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antifa, BLM, Bookworm, Donald Trump, joe biden, Kamala Harris, Kurt Schlichter, marxism, NCOs, Pentagon, Red States, Second Civil War, Stephen Coonts, Sturgis Bike Rally, Swallwell nuns
One of the finest writers on the Internet—or anywhere, actually—is Andrea Widberg, AKA Bookworm. I’ve known her for quite a few years now, and engaged in at least one collegial Internet endeavor with her. She’s brilliant, kind, insightful and an example of the best human femininity can offer. These days she writes not only at Bookworm Room, but for The American Thinker. It’s an honor to know her, and if you’re not reading her daily, you’re missing much.
Her writings often inspire mine, which is the case for this article. In a mid-May article, Andrea suggested armed rebellion against the Federal Government is impossible—doomed to failure. Let’s explore that assertion.
People who believe in the possibility of a civilian uprising point to the fact that Americans are well armed and getting better armed. The current guesstimate is that 42% of American households are armed. Despite the ongoing ammunition shortages, Americans probably have enough ammo to keep them going for a while. Some believe that this is a sufficient bulwark against encroachments on American liberty, which is exactly what the Founders had in mind when they included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
I have several reasons for believing that an armed rebellion is pie in the sky thinking:
There is a much wider chasm between civilian weaponry and military weaponry than existed in the Revolutionary era. The AR-15’s that Democrats demonize are simply fancy rifles. Some people have more complex and powerful weapons, but for the most part, Americans have pistols and rifles. In the Revolutionary era, the military and the civilians had the same kind of guns. The military added to that canons and mortars. That was it.
Today’s military, though, has an unimaginably more powerful arsenal than civilians do. Just spend a few minutes watching recruiting commercials for the American military. (I mean the recruiting commercials before they started being woke.) We can do low-level civilian warfare for a while, but I happen to think it’s ludicrous to believe that an impromptu civilian army can stand up against the biggest, best-equipped military in the world.
It’s easy to point to tribesman in Afghanistan that have done just that for a very long time, yet that makes it no less true. The outcome of such a potential conflict can’t be determined merely by the weapons or combat power involved. Of course the military has more advanced weapons than most civilians. As the idiotic and vile California Representative Eric Swalwell observed, rebellion is impossible because the feds have nukes. Facing a massive backlash, Swallwell tried to backpedal, but there is little doubt he, and others like him, would be delighted to imprison, kill, even nuke their political enemies. Even so, that’s unlikely in the extreme.
If civilians are to have a chance against the federal government if it turns against them, they need a military that will side with them. However, starting with Obama, the Democrats have been taking care to make sure that the military does not ally itself with ordinary Americans. I’ve written before about the cancer in the Pentagon, so I’m not going to belabor that point. However, I have a few things to add to it.
Andrea’s “A Cancer in the Pentagon” article is must reading. She goes on to point out the Pentagon is staffed by people interested in protecting the D/S/C Party and its social justice imperatives rather than America. They’re also actively recruiting for social justice warriors, not American patriots. They’re also trying to purge the military of patriots, who naturally oppose socialism and Marxism:
In Biden’s military, the dominant doctrine appears to be Marxism. And the troops whom the Pentagon wants in its new military are those who eschew traditional American values in favor of Marxism, social justice, Critical Race Theory, etc. So, I ask you: Are these the kind of people who will side with ordinary civilians in a revolutionary scenario or are they people who will instead vigorously support a government crackdown?
The question is: to what degree is Andrea right? She was never in the military, though is an ardent supporter of our military. What her argument misses is the nature of the military, which cannot be as easily changed as anti-America lunatics desire.
Would there be high-ranking officers willing to murder fellow Americans in the name of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris? Yes, but they would be ultimately ineffective. Most of our service members understand they’re swearing an oath to the Constitution, not to any maximum leader. In communist regimes, soldiers are never allowed to stay near their homes and families/tribes. They’re sent to far-flung corners of the empire where they will have fewer reservations about killing people who are not friends, neighbors or family. That’s absolutely not the case with the American military.
Our National Guard, which our active duty military heavily depends on in war, are citizen soldiers, serving at and near their homes. They know who really appreciates them. They are very well armed indeed, and few, if any, of them at any rank would be willing to murder their friends and families. Another truism is a pistol is useful for seizing a rifle, which is useful for seizing a machine gun, which is useful for seizing a mortar, which is useful for… you get the picture. In a Civil War scenario, a huge number of National Guard units would either stand down completely—be neutral–or would simply leave with as many weapons and munitions as they pleased.
What must also be understood is in a Civil War, the country would split into red and blue states, which would gather militaries of not necessarily equal strength. A great many of our most powerful military facilities are in red states, including nuclear weapons of all kinds. The battle would not be a matter of lightly armed civilians against massive armies.
