Deferred Rebellion Not Necessarily Better
My friend
Michael Totten is worried, with good reason, that in the event of a Bush re-election, the nutbar left will actively work to overthrow democratic process in the United States in retribution. He quotes a commenter on another blog,
Cicero, who works at a California university and has heard people talking about open rebellion. Cicero is voting for Bush but rooting for Kerry because of the potential for deterioration of the democratic process in the event of a Democratic loss.
I think I get where Michael and Cicero are coming from, I just don't agree with where they are. The prospect of dilettante academics taking up arms to resist the lawfully elected government does not fill me with dread. Actually, it kind of fills me with humor. I've met, up close and personal, college revolutionaries and USMC Sniper School Instructors. I know for sure who I'd put my money on in a stand up fight or an insurgency, and it isn't the ones wearing Birkenstocks.
The most effective anti-insurgent military in the world is who the revolutionary intellectuals would be rebelling against; and the patchouli rangers do not have the tactics, training, discipline, logistical support, coherence of goals, or the leadership to accomplish much more than self-immolation. A lot of people would go to jail, and probably some particularly destructive schmucks would earn themselves a lethal injection for treason. It would be an embarrassment, but I think it would be a small one. The most striking lack in the nutbar resistance is credible leadership; Michael Moore is not even qualified to carry
Abbie Hoffman's jockstrap, and there simply is nobody on the left near the same league as Martin Luther King, Jr. Actors and Rock Stars have not shown a significant capability to influence the general populace to do more than sell tickets, and they are generally more concerned with that endeavor. Discussions of a virtual leadership on the Internet are simply laughable. People risk their lives for ribbons and tin, but not the honor of a chat room or a blog. Honestly, any revolution in the near term would be over very shortly after it got started.
I have a lot more enthusiasm for experiencing this disturbance under the leadership of George W. Bush because he has already exhibited remarkable forbearance under pressure with regards to the Islamic community in the US and the world. That is something worth taking into account. Regardless of the persistent underestimation of the President that the moonbat left thrives on, there is no evidence that Bush gets stupid under pressure. More importantly, the Pentagon will never overthrow Bush and establish a military Junta. If they tried it, Rumsfeld would have their heads on pikes in his office in a moment, and that may not be just a figure of speech.
The people who are serious about exploiting revolutionary idiocy, like A.N.S.W.E.R., don't care if Kerry gets elected or not, because he is not their kind of Stalinist. There is no good reason to believe that the people herding the moonbat left really care who is in charge since nothing less than a revolution will make it them. I think we should take the people who say there is no difference between Kerry and Bush at their word and acknowledge that the results of this election will do nothing to forestall any attempt at revolt.
Lately I've been hearing from people who talk about the need to throw a revolution every so often to keep things fresh. I have a lot of friends who are both decent people and incredibly disconnected intellectuals. I do not think they are organized because I do not have any evidence they have sufficient discretion to sustain a significant organization. I've seen these people fold up like a card table when they run out of cigarettes; I do not think they could talk to me for a half-hour under the influence of a bottle of wine without gossiping about how they are conspiring to install a new government.
Honestly, I think we would be better off dealing with this now than postponing it until later. We know this is coming, and I think we are much better off handling it as close to the memory of 9/11 as possible.
Penguin In the Water!
Those clever folks in the
blogosphere have done their penguin best to herd one of their own off the ice and into the water to see if there are leopard seals about!
It's not like a blogger could do a worse job than most senators!
Imagine a World without Empowering Delusional Twits
(UPDATED)
Some years ago the Wall Street Journal ran an article describing the hotbed of anarchist empowerment that is my former stomping grounds of Eugene, Oregon. One of the flyers they reproduced had a drawing of Winnie the Pooh by a bucolic pond playing with a butterfly with a title something like, "
Imagine a World without Corporate Greed" or some such. The idea being that once we embrace anarchy as a collectivist expression of our individual capabilities we will live in a wonderland like Christopher Robin. Probably the Journal chose the absolutely most delusional anarchist flyer they could find to drive the point home; but let's be honest, they had a lot to choose from. There is a lot of idiotic thinking on the left that in the September 12th world we live in needs to be corrected.
Michael Totten is writing that the Left needs to get hammered by history for a while to knock off some of the useless detritus and pound the worthwhile remainder into some kind of shape. I agree with the principle, but think he is utterly wrong on the method, since he thinks this will happen during a Kerry presidency. Michael has been to the Sahara this year, so he knows what a desert is. In most major religions, you go to the desert to atone for your sins of excess and come back with the strength to make things right.* The desert scours your soul and makes you stronger.
Washington, D.C. is a swamp, not a desert. Being in control of the largest aggregate of money in the world, the U.S. government's budget, is no way to atone for your sins of excess. With all those billions flying around, it's pretty near impossible to recognize a sin of excess if it is hitting you in the face really hard. With all the grant money and government contracts to direct, and all those new friends telling you how wonderful you are, your soul is never going to get scoured.
The central failure of Michael's theory is that there is no incentive for a winning team to change. The only way to get desert tough, desert pure, is to go to the desert and that NEVER happens willingly. Nobody gives up their position on the
Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy to go clarify their reality and come back with a stronger philosophical ideal. They stay at their jobs, pay off their houses, hire their friends, direct grants to their alma maters, and change in the direction of securing their position.
Michael wants his friends to change to a rational and aware position on the basis of logical thought and awareness of the real dangers of the world we face. This month at a party at Michael's house, one of his friends tried to explain to me that it was logical and reasonable to believe that the forged documents used by CBS were somehow an administration plant intended to damage the Kerry campaign through a series of articulations too bizarre to repeat here. Michael, your friends need to go to the desert to change, and they will not do so on their own like you did. That moment has left us. There is no way that you believe that Kerry is strong enough lead anybody out of the desert, and the only way he is going to lead anybody into the desert is if he loses badly in three weeks and his supporters are driven there.
The way the idiots with the Pooh flyer start imagining a world that actually exists and stop being useless twits is to be confronted with reality. Giving those people executive positions at Disneyland is not a good way to start.
*Communism is a major world religion that does not have this tradition. In Communist tradition, you get taken out back and shot or they chase you to Mexico City and bash in your head with an ice axe. The absolute lack of significant doctrinal progress in Communism is not quite as hard to explain as some would have you think.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Michael. I still think you are too attached to your friends or good manners to appreciate that the Left is going into the desert if they win this election or not. I honestly think that the Left has some chance of recovering relevance sooner if they lose this fight than if they win. A lot of that is because Bush is such a liberal Republican that to have any ground to stand on that isn't within reach of Bush's appeal, you have to go out to the very fringe.
The only traction the Pro-Choice folks are able to get is by fear-mongering about his potential judicial appointments. If they had something concrete to nail Bush on, they certainly would use it. The simple fact is that directly attacking the middle doesn't sell tickets, and that is the position Bush is occupying. The Left needs a candidate who occupies the middle better than Bush, and right now all they come up with is a candidate to tries to be everywhere.
