done in China is beyond cataclysmic, and this crisis is very far from over. This is a global plague unlike anything we have ever seen before.
More than one-quarter of Earth’s pigs have been wiped out by the virulent disease and this virus is still raging out of control.
Deu 7:26 You are not to bring an abomination into your house—for you, like it, will be a banned thing. You must utterly detest and utterly abhor it, for it is set apart for destruction.
Abomination and abominations appear in the New King James Version of the Bible 152 times. When we examine the Greek and Hebrew words translated “abomination” in Scripture, we see that these words have very definite implications. Abomination is used exclusively to describe things that are disgusting, loathsome and absolutely intolerable—things that are unacceptable to God.
We would do well to take note of what God labels abominations.
Dishonesty (Proverbs 12:22).
Arrogant pride (Proverbs 16:5).
Ignoring God’s law (Proverbs 28:9).
Devising evil and sowing discord (Proverbs 6:16-19).
Eating what the Bible calls “unclean” animals (Leviticus 11:8; Leviticus 11:11; Leviticus 11:13; Leviticus 11:23).
The act of homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22).
The book of Revelation explicitly states concerning the New Jerusalem that God is preparing for His people, “There shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life” (Revelation 21:27).
In the real world, there are no guarantees.
Learn to be content with the air you breathe.
I was still in high school when I read a sci-fi novel Earth Abides by George Stewart (IIRC). The premise of the novel was that a pandemic had come through and wiped out well over 99% of the population leaving little pockets of survivors here and there. The novel chronicles one little pocket’s efforts to reestablish a form of primitive civilization that was sustainable.
The Primary Kill was the pandemic. The Secondary Kill was of survivors of the Primary who could not see life worth living so laid down and died or did nothing to ensure their survival as local resources were used up.
Thus, that moment a person realized they would never eat chocolate again, combined with everything else that had happened, could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. (Metaphor there.).
If you can get through the initial shock of realization, the pain eventually goes away.
Part of avoiding the Secondary Kill is knowing what your alternatives are, and how to best make use of them.
This or something similar has been written about the NAZI death camps. When prisoners concluded there was no hope in ending the pain often they would lay down and give up their life. One prisoner was said to have written that when observing someone giving up their life there was only one action that some times brought them back. If you would yell at and beat on the prisoner and made them angry enough they would get up to fight with you.
Knowledge and your faith are two things that nobody else can take away from you, and are the most powerful tools in your arsenal of weapons against changes in life that don’t work in your favor. With correct application both, prove VERY beneficial to the user.
The spiritual seekers and indigenous content themselves with such as a cool breeze on a hot day, a good harvest following a diligent growing season, a beautiful view from a lofty peak……and they learn, early on, that when these are lacking, patience will carry them through to the next of life’s small blessings.
A spoiled society is not so invulnerable to calamity.
In the real world, there are no guarantees.
Learn to be content with the air you breathe.
Sophistication is apparently the greatest enemy of the institutionalized.
I had an old wise woman tell me once many years ago- You have a choice in life: You can be Crystal and shatter on life’s Wheel. Or, you can be Willow, and bend to adapt to its Changes. I have tried to live this and it is not easy but it can be done.
It has been over 150 years since the United States has had serious internal distension. The closest to a revolt was the Civil Rights Movement, but the blacks were easily bought off after some protests and riots. America seems due for a violent adjustment.
A prevailing assumption in all of outsider politics, both Left and Right, is that America is headed for a civil war. The details are not all that clear, but that is the assumption. Even the mainstream political types think it is possible. A regular part of Tucker Carlson’s act is to warn his fellow political elites that they better shape up or the else. From time to time polls are done that show Americans are increasingly sure that a civil war is the most probable outcome for the turmoil and conflict of the current year.
At first blush, it is not a silly assumption. After all, empires tend to end in violence, either they are conquered or break apart. Even if you think America is some sort of exception when it comes to being an empire, every society is racked with conflict. It has been over 150 years since the United States has had serious internal distension. The closest to a revolt was the Civil Rights Movement, but the blacks were easily bought off after some protests and riots. America seems due for a violent adjustment.
Further, the far Left assumes they will win such a conflict. How is never explained, as most are noodle armed sissies, but they probably think they will have the full support of the police, like they see at their protests. Maybe the cops will side with the far Left in an armed conflict. If it means keeping their pensions and benefit packages, that’s probably a safe bet. On the other hand, history says police forces tend to scatter quickly when order falters to the point where there is fighting in the streets.
