This is the revolution that I see coming to America

 

I don't want to write this blog post.  I'm certainly not calling for violent revolution, and I won't participate in the sorts of acts I'm going to describe here.  However, I've lived through or passed through violent revolution, civil unrest, insurrection and general political mayhem in three countries, and I've seen this at first hand.  The elements I'm about to describe happened in every one of them, and they are also evident in other countries that endured violent revolutions, whose survivors wrote about what they saw and experienced.  I figure someone has to put this out there for Americans to read, because there's no reason in the world why the same thing won't happen here.  I'd go so far as to say it's inevitable, if things go on this way.

We all know the polarized nature of American society.  These two illustrations from the Pew Research Center illustrate what's happened to us over the past quarter-century or so.

When a society has moved that far apart within itself, there's very little chance of peaceful reconciliation.  Instead, extremists on both sides will look for opportunities to impose their will, their perspective, their demands, on the other.  A recent example illustrates the point.

Activist members of the student government at Cornell University are waging an ideological war against fellow Cornell Student Assembly members who recently voted against disarming campus police.

From launching recall petitions and rallying against their fellow representatives in November, to earlier this month ousting some of them from subcommittees or the entire assembly, these activist student government members say they are motivated to set right what a “white-cis-het” group of their peers did in voting down the disarmament resolution.

. . .

“Many of these assembly members are white-cis-het men and women who quite literally laughed and danced in our faces when the resolution failed,” Chukwukere said.

“Their faces are all over social media,” he added. “We will never forget. … Their campus careers are over. … We must disarm, defund, and disband the Cornell University Police Department.”

In November, the Cornell Student Assembly narrowly voted against Resolution 11, a bill calling for the disarmament of Cornell police.

In the days following the initial failure of Resolution 11, vulgar language and threats of violence were directed at student assembly representatives who opposed the bill.

. . .

After weeks of intimidation, online harassment, and ultimately, the removal of several student representatives who supported keeping campus police armed, the assembly’s activist faction was able to approve on Dec. 10 a new measure, Resolution 30, calling to disarm campus police.

. . .

In a letter to the editor of the Sun, the student representatives under fire for refusing to support disarming the police denounced the attacks against them ... “These actions are undemocratic, authoritarian and a flagrant abuse of the S.A.’s rules and procedures,” the Dec. 9 letter states. “It goes without saying that these efforts are unprecedented.”

“A vocal minority of the S.A. who believe everyone must think as they do has attempted to strip power from anyone who disagrees with them and browbeat them into silence,” it adds. “Their actions have created a hostile, toxic and untenable atmosphere within the S.A., hampering its ability to function and causing unnecessary anxiety and emotional distress to its members.”

Part of the tensions during the initial vote back in November included racial ones.

Student Dakota Johnson, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who attended a November SA meeting to express his opposition to disarming police, was told during the hearing by Moriah Adeghe, the SA director of elections, that “As a white man, you cannot be the arbiter of what is and isn’t racist and who is a good or bad person. … You will never be the arbiter because you are a white man.”

There's more at the link.

The same single-minded fanaticism has been visible in many institutions and locations over the past year.  We see it in Seattle, Portland, and many other cities where progressive left-wingers control city government, and have "weaponized" that government in favor of their political beliefs and those who share them, and against those who disagree with them.  That problem will only get worse.  It will not get better.  If any of my readers live in a city or town controlled by progressive left-wing individuals or groups, this is a wake-up call:  get out now, or be oppressed.  There are no other options open to you, except to fight back - and almost every peaceful avenue of resistance has already been closed to you, up to and including elections.  I need only point out the electoral fraud that was so clearly on display last month.

So, what's the path from here on out?  Here's what I've seen in other countries, and read about in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ukraine, the countries of the Arab Spring, and others.