But what about attack helicopters?! What about fighter jets?! Fearsome weapons against concentrated enemy forces and while in the air. But no one is going to give them that kind of easy target, and on the ground, they’re as easily destroyed as their pilots and maintenance personnel are easily killed. But with all those advanced weapons, they’ll show rebels who’s the boss! That’s just the point: government is not the boss; it’s the servant of the American people, and when it no longer serves the people, they can abolish it. They’ve done it before.
In our military, if the Non Commissioned Officers—NCOs—aren’t onboard, nothing is going to happen, and we can be certain most, probably virtually all of them, aren’t going to be up for murdering fellow Americans to establish or preserve a socialist utopia. Our service members know very well who honors their service and who has their best interests—America’s best interests—at heart, and it’s not D/S/Cs.
To get a sense of the reality of this, I recommend Stephen Coonts’ book, Liberty’s Last Stand, which I reviewed in 2016. I also recommend Kurt Schlichter’s Kelly Turnbull series, which I reviewed in 2019. With a new book out in June, he’ll be up to six. All of those books construct a fictional, split America, but with a keen eye toward the military realities of a split country. Under no realistic scenario would a tyrannical Marxist regime prevail. In fact, under Coonts’ scenario, most of the US Military ultimately decides to sit it out, to let social justice politicians try to oppress armed and tactically trained and smart Americans by themselves. It ends badly for them. That is not an unlikely scenario. I also recommend my Second Civil War series, which explores all of these issues in some detail.
But what about D/S/C shock troops: Antifa and BLM? Those Marxist twits are mostly smart enough not to venture into red America. A few Antifa idiots tried their revolutionary street theater at the Sturgis Bike Rally a year or so ago. It didn’t work out well for them: the police had to hastily run them out of town to save their lives. Such would be the case in the real world where Normal Americans won’t put up with self-important dimwits who think wearing black makes them formidable. Back to Andrea:
Moreover, as I’ve pointed out, a Civil War would be more disastrous than anyone can comprehend. Ordinary Americans are so far removed from the source of food that most of them would starve to death in a few weeks if there were a revolution that completely stopped the supply chain. Just think about the fact that it took only three days for gas to run out after the Colonial Pipeline was shut down.
Indeed it would be disastrous. Civil Wars, because of the betrayal involved, are particularly ruthless and bloody. But the people who would be starving would not be those in Flyover Country, the part of America D/S/Cs want to suppress and control. That’s where the food is grown, the power is produced, and much of the manufacturing is done. Glance once again at the electoral map of America in the header. That’s the land mass a communist government would have to pacify, occupy and continuously garrison. It would be impossible, and whoever owns the countryside owns the country.
To be sure, the cities would become uninhabitable in very short order, places like Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles—you get the picture. Keep in mind most food and other goods is delivered by long haul truckers, who for the most part are not D/S/C true believers/supporters. Also keep in mind all of those goods travel by rail and highway—racist though that concrete and steel may be—through Normal, red America. No military—even if every single service member betrayed the Constitution–is big enough to keep all of that open.
Again let me reiterate, no one I know is arguing for a revolution. To a man (and woman), the people in my world strongly support the Constitution, the ballot box, and the rule of law. This post contains hypothetical arguments that are meant to expose the serious changes in the federal system, especially in the military. They are food for thought. That is all.
I could not agree more. I write about the possibility of a second Civil War not because I hope for one, but because by pointing out reality, I hope to prevent one. This little article, too, is food for thought.
But what if the military were able to completely purge its ranks of patriotic Americans? What if every real war fighter, every man and woman willing to dedicate themselves to becoming and remaining lean, mean fighting machines was drummed out to be replaced by pajama boys, racist Black Power thugs, and all manner of LGBTQWERTY whiners? Oh yeah. Now there’s a formidable fighting force, isn’t it? Keep in mind should that sort of thing happen, they wouldn’t be fighting Americans, at least not long. That kind of weakness could easily provoke an invasion by our enemies, who are not purging their ranks of warriors, quite the opposite. At the very least, they’d take the opportunity of a feckless and divided US to redraw the map and wreak all manner of damage on us too.
One more thought: the internal enemies of America recognize Normal Americans armed with AR-15s and similar weapons are a formidable threat. That’s why they’re so determined to disarm them. That’s why they’re trying to paint normal Americans as insurrectionists and terrorists.
At bottom, all of us must hope that honest elections in 2022 and 2204 allow voters to show the true direction in which they want this country’s government to take America.
This raises another question that may determine whether we will remain a united, 50 states. Will there be honest elections in 2022 and 2024? D/S/Cs are working feverishly to ensure there will never again be honest elections. They’re calling election integrity measures like voter ID a threat to democracy. Should Republicans take over the government, D/S/Cs have made it more than clear they will not be the loyal opposition, but a crazed, Marxist resistance. To their way of thinking, no Republican government is legitimate. If Americans come to believe our elections cannot be trusted—and the seeds of that mistrust have already been planted—it’s all over.