Many on the far Right make the same assumption as the Left, with regards to the outcome, owing to the fact that most of the guns are owned by whites. Those noodle armed Antifa sissies and their mouthy women would not last long in a fair fight, much less an armed fight. That’s certainly true, but if they did have the cops fighting for them that would be different. Then there is the fact that the same people controlling Antifa also run the military, so the gun disparity would change quickly.
The main trouble with the civic war bogeyman is no one bothers to imagine how it would be conjured in the first place. Civil wars are fights between two or more factions, led by members of the elite. The American Civil War was a fight between New England elites and Southern elites. Modern elites, not just in America, but across the West are in lockstep on every important topic. It is inconceivable that they would take up arms against one another. If anything, they will take up arms against the people.
That leaves open the other option for a social war. An armed rebellion of some sort, maybe due to divisions within society that the elites can no longer contain. The Antifa media, for example, harasses the wrong people and the result is organized white terrorism against Progressive targets. Alternatively, the media agitation results in some left-wing street protesters moving from theater to violence. The media did convince that guy to shoot up the Republican softball game a few years back.
The trouble with the rebellion scenario is that a decent rebellion has to be led by people capable of organizing a lot of people. The structure of the Left precludes a rebellion from that side of politics. They control the institutions and the rank and file lack the will and brainpower to go it alone. The Left is not going to revolt against itself, so they will continue to ratchet up their terrorism against everyone else. Red flag laws, for example, will be used to jail dissidents in the near future.
Outside of left-wing circles, organizing a rebellion seems less likely. Blacks have rioted in the past and they have some reason to rebel against the prevailing order. History says they will just burn down their own neighborhoods and loots some local stores. Hispanics seem to be the most passive group in America. As long as they have cheap food and cheap entertainment, they are not rebelling. The squalor of America beats the squalor of back home, so getting them angry enough to rebel seems implausible.
If there is to be a rebellion, it will be among whites, but whites are far from being a monolithic group. There are regional divides, as well as class divides, which are easily exploited by the people in charge. Ruling class whites, for example, hate all lower class whites. That’s part of what motivated the FBI to spy on the Trump people in the last election. It’s why the IRS harassed white people in the 2012 election. Ruling class whites have a deep loathing for the rest of white America.
At the other end, the working classes have had plenty of reasons to revolt since the 1970’s, when the usual suspects began auctioning off the manufacturing base. In coal country, for example, where you will find the most rebellious whites in America, an all-out war on their way of life has not resulted in much resistance. The semi-urban white working class has continued to support a system that shows every sign of trying to snuff out the white working class. There’s no rebellion in that group.
That leaves the white suburban middle-class, who are certainly the angriest cohort in the country, but they are the most docile too. Perhaps if they fear a real threat to their economic position, they will become less docile, but middle-class revolution remains an oxymoron at this stage. For now, they will remain committed to the system, taking out their anger on politicians at the ballot box. Even though voting has had no impact on the trajectory of American society, it seems to be enough for this class.
Even if you can conjure a scenario in which a group revolts or the ruling class splits, resulting in a civil war of some type, it’s hard to imagine it being violent. For starters, rebelling against the local police department, much less the military is laughably implausible, given the disparity in firepower. Even small town cops these days have been militarized. They have assault units, armored vehicles, drones and electronic surveillance equipment. America is literally a police state now.
Rebellion would have to be guerrilla war, turning the weight of the surveillance state against itself. Instead of blowing stuff up, the rebellion of the future will be placing racist material in strategic locations, forcing the police to spend hundreds of man hours looking for invisible Nazis. More sophisticated tactics will require infiltration of ruling class assets, so rebels can easily and surreptitiously throw sand in the gears of the custodial state. The war will be fought in cubicles, not the streets.
Now, this may seem depressing at first blush, but civil wars and rebellion never encompass the whole of the society. The American Revolution directly involved less than five percent of the population. The American Left radicalized the country with less than 20% support among whites. For those hoping to see the next American civil war, it will not take much of a change in the above dynamics to get the conditions for it. A serious economic catastrophe or a major foreign policy setback could be enough.
There’s also the fact that the nature of rebellion changes with the times. The rebels of the agrarian age faced men with bayonets and muskets. Men with muskets and rifles hiding in the woods could do real damage to their rulers. In the industrial age, general strikes and urban riots were enough to counter state power. In the information age, the rebellion will be about sapping the strength of the rulers, with regards to their ability to control data. Unplugging a data center will be the new terrorism.
When you start to puzzle through it, the probability of an old fashioned civil war is close to zero, while armed rebellion is in the single digits. Things will have to change a lot for the conditions to be right. On the other hand, a new type of rebellion, one suited for the age and the sorts of people unhappy with the system, is increasingly likely. Middle-class mom giving company passwords to rebel hackers is a likely scenario. The revolution of the future will be low-grade and mostly non-violent.
