Since the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks, I've been watching developments and thinking about how those attacks fit into the social dysfunction that can be seen in both countries. In France, some banlieues (particularly those dominated by Muslim immigrants and their offspring) are virtually ungovernable, forming a 'safe haven' for terrorists and criminals. In the USA, some inner city areas (particularly those riddled with gangs and crime, and those that are havens for political correctness such as the 'Black Lives Matter' movement - often one and the same, of course) also provide a 'safe haven' for criminal activities, and are often places where police won't go alone or in small numbers. In both countries, the political 'establishments' have (until recently, at any rate) acted and spoken in favor of those living in such areas, and of the 'culture' they've established there - even when law enforcement authorities have diametrically opposed views. Political correctness had trumped reality and practicality . . . until events forced a re-evaluation of the situation, which is still ongoing.
I was struck by some recent comments from other bloggers. First, Herschel Smith pointed out that military-style counter-insurgency and stabilization tactics are coming to dominate inner-city policing.
... what the Marine Corps couldn’t accomplish is fixing millennia-old hatred over rights to succession between Sunni and Shia. What they couldn’t do is fix the seed of hatred and violence inherent in Islam. Thus, the root problem remains today. And this is the point of analogy between COIN in Iraq, stability operations in Israel and stability operations in Chicago.
While we aren’t dealing with millennia-old problems, we are in fact dealing with at least fourth or fifth generation entitlement, with fatherless families, SNAP payments, welfare, “free” medical care, and so on. Just enough government largesse to keep the inner city blacks on a leash, not enough (yet) to create revolution against it. And therefore the elites get their voting bloc, which is the intended outcome all along.
But the monster this created is ugly and difficult to control. I’ve read comments about the rioters in Ferguson, to the extent that any protest against “the man” (or the state) is a good thing and they must be our ally (I’m not sure who “our” is). Such a view is a sign of lack of attention to detail, immaturity and weakness of mind. Most of the rioters in Ferguson would sooner gut you groin to throat with a knife and then rape your wife and daughter as to look at you. Anyone who feels an alliance with the rioters in Ferguson is a fool.
This is a monster the government and effete urbanite elitists created. The hive is coming apart at the seems, and the only way to keep it together is harsher and harsher stability operations. Make no mistake about it. The Chicago Mayor knows all about the tactics in use in Chicago and approves of them. The firing of the chief of police was a sacrifice to the masses.
The lesson for us is that police departments are more and more using stability operations as a model or paradigm for their work, with the approval of those in charge. As these tactics want to work their way into the fabric of American society like a cancer, one goal will be to kill the cancer before it takes over the host. This battle will be gradual, fought initially on the fields of town hall meetings, boards, blogs, and so on. If the battles are lost there, it will expand, and if lost entirely, dystopia (and maybe insurgency) will come to the American countryside.
The wars for the inner city cannot be won. America is going broke and the largesse cannot continue forever. Sooner or later, the riots will expand. The more important thing will be what happens to the medium and smaller towns of America? Stability operations can lead to COIN if not successful (and couple this with Islamic terrorism and the influx from South of the border, and the potential for success seems bleak), and neither COIN nor stability operations is an acceptable model for this country.
There's more at the link. Highly recommended reading. Note, in particular, how he identifies the welfare system and the creation of controllable 'voting blocs' with urban 'ghettoes'.
In the latest edition of his 'Woodpile Report', commentator Ol' Remus has this to say:
If you want to know what collapse looks like, look around. We're living in an ongoing collapse—civil, economic, military and moral. Everything's political, acquiescence is mandatory, dissent is a crime . We have fallen far. We shall fall much further. Emergencies and disasters follow each other ever more closely, each more astonishing than the last. Sociopaths and madmen—the mainstream, the real lunatic fringe—have neither the capability nor the will to fix them. And so we fall. The collapse will end when we can fall no further.
. . .
The "Ferguson Effect" is everywhere now. It's rank extortion , and violence is an accepted part of the process. When an unruly mob (wink wink) invaded the library at Yale, threatened and criminally assaulted students at their study, Yale apologize for being Yale and humbly caved to their demands, a lesson fundamentally different from what had been taught since 1701. What was unbelievable is unbelievable no more. In turn, the unbelievable will give way to the unthinkable, the unthinkable to the unimaginable. Violence works. It works because we are in collapse.
Again, more at the link.
In his classic analysis of so-called 'Fourth-Generation Warfare' (found in the September-October 2004 edition of Military Review, pp. 12-16), William S. Lind observed:
In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting nonstate opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.
Fourth Generation war is also marked by a return to a world of cultures, not merely states, in conflict.
. . .
Nor is Fourth Generation war merely something we import, as we did on 9/11. At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation war on their soil. America, with a closed political system (regardless of which party wins, the Establishment remains in power and nothing really changes) and a poisonous ideology of multiculturalism, is a prime candidate for the homegrown variety of Fourth Generation war, which is by far the most dangerous kind.
