Something a friend said to me the other day...

[Strings]

My observations (one of which I've made numerous times)

I don't think the far left truly understands what they're going to cause. And it will be the Far Left that provides the spark to the fire.

I think we all know someone (or a few someones) who are... capable of creating massive damage to people and infrastructure. Mostly people who served in the military, and (thankfully) still have faith in the Social Contract. And that's what the Left is striking at: the Social Contract that keeps the lid on open warfare. Once that is seen as broken, all hell breaks loose.

Not sure how it will look in the beginning: may seem to be a fairly clear "white hat v. blue hat" fight. But it will devolve, and I'm betting it will devolve quickly. Want to know what it will look like at the end? What the ending of Reservoir Dogs, to see it in microcosm

[T.O.M.]

I truly hope none of this ever becomes more than a debate and discussion online.  I have two sons that I hope will die of old age in 50+ years.

That said, in my job I have contact with people all along the political spectrum.  It seems to me only those on the far ends of both sides are so far apart that it appears to 've approaching battle lines.  By far and away, most of us seem to be in the middle, living our lives,  caring for our families, and while we may disagree about things, we aren't looking for that kind of fight.

If blood is spilled, where the lines would 've drawn would prove interesting.  I know a lot of serious Democrat card carrying union brothers and sisters who have serious firepower in their safes, and no intention of giving it up because libs say so.  I also know a lot of LEOs at local, state, and federal level who truly believe Molon Labe,  2A, and would hand in their badge if those lines were drawn.

Strategically, the centers of lib population are spread way out.  Makes supporting each other pretty difficult.  Especially if the Patriots in flyover country blow train tracks, highway bridges, etc.    That all said, what about the rest of the world?  If USA becomes the former United States, China has a whole lot of money invested in us staying United, making money, and paying them.  Whole lot of other countries would sit up and take notice, maybe even choose a side.  It wouldn't likely stay a domestic issue for long.

[freakazoid]

Don't see how them being on the ports would help them. We've got military bases every where. I don't see us just giving them up, especially our naval base in San Diego.

[French G.]

I got lot less political when Obama malaise set in in the second term. I could not personally bring myself to hate half the country and a good chunk of my family. And besides, I hate conservatives too, just single issue vote for them. Well, it'd be two or four issues, but the only conservative that makes any noise about border security, national defense, or smaller govt is a corrupt New York liberal. I really try to be decent to anyone and avoid labels. My drinking buddy is a liberal by family tradition. That they pay corporate tax kinda damps that progressive fire a bit. But we get along once past the intial stage of labeling and dividing we as society seem intent on.

[MechAg94]

Don't see how them being on the ports would help them. We've got military bases every where. I don't see us just giving them up, especially our naval base in San Diego.

Well, being near the ports doesn't mean they have them. 

The exact nature of such action is nearly impossible to predict.  I would lean far more to splinter groups deciding that violence is the way to go and trying to turn terrorist.  If it was not shut down quickly, that sort of disruption could screw things up all over quite a bit.  Once things get bad in general all bets are off.

[230RN]

Chris remarked,

"Whole lot of other countries would sit up and take notice, maybe even choose a side.  It wouldn't likely stay a domestic issue for long."

Agreed,  As much as I dislike globalism for its touchy-feely-kumbaya-bruderheit aspects, we (the global we) are so intertwined that international conflict seems quite possible.

One of the problems is we do not have the ammunition or ambition to fight the leftists in their propaganda war.  I've got a neighbor who is a gun owner in the real "gun owner" sense, who, when the high-cap magazine debate was taking place in the Colorado legislature, suddenly made remarks akin to "who needs high-capacity magazines?"

He had apparently been influenced by the left's constant propaganda barrage over the years. 

That's what we're really fighting, in my view.

[Kingcreek]

I called my cousin and put in my order for another 1/2 beef, stopped by the neighbor's and agreed to buy another grass fed lamb, and sat down and reloaded another 600 rounds of 556. I'll start stepping up my fuel supply both gas and diesel.
Ah, I feel better now out here in the sticks...

[Hawkmoon]

One of the problems is we do not have the ammunition or ambition to fight the leftists in their propaganda war.  I've got a neighbor who is a gun owner in the real "gun owner" sense, who, when the high-cap magazine debate was taking place in the Colorado legislature, suddenly made remarks akin to "who needs high-capacity magazines?"

I have a good friend, an Army veteran (a generation after my time -- his father was in Vietnam at the same time I was), who shocked me the other day by saying he believes in the Second Amendment but he doesn't think "civilians" should be allowed to own "assault weapons," and he favors universal background checks.

It was a struggle to stifle a hasty retort.

[Ben]

Don't see how them being on the ports would help them. We've got military bases every where. I don't see us just giving them up, especially our naval base in San Diego.