What’s in YOUR wallet?
“I just need to obey the rules and look after my own business and all will be fine.”
Actually yes, this is true. But it is hard to obey rules when those rules actually take all of your freedoms.
Let’s talk about martial law. This is when the normal law of the land is suspended and the authority comes from the military or federal government.
One recent example of undeclared martial law in the US was when the police were looking for the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing and went door to door, forcing innocent people to come outside with their hands on their heads at gunpoint, while their homes were searched without warrants.
It turns out that many of us have some serious misconceptions of what it’s really like to live through a martial law situation. I asked a survivor of the Bosnian war, who has personally been through it, to clear up the myths and tell us what it’s actually like. You can count on him for the unvarnished truth, and that’s what we need to be prepared to survive extreme situations.
During Yugoslav wars, in different regions (states) based on particular timing and events you can say that martial law was in place, or “state of direct war threat” as some call it here.
There were different “stages” or even levels of it, but one common fact is that during that all normal civil rights and laws were completely and absolutely a matter of the will of the “war government.” (Or “military council” or “war headquarters”.)
The names were different for different regions, even cities, but the results were the same.
In the case of my city in that particular time, it was “war government” that had little influence on ordinary citizen simply because there were too many factions.
But prior to that time and after that year I experienced and went through something that looks more like real “martial law” as your readership imagines it.
Many people in the prepper community think they’ll be able to take on the militarized police or army rather than bending to the new rules. How do you think that will go? Can you give any examples of people attempting to defy the military?
Yes, I am aware that lot of preppers imagine martial law to be like some black and white situation (with clear causes, solutions, and views). In reality, it is quite different.
It is a situation where all stakes are much higher, and solutions-actions that the government ( ruling party, military leaders or whoever in your case) wants to achieve will be attempted with all means. That can include some new rules where what you think about it usually does not mean anything.
A lot of preppers think about “martial law” but in reality, they think about it still in normal terms, with rights, law, constitution, and rules…
You cannot defy military, at least not openly, because they will deal with you fast and efficiently. In times like that it is so easy to get labeled that you are dangerous, an enemy of the state, a terrorist or anything similar, and most probably you will not have any help.
Forget about the movie illusions of openly being a freedom fighter.
No matter how well-organized you are, those who impose martial law have better organization than you. Remember that martial law usually means an information blackout. “They” will own information and present it to the public the way that they want to present it.
In my opinion here are a few really widespread myths in prepper movement about martial law:
“The UN will somehow “occupy” my land, impose martial law.”
When it comes to martial law I would choose to be worried about my own government first when times get really hard. That’s because most probably your freedom will be taken by those people through the martial law so they can achieve they own goals, or in order to stay in power when all goes to s..t.
It is not about who lives where, and what kind of system you have, and how much you love your country. It is about powerful people staying in power when times get really hard, even if that means taking all your rights and eliminating all possible threats from the common folks.
Patriotism does not have anything to do with that.
While you are looking for some outside “exotic” threat, the danger may be next to you all the time.
“I will recognize the threat (coming martial law, repression etc), and fight against it.”
Most probably you won’t because it will be arranged into something easily “digestible.”
For example, it will be a fight against terrorism, foreign threat, patriotism euphoria, or something similar, and then one day you’ll realize you are living in the middle of “no more rights” situation. Maybe even you’ll even be labeled as an enemy of the state simply because you have a weapon, or an off-grid retreat or similar.
Do not expect to see one day a big neon sign that says “martial law is coming”, because it will be smartly packaged into something reasonable and understandable. And most probably it will not be called martial law.
It will be packaged in a way that most people will actually welcome it, because they will not recognize what is actually, and those who openly recognize it and call it by its real name will be the first in danger.
The majority of people will look for it and ask for it, because they will think it will resolve a hard situation.
If you are going to be able to fight it, most probably you’ll have to fight it in a silent way, like a real underground resistance movement.
“I just need to obey the rules and look after my own business and all will be fine.”
Actually yes, this is true. But it is hard to obey rules when those rules actually take all of your freedoms.
One of the first actions in martial law situations is to eliminate possible threats – or let’s say “subversive elements”.
It can be done in a soft way by shutting down free press. for example. Or making you obedient (docile) by taking away your resources, and making you dependent on resources that they will give you. Or it can be done the hard way by making “problematic” people “disappear” after raids for example.
You can be that problematic man if you are openly opposed to them taking your rights, if you have other political opinions, are in the prepper movement, or similar.
Maybe you are already on some list of “emergency detention people” in case of an event.
Run away, or obey publicly while you are silently working whatever you can against it.
You simply need to be grey.