• Expect the forces of law and order to be a primary target.  Law-abiding officers and agencies will be politicized, and those who resist will be demoted, harassed, and driven out.  The families of officers may become targets for rioters and mobs, and may even be killed.  Once law enforcement has been polarized, it will become an arm of oppressive government, its powers turned against citizens who resist in any way, shape or form.  Officers who object won't be there long enough to make a difference.
• Expect business rules and regulations to be warped and twisted in favor of politically correct causes, rather than basic economics.  Crimes against businesses will be justified on the grounds of social deprivation or need, and those committing them will not be prosecuted by the authorities.  (This is already widespread in America, as we've seen in these pages several times - most recently in Los Angeles.)
• The right of citizens to security, self-defense, etc. will be eroded to the point of non-existence.  Anyone acting to defend himself and/or his loved ones will face criminal investigation, and if an attacker was killed or injured in the process, no matter how legitimately, the defender will likely face prosecution.  The facts of the matter won't matter at all.  Instead prosecution will become a weapon with which to cow, intimidate and threaten the people into compliance.
• The powers that be will arrogate to themselves the right to decide about your children's education, where and how you may spend your money, and all sorts of aspects of your everyday life that you're used to deciding for yourself.  Your life will no longer be under your control, because they can't trust you to live it in a politically correct way.  Therefore, you'll be forced to do that, and your children will be propagandized and brainwashed until they don't know any different.  Efforts to safeguard them from that by (for example) homeschooling, even though technically legal, will be met by the imposition of politically correct study syllabi, complete with examinations that demand politically correct answers.  If the student fails them, he'll be forced into public education to "correct" the "imbalance" in his or her understanding.  (Dennis Prager refers to the "Sovietization of California".  That's not a bad description of what's happening there in all these areas.)
• Anyone seeking to fight back against this, in the courts, or through mobilizing public opinion, will be demonized by the powers that be.  This may include harassment by city inspectors for "code violations" or "unsafe structures" or any one of a host of regulatory transgressions that they "discover" at the drop of a hat.  Resisters can expect to be portrayed as extremists, right-wingers, racists (of course) and anything else that comes to mind.
• Attempts at physical opposition will be categorized as insurrection or armed resistance or vigilantism.  Expect weapons to be more and more tightly controlled, except for those on the "right side", who won't have any trouble getting hold of them.  Expect courts to be merciless to everyone else.  (For example, Kyle Rittenhouse has been charged with murder, despite substantial evidence that he acted in self-defense;  but Gaige Grosskreutz, the third man he shot, who was threatening him with a handgun, was a convicted felon, and therefore illegally in possession of a firearm.  He has not been charged with anything.)

When enough pressure has built up in society, I expect there to be acts of armed resistance against progressive, left-wing tyranny.  These are likely to involve attacks against electrical infrastructure (for example, the Metcalf attack in 2014);  sabotage of transport infrastructure (for example, derailing trains, or causing blockages of vital roads, etc.);  disruption of delivery systems (e.g. distribution centers for vital supplies, commercial warehouses, etc.);  and so on.  In many cases, these attacks will seek to stop supplies being given to politically favored groups and divert them to those who are not in favor, and may therefore be deprived of what they need.  It's likely to develop into an urban-rural conflict, too, with cities trying to ensure they get the supplies they need by forcing rural areas to either provide them, or allow supplies to transit through them to the cities - without, of course, delivering any of those supplies to the areas through which they pass.

The powers that be will not take resistance lying down.  They'll try to crack down on resistance, weaponize law enforcement into the armed wing of their politically correct administrations, and generally terrorize people into compliance.  This will almost certainly include whipping up mob violence against groups and areas that are judged to be resistant to their policies (for example, richer suburbs that can afford their own private security guards, private schools, etc.).  "Lynch law" may apply, too, with resisters (peaceful or not) beaten up or killed as an example to others.  There will be more and more aggressive attempts to disarm the general public, so that they can't resist the authorities.

Meanwhile, the central government will blithely continue on its way, ignoring political opposition.  In fact, the "opposition" will probably support the overall trend, because they've been bought off.  Many people speak of the "Uniparty" in the USA, where the distinctions between Republicans and Democrats are only skin deep.  I can't help but agree with that observation.  I think that all our Congressional representatives and Senators, with a very few honorable exceptions, are corrupt and feckless.  I'd as soon throw out the lot of them, impose strict term limits so that their offices can no longer corrupt those who fill them, and then elect a clean slate of politicians with no ties to the political machines that control city and regional politics.  A plague on all their houses!

I'm not suggesting that anyone foment violent revolution.  I'm simply saying that in three violent national uprisings, this is the pattern I've seen in every case.  The same pattern is evident in Venezuela right now.  That country is likely to be a living example to many leftists in the USA as well, because they thoroughly approve of all Chavez and Maduro have done to entrench themselves in power and destroy any effective opposition.  They regard Venezuela as a textbook rather than a tragedy.  They feel the same way about Cuba under Castro.

Folks, this is what I believe is coming to the USA before long.  I hope and pray I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.  All it will take is one more major upheaval to plunge us into the morass of permanent societal conflict, including armed conflict.  I think that upheaval will be economic, when the inevitable results of our politicians spending money like there's no tomorrow will take effect.  I'm expecting severe inflation, if not hyperinflation, within the next year or two, no matter what "official" statistics may claim or predict.  (As we've seen in these pages, the real rate of consumer inflation has been hovering at about 10% per year for the last decade or more, despite the pablum figures dispensed by the authorities.). I think inflation may be accompanied by an asset price collapse (including housing), because people without jobs and incomes won't have money to buy those assets.  Those who are cushioned from the blow by having lots of money will either leave with it, or be co-opted into the ruling circle to defend what they've got against the "have-nots".  Again, that's been the classic pattern, and I've seen it before.

If you think I'm wrong, feel free to say so in Comments.  This is an open discussion, after all.  Frankly, I hope I am wrong.  I don't want to see any of this again.  Three times is enough in one lifetime!  Sadly, however, the pattern is already clear in this country.

So, I've described what I think is heading our way.  In my next post, I'll discuss how we can respond to it.

Peter