Well, it's not just having the ports. The ports are starting points for goods trucked and otherwise shipped well into middle America, so you would have to have guaranteed clear routes of transportation.

And again, it's not that I think something like a civil war as we know it would happen. I'm more of a, "We'll die with a whimper, like the Roman Empire" kinda thinker.

Anyway, if it ever happened that say CA seceded, I'm sure our wimpy govt would make arrangements to give CA the port of LA/LB and pay them some ridiculous amount of money for port use and for transportation routes out of the state/country. They'd probably also pay them some ridiculous amount of rent for military bases as well, and likely throw in free protection so CA wouldn't have to stand up their own military. If CA lost the ports and had to stand up their own defense and pay a host of other bills that get covered by the feds, they'd soon find themselves much, much lower than "the 6th largest economy in the world" status they are always bragging about.

[Hawkmoon]

Are there any viable deep water ports in northern California, or Oregon or Washington?

I know we have a mothball fleet in Washington. Could that be ramped up into a full-fledged, active Navy base to replace San Diego?

[T.O.M.]

Been thinking about the Cali bailout on the US.  Think any of the proponents of this idea have considered what would happen when federal funds stop flowing into the state?

[K Frame]

Been thinking about the Cali bailout on the US.  Think any of the proponents of this idea have considered what would happen when federal funds stop flowing into the state?

Of course they have...

We have one of the largest economies in the world and we won't have to share with horrible TrumpMerica! It will be all unicorns, fairies, and rainbows! Every Californian will live like a king! Every undocumented immigrant who has been harried by and discriminated against in the United States of Racism will be welcomed with loving, open arms! Utopia!

More importantly, social welfare utopia! We're the right people who will finally make a socialist state work!


After the absolutely massive outflow of taxpayers who don't want any part of that *expletive deleted*it, and the massive inflow of low wage teat sucklers whose only desire is MOAR FREE SHITZ! I give it 5 years before it's an absolute crash and burn.

If not sooner when the parts of the state that want no part of this liberal fantasy bullshit try to break away and armed insurrection breaks out.

[Perd Hapley]

Come on, Mike. Leave some exclamation points for the rest of us.

[Pb]

The first Civil war probably the most horrible thing to ever happen to this country.  Anyone who wants it to happen again needs to think some more.  I have relatives who fought on each side, and several that were murdered as civilians by related terrorism.

[Ben]

Of course they have...

We have one of the largest economies in the world and we won't have to share with horrible TrumpMerica! It will be all unicorns, fairies, and rainbows! Every Californian will live like a king! Every undocumented immigrant who has been harried by and discriminated against in the United States of Racism will be welcomed with loving, open arms! Utopia!

More importantly, social welfare utopia! We're the right people who will finally make a socialist state work!


After the absolutely massive outflow of taxpayers who don't want any part of that *expletive deleted*it, and the massive inflow of low wage teat sucklers whose only desire is MOAR FREE SHITZ! I give it 5 years before it's an absolute crash and burn.

If not sooner when the parts of the state that want no part of this liberal fantasy bullshit try to break away and armed insurrection breaks out.

That's what I would like to see if CA seceded, but as I speculated in my previous post, I highly, highly doubt the US would simply say, "You're on your own, let us know how it works out." I guarantee it would turn into a Puerto Rico style money drain for "infrastructure treaties" or something.

Are there any viable deep water ports in northern California, or Oregon or Washington?

Seattle would be the next biggest on the West Coast, but it's less than half the capacity of LA/LB. LA/LB accounts for 25% of all container traffic in the US.

[K Frame]

Realistically, who thinks that California would be allowed to gracefully exit the United States?

We played that game once before and it didn't exactly work out well for the parties that wanted to exit. I suspect that it would work out much the same way.

California National Guard would be nationalized to remove it from the governor's control and... how do the moonbeam 'tardunists "enforce their will"?

[Ben]

Realistically, who thinks that California would be allowed to gracefully exit the United States?

Very highly unlikely, IMO. Anyway, even in CA, it's a bigmouthed, whiny minority talking about it, and they have been for years. I remember when Bush was elected, some woman in a bar was droning on and on to me about "6trh largest economy - we need to secede!"

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure, but I think constitutionally, it is much easier (but still difficult) to add or split states than it is to secede.

[Perd Hapley]

I know secession doesn't exactly have a rosy history in the U.S., but it sure seems tempting to let the blue states just go their way, leaving the red states to keep doing this America thing. Probably a lot of practical reasons why that would have horrible consequences, though, well beyond the ones that seem obvious to me.

   I keep coming back to Americans having to slowly take back our institituons and influence centers, the way the anti-Americans took them away from us.