Until D/S/Cs love the Constitution and the rule of law more than they love raw power, more than they hate normal Americans, the specter of Civil War will hang over us all. Take the links I’ve suggested and consider the arguments, the realities you’ll find there. Normal Americans will not only resist a tyrannical government, they will crush it, and our domestic potential tyrants know it.
Let us also not forget that, sheer weight of numbers aside, American citizens do all the heavy lifting in this country. All it would take to absolutely paralyze the D/S/Cs would be for large numbers of long-haul truckers to divert deliveries of foodstuffs away from a relatively few Blue urban zones for a week or two. DC grows no crops except grifters and perverts. =^[.]^=
If the shit hits the fan, I have little intention of going toe to toe with the US military. I will primarily engage the woke folk who chose to identify themselves as my enemies by displaying their Harris/Biden bumper stickers and other liberal insignia.. If a few million patriots such as myself initiate hostilities in this manner, the civil war will be over in a day. The structural metamorphosis in the political balance of power will ensure that never again will the D/S/C’s aquire political power.
MIke, I think the guard may be the answer. If it comes to it, say if election audits show massive fraud and washington does nothing, the guard from red states roll into town and take over the federal government. I would not be surprised if even the blue state guards don’t end up on our side as well. Being a warrior takes a certain mindset that is incompatible with D/S/C’ism. Of course you can get sociopaths and thugs, but they are not really warriors. Then of course, there is SOCOM. Just a thought experiment…
I have family and friends that are in the military or recently got out and I can confirm that the ranks of the military are by no means guaranteed to be on the side of the Constitution. The best case scenario for the military is that it fractures, hard. What faction remains in command in the event of civil war or unconstitutional orders will be highly dependent on which groups of officers wind up seizing control, and that will vary from base to base. It’s not a coincidence that the Harris-Biden administration is working so hard to vet the military. Any military officers who voted Trump or Republican are now highly unlikely to find themselves in positions of authority, or rise further in the ranks. We also have a high number of left leaning or apolitical welfare drones who join the military as a way to get out of inner city hell-holes. They’re following the tactics of Mao – get members of the party in firm control of the military, oust those who are not on the same page.
Asymmetric warfare similar to that seen in Northern Ireland, or mass unrest and Balkanization such as we saw in the former state of Yugoslavia are what face the Unites States. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and we no longer have common ground. Unfortunately a majority of “Republican” politicians refuse to acknowledge reality and are doing nothing to counter the groundwork of our communist would be rulers.
As of a couple of years ago, there was a very controversial paper written by an active military tactician that figured the US military could probably take two medium sized US cities, with massive casualties and it would take a while.
It was soundly criticized because he flat out stated that he had to stack the deck by assuming that none of the military defected, there was no attempt to do outside help to the cities, and there were basically no vets who could go in and take military equipment…and even granting that, others familiar with our military power thought he was over-estimating how easily some things would happen. (For example, he assumed that it would be possible to take out primary transportation routes. For somewhere like El Paso, or Manhattan, that will work– but, say, Des Moines? There aren’t choke points.)
What a lot of these folks miss is that our military is pretty small to start with.
While it’s easy to arm-chair quarterback the what-ifs presented by both Mike and Bookworm. I sincerely hope and pray we never test either theory. The U.S. military has, in fact been called out against the American citizenry many time: the draft riots of 1863, the bonus riot of 1932, numerous race-related riots during the ‘50s/60s civil rights era, Rodney King, Kent State, New York postal strike, and more. Anyone that believes Americans would not take up arms against their neighbor should remember the American Civil War, where families literally fought and killed one another.
We live in an extremely divided America, where many, on either side are fanatical in their beliefs. While I agree that the military rank and file “might” tend to be conservative, I’m not willing to bet either my life or that of my loved one’s on it.
Maybe because I live in Texas that I mention this. But never forget that the first thing that would happen in a civil war 2 is that electrical grids would be taken down everywhere and stay own. The essential infrastructure is mainly above ground and unprotected. I am not endorsing anything except taking on an awareness that the underpinnings of our modern life are ridiculously fragile and the only reason they have not been kicked out from under us is the lack of the evil intent to do so. Or that a state actor would be retaliated against.
In CV2, we would retaliate against ourselves.
Dear Rum:
Yes, however I suspect residents of red states would be far better equipped to deal with any hardship, and to help their neighbors.
so in my lifetime we have gone from “leave it to beaver” to members of our own government openly talking about using the military; and nukes against the citizens they’re supposed to represent. they are deathly afraid of what is going to happen when it becomes impossible to conceal from us how horribly they’ve fucked us over.
Dear ontoiran:
We either expose them fully and punish the guilty–restoring American constitutionalism and the rule of law–or America ends. There is no other way, and they’re forcing the confrontation.