. . .
Fourth Generation [warfare] is not novel, but a return—specifically a return to the way war worked before the rise of the state. Now, as then, many different entities, not just governments of states, will wage war, and they will wage war for many different reasons, not just “the extension of politics by other means.” They will use many different tools to fight war, not restricting themselves to what we recognize as military forces. When I am asked to recommend a good book describing what a Fourth Generation world will be like, I usually suggest Barbara Tuchman’s 'A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century'.
. . .
The fact that no state military has recently succeeded in defeating a nonstate enemy reminds us that Clio, the patron goddess of history, has a sense of humor; she teaches us that not all problems have solutions.
More at the link.
When you put those three excerpts together, and look at our situation in their light and from the perspective of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks . . . it makes you wonder. Have our feckless leaders created the breeding-ground for fourth generation warfare in our own inner cities, through pandering to 'the mob' there, creating an entitlement society that's no longer capable of functioning (or even surviving) without such assistance, and denying the reality of crime and violence even as it affects more and more people?
I'm not sure I'd equate current policing trends in our urban areas with military counter-insurgency operations. I'm trained and experienced in the latter, and I don't see a lot of parallels between the two environments . . . at least, not yet. If our inner cities become 'no-go areas', ungovernable except by those living within their borders and shutting out normal administrative and law enforcement authority, that may change. At that point, it'll be a choice between letting them become the US equivalent of some French banlieues (which God forbid!), or taking them back the hard way. I doubt that any 'middle way' will be feasible in reality, even though the politically correct talking heads might try to insist that it'll work. I'm here to tell you, on the basis of many years' experience, that it won't. You can take that to the bank.
What say you, readers?
Peter
10 comments:
Retaking the in nervous cities if they 'go rouge' is technically very easy, politically and morally difficult. Shut off the power and water, erect a blockade of shipments in. If people want to leave, search them as they leave, settle them as refugees until the situation is resolved (easily done as the State provided pretty much everything already). This who stay will riot and loot and gnash their teeth. Keeping the political will to keep up the embargo until the end will be difficult part.
Before the will to that happens, some major cities are going to have to burn. Unfortunate, but the current Establishment party (and by that I mean the 2 major parties) does not have the will to do it. Rather, they will see this as another exploitable crisis that they can (they think) use to their advantage. Perhaps trying a major gun grab, federalizing the police, etc.
10 years ago, I would have said anyone saying any of the above was a paranoid fool. Now, I see it as inevitable. I'm old enough to think it might not be in my lifetime, but it will certainly be in my children's lifetime. Fortunately for them, they will have a legacy of self defense and gun training to fall back on.
Governments become more desperate and violent as they begin to lose control. This WILL get much worse.
Big difference between urban trouble zones in U.S. and no-go zones in Belgium and France is the character of the inhabitants. While Muslims in Europe feel themselves the vanguard of a billion-strong force, inner-city black Americans have no outside backers (yet) and no coherent ideology to fire them up... nor do they have a realistic expectation of doubling, or tripling, their share of the population, unlike Europe's Muslims. Unless black Americans convert en masse to Islam (not likely) they do not present a mortal danger to the country's continued existence.
I think you need to change the deate from "how do we deal with these people already in the underclass" to "how do we not create an unerclass and how do we get people out of them". Because the simple fact is the people you talk about are driven with to them quite sound rational decisions because ;
1. They are on a whole not the most intelligent employable people in the world.
2. They have zero prospects of getting any work at a wage to actualy feed and house yourself independantly.
3. A large minority are dealing with some form of mental impedement. Remember the average IQ from 100yrs ago would now make you educationaly imparred.
So the question is what does the "West" do with a large group of Manual workers when we have either exported their jobs to China and the far East or imported desperate people surviving on less than Western Poor People could ever imagine possible to do our remaining Manual Jobs because they are cheaper.
We are left with a 10% rump of the population which is growing towards 25% as inequality and access to Capital is more important than the sweat of your brow. The choices are;
1. Export them to follow there jobs in to near slavery conditions in the East. Really not an option.
2. Onshore real jobs back to the West and those with comfortable incomes will just have to accept the price of some things like Cloths and Manufactored goods are going to go up so they are going to have less money. A kind of income redistribution by Capitialist Means.
3. Good very expensive welfare Systems to try and save those you can and leave the others to fester.
4. A huge Armed forces to soak up the excess labour probably via conscription for 10yrs. IE get the discipline ethic in to them and raise their hopes and ambitions a bit.
5. Keep a very heavy lid on top of the smouldering pot and hope it never explodes on an organised scale basis and you have a revolution on our hands.
