The latest podcast by one of my favorite historians, Dan Carlin, recounts the year 1968 in American history. As I often say, those of us who complain about the false significance of St. George Floyd and the ‘racial reckoning’ in the wake of his Woke martyrdom often have 1968 to remember. Today in America we are having a long hot summer, but we have had nowhere near the number of bombings and race riots as we suffered in ‘68. We are not at war today. We were at war then. Assassins missed today. Assassins did not miss in 1968.
In this new book released today, my essay reflects on the change in my family in the years beyond 1968, of how we went from separatist to integrationist. How we decided that family integrity was more important than political radicalism. These days I am coming to think how important that a concrete recognition of war focuses the minds of people who, in its absence, find ways to abstract themselves away from common sense. I know that there are millions of Americans who strain to think what could possibly get them to think outside the boxes of their party’s ideological police actions. The excuse-making is mind-boggling. The event horizon of the partisan memory hole defies restraint. I say they’re going all in showing a pair of deuces. But yeah it’s American populist politics and four deuces and a joker seems unbeatable. Especially when postmodernists can declare any card of color to be the wildcard.
But the military intelligence works differently. You have to plan for and counter deadly threats and failures cost lives. I don’t have the experience to tell me what a rear echelon demotion looks like or how common it is in practice, but the Charge of the Light Brigade was no joke. Similarly it was no joke to be hanging around Chicago or Orangeburg SC on certain days in 1968. The front lines were here and combatants were ready to riot. But the simple fact remains. We are the same human hardware and we put our bodies in harm’s way with a certain necessary amount of calculation driven to balance survival with conviction. But any reasonable assessment shows us while the conviction is high, the existential risk is low. As crazy as media tell us it’s getting, nothing has quite surpassed Antifa Portland and Ferguson, MO. People are still not starving in America, neither are they strafing. We’re just hysterical. Who is going to call out the national guard. Which guardsmen are going to show up, over what?
I think the obvious answer would be a successful assassination of President Trump. Love him, hate him or ignore him, over 40% of the electorate is backing him. That’s no joke, and of course some of them are unreasonable. Unreason wins elections, and nobody has found a replacement for elections, as sketchy as we have allowed them to become. Corruption didn’t ruin Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans or New York. Not as much as economic failure ruined Gary or kept our best manufacturing out of the South. Yet the nation survives. But lets get back to the violent dissent, shall we?
The military intelligence, whether you like it or not, is learning lessons from Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen and anywhere else actual bombs and actual automatic rifles are being used on a daily basis. As awful as school shootings have been since Columbine (1999), the best guess anyone has shows less than 400 dead over 25 years. In 2014 when America was in a panic over ‘unarmed black men’ I published the following chart:
As you can deduce, playground equipment is as deadly as school shooters. The questions to ask in all of these cases have to do with what level of policing we want. But the bigger question from my point of view is what will it take to get truly wise people motivated to address the larger problems in society. Not just the ones that make YouTube influencers zoom their cameras on their faces and raised eyebrows, the ones that are widespread, frequent and physically destructive. No we’re not talking about the latest meme about some Haitian Johnny Verbeck. We’re talking about the Zetas. Well, we on the actual side of reason are.
At some point, we have to recognize that serious, grownup Americans like Ward Carroll are taking real tragic conflict in stride. This is what we expect of military intelligence, not just the institutional sort, but the sort trained into minds that don’t go all faint over deadnaming and venal microaggressions categorized by the handwringing class. Witness Ward.
I’ll only editorialize this far. It was a brilliant operation. There is nothing quite so eye-opening as a revelation of how far ordinary life is permeated with conspiratorial danger and those who would aid and abet revolution. Any innocent life lost today in collateral damage is but a blip in the score of outing the subversives. That’s what policing does. This is the cost of conflict. Ask Ferguson. Ask Orangeburg. Ask Watts. Monsters from the id. We can’t pretend we do not entertain them. We cannot pretend we are immune to this conflict.
It’s rather pissing me off that I’m getting so deep into Aldrete’s Military Bloopers. It’s understandable that our historical proximity to smaller tragedies should make us a bit less sanguine than when we talk about the genius of Hannibal. But when you consider the expense of life lost in world population during the Punic Wars as compared to those of the Trail of Tears or Little Big Horn you wonder about our sense of perspective. After all, everyone is in some way indigenous. Every foreigner who comes over a border with hostile intent is a danger to society. Every police officer polices. Every law that is enforced requires force. Decriminalization depopulates. It didn’t take long in San Francisco. Yes I’m pissed off because I’m becoming one of those people who care a bit more about law and order than postmodern distractions and white parties in the Hamptons. I don’t want to sound dire or shrill, but we are primed for another candidate like Nixon. Does America even have a law and order majority? Are we even serious about crime and chaos?
Civil liberty is quite precious. Law and order can be enforced by martial means. The zeitgeist doesn’t sound amenable to finding any balance. Calm heads are not prevailing, nor are they clear and present in the candidacies this time around. How many Portlands do we need to lose before some balance is restored? How many dissidents will targeted by military intelligence? How many race riots, how many bombs must it take? Damn, I’m sounding like Bob Dylan.
As my own family story demonstrates it only takes a few years to leave a radical past behind to find comfort in an integrated liberal mainstream. We have that in many places, but we’re losing the fringes. Those of us capable of reasonable negotiations without algorithmic leverage are losing ground.
The Cyber war is here, and one way or another, the next administration is going to look closer at weaponizing it. How much civil liberty do we deserve? We the people deserve it all. I’m just not sure that capable people with sound judgement will be in charge this time next year, so who will defend us from real enemies? The APB is out, but who’s driving those cop cars?
I’ll try to find something less pessimistic to talk about next time - depending on what happens. Buy my book and read through the positivity. We need renewal.