[Pb]

I would love a constitutional amendment to give a mechanism for states to peacefully leave the union.

[K Frame]

"some woman in a bar was droning on and on to me about "6trh largest economy - we need to secede!""

Something just dawned on me...

Much of California's status as the 6th largest economy in the world is based on its ports serving the entire United States.

Kind of stupid to think that they'd be able to maintain that status if they were to withdraw from the union. Something tells me that their economy would quickly fall by a lot.

[Scout26]

I got this in an E-mail from a lawyer friend that I teach Hunter Ed with:

Fight on, Trump - "You magnificent bastard"

This is a great article....................... .....................

With a description of politics in the US since the mid sixties.  

Evan Douglas Sayet is a comedian and conservative speaker. He is the nation's leading conservative speaker, an in-demand Master of Ceremony for Republican events. Sayet is the author of The Kinder Garden Of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks And Why He's Convinced That Ignorance Is Bliss.

HE FIGHTS....

by Evan Sayet

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #Never Trumpers) constantly ask me if I'm not bothered by Donald Trump's lack of decorum. They ask if I don't think his tweets are "beneath the dignity of the office." Here's my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship.


Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized "collegiality" as John McCain? We tried propriety: has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.


I don't find anything "dignified," "collegial" or "proper" about Barack Obama's lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds simply because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don't see anything "dignified" in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don't see anything "statesman-like" in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was "articulate" and "polished" but in no way was he in the least bit "dignified," "collegial" or "proper."


The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the '60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they've fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one of the violent take-over of the universities till today.


The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety. With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America 's first wartime president in the Culture War.  During wartime, things like "dignity" and "collegiality" simply aren't the most essential qualities one looks for in warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming.   Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Â  Lincoln rightly recognized that, "I cannot spare this man. He fights..."


General George Patton was a vulgar-talking son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum then, Hitler and the Socialists would be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.  Trump is fighting. And what's particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel's, he's shouting, "You magnificent bastard, I read your book!" That is just the icing on the cake, but it's wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he's defeating the Left using their own tactics.  That book is Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, a book so essential to the Liberals' war against America that it isand was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton's senior thesis.  It is a book of such pure evil, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted.


Trump's tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after "the fake media" (and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri) Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal.   Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as "the most powerful weapon of all." ... Most importantly, Trump's tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices. They can either "go high" (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve.


It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama's close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright's church. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration's weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration's cover-up.


So, to my friends on the Left and the #Never Trumpers as well: do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be "collegial" and "dignified" and "proper"? Of course I do. These aren't those times. This is war. And it's a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.
  So, say anything you want about this president - I get it - he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times.

 

I don't care. I can't spare this warrior. He fights for America!  Fight on you magnificent bastard!

 

  

[DittoHead]

By far and away, most of us seem to be in the middle, living our lives,  caring for our families, and while we may disagree about things, we aren't looking for that kind of fight.

This is certainly what I see in the real world. It's quite different than what is seen online and it seems easy for people to get caught up in that stuff even when their daily reality is quite different. I spend lots of time with people who disagree with me politically and it's just not a big deal. We certainly don't consider each other enemies, even the people I know I'm 100% opposite from. In the worst case scenarios we just try to avoid talking politics.

The enjoyment people seem to get from wargaming  these political civil war fantasies is mildly disturbing.

[makattak]

This is certainly what I see in the real world. It's quite different than what is seen online and it seems easy for people to get caught up in that stuff even when their daily reality is quite different. I spend lots of time with people who disagree with me politically and it's just not a big deal. We certainly don't consider each other enemies, even the people I know I'm 100% opposite from. In the worst case scenarios we just try to avoid talking politics.

The enjoyment people seem to get from wargaming  these political civil war fantasies is mildly disturbing.

In the real world, I see my wife afraid to speak openly about her positions, as she sees other people in her profession being shut down and attempted to be ruined for expressing nekulturny opinions.

In the real world, I see people shunning me, who were previously friendly because I happened to wear an NRA jacket.

It's not just online. 

[DittoHead]

In the real world, I see my wife afraid to speak openly about her positions, as she sees other people in her profession being shut down and attempted to be ruined for expressing nekulturny opinions.

In the real world, I see people shunning me, who were previously friendly because I happened to wear an NRA jacket.

It's not just online. 

I'm not going to argue that you or your wife haven't experienced these things, just sharing my own perspective - one which seemed underrepresented in this thread. I think people on this board (and others like it) can get themselves a bit worked up since it's kind of an echo chamber. I remember people calling Obama's reelection the end of America, that we wouldn't last another 4 years and even if we did he wouldn't allow power to be wrenched from his grasp. 

[cordex]

I think I've been reading too much on the fall of the Roman Republic.