Personaly I favour options 2 with a help from 3 to stop creating what in the Victorian times would have been described as the seething masses. It doesn't matter if your a Muslim Extremist, Gang Memeber or just some local street criminal you end up there because no matter how hard you work you do not have the capacity to get out of the Jungle.
The problem is this all costs money, and particularly it costs money to those earning more then $100,000 a year who are very adept with very clever accountants in not paying taxes. Ultimately when the mob comes with the pitch folks (these days also probably an AK47) those people will not see that investing in their own people is an easy option than employ some more robo cops to keep the local Bayou/Favela/Shanty Town/ Inner City Project / Council Estate quite by shooting a few of the locals.
The problem is that this is where Reagan/Thatcher economics of ultra low taxation of the Wealthy leads to when the "wealth" does not trickle down but gets invested in stock options and new robots rather than workers.
Don't treat the sympton, treat the cause and you know you just might cure the problem.
The Ginge
My predictions:
1) If Hillary Clinton is elected to the Presidency America will have armed insurrection during her term (that's not "first term" because not only will she not get a second, she won't complete her first, probably by escaping to a non-extradition country before impeachment proceedings can be concluded).
2) If a white male - any white male - achieves the Presidency and institutes corrective action to arrest the decline that insurrection will come sooner, but be limited to cities; entire metropolitan areas will become "no go" zones.
3) If neither of the above occur the insurrection will be postponed for about a decade.
Whenever the insurrection occurs, it will be unstructured. See below.
Anon at 0356 makes the point that we have a large dysfunctional and incapable underclass; he is correct. Our Betters - the elites - have created a stratified society in the belief that each strata can be managed separately, and successfully. That's worked so far, at least for them, but that theorem is in the process of failing, and the end point of that failure will be conflict between the strata. Whether that conflict is catastrophic will depend on intensity and duration. At the very least it will be unpleasant for all, at the worst it will result in America remaining America in name only.
One is advised to have their children begin studying up on "Feudalism For Fun And Profit, Useful Skills for The Coming Years".
What do I think ? I think we have a fine kettle of fish in large urban areas for the reasons you list. The "Under Privileged" will become unhinged and I think the result will be martial law (perhaps by design) instituted. Our bankrupt system is already collapsing and when benefits fall, riots are inevitable.
Pretty sure the country we live in will be much changed in the next five years, if not sooner. Time is running out. Keep your passport (you do have one, right ?) current, it may become a refugee situation very quickly.
One thing you are all failing to take into account, well two, are the energy revolution and the manufacturing revolution with maker bots and Computer controlled assembly. The US is seeing manufacturing come back on shore because our energy costs are so cheap. However, use of smart machines is enabling the manufacturing with a shrinking work force.
As technology advances there will not be jobs to be had.
Leadership is as much about self fulfilling prophesy as anything. You get winners when you tell people they are and treat them like they are. You get a dysfunctional underclass when you treat people like that. Most people do not have the strength of character to do anything other than accept how they are treated.
The point being we actually can manufacture our way out of the current situation, but we have to stop making things worse. We also have to start thinking about how we give meaning to the unemployed today and in the future. Also, who will go to school for years to fix manufacturing machines when you can sit at home and get everything you want. We are made for struggle and work, we fester without it. (Idle hands are the devils workshop).
I've decided I'm a nationalist. we can't solve the world's problems, we need to concentrate on our own. We need to retake our place as the shining beacon on the hill. Our success means we were doing it right, not taking advantage of others (Yes, there is always those who will in this fallen world, but property rights and the rule of law keep getting linked to economic success in study after study. One bad apple doesn't mean all apples are bad).
This does mean the rule of law, we can not tolerate no-go zones. But to avoid those, we have to decide what to do with the growing unemployed class, and it will grow and become more racially diverse over time.
I think our politicians, assuming they ever actually think about it, are jealous of Israeli politicians. The Palestinians are a captive boogeyman, not threatening at all to the elites, but very useful to the elites to enforce a level of statism in Israel that would not otherwise exist.
If you remember Ferguson, the media coverage could be viewed as a brilliant piece of marketing, with the white middle class demographic more or less being convinced that militarization of police is a good thing (especially among Republicans) while blacks and progressives were propagandized into this 'black lives matter' stuff.
Trump, meanwhile, is gaining much ground with the promise of a wall- but I don't think the walls, nor the jobs manning them will stay at the border.
Not that I think this is a conspiracy. Rather, the businesses already market these systems, and politicians are self-serving bastards who will take the easy way out.
Given the discussion I was put in mind of this quote from Davie Crockett:
"In my last canvass, I told the people of my district, that, if they saw fit to re-elect me, I would serve them
faithfully as I had done; but, if not, they might all go to h---, and I would go to Texas. I was beaten, gentlemen, and here I am."
It would seem that you and Dorothy are ahead of the game, Peter. Nashville is certainly not the worst of the major cities, being red state conservative for the most part, but it's still a major population center with all the troubles that go with that designation.
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