Lickers: among the enemies of civilization
When I decided to title this post “the enemies of civilization”, I didn’t mean what’s often meant by the phrase: barbarians who plunder and murder and rape and pillage.
I’m talking about the sort of thing Sarah Hoyt was referring to in this excellent post, which deals with a topic I’ve been meaning to write about—the breaking of the social contract in ways that seem minor but aren’t.
A long time ago I wrote about a childhood version of this in a post called “The Martin Higby phenonmenon.” It describes a situation in which a few people (or in the case of Martin Higby, one person) can cause trouble for the rest of us by not following the basic rules of civilized behavior by which the group functions. Those violations can be small and still have a pernicious effect for everyone.
Sarah Hoyt writes about a present-day version: people who’ve followed the latest craze of licking various public food items that are for sale and then putting them back on the shelves, and celebrating their actions on social media. Hoyt writes:
Civilization could be considered the way that humans changed — tamed — themselves so we can live in vast quantities, close together. The city requires a different discipline from the ape band, which had maybe fifteen individuals, whose lives were brutish, nasty, short and infinitely dirty. To improve that, it started with behavior that allowed us to live in larger groups: software in the head that allowed to consider ever more extended family and eventually strangers part of the ‘band’, and ways to keep food clean, and ways to control our tempers so that we didn’t all spend all of our time killing each other. Ways to share, and ways to behave that increased trust between total strangers. This included trusting those who handled and sold your food…
Part of the tenets of civilization is that something like this should be unthinkable. You don’t taint water and food. Even cats don’t shit where they eat.
When I read that, the phrase that immediately came to my mind was “poisoning the well.” That was far worse than what Hoyt is describing, and it’s an ancient and horrific transgression, something that invading armies sometimes did to the conquered populace, or something that disfavored groups (the Jews, for example) were falsely accused of doing in order to fan the flames of hatred against them.
Now people are performing some modern-day equivalent of well-poisoning or at least the perception of well-poisoning, and then photographing themselves and celebrating it, and doing this to food that will be feeding people in their own communities whom they don’t know and with whom they have no special beef. How destructive and nihilistic is that?
No matter if it doesn’t actually spread a disease (which in most cases it certainly won’t) or do any actual physical harm to anyone. It is nevertheless a sort of psychological terrorism, a seemingly sociopathic desire to shout out a big F-U to the entirety of the society in which the perpetraror lives.
Disturbing, to say the least.
These “lickers” should have their asses kicked by their fellow citizens when caught doing this. Like guns and fences, sometimes a good ass kicking can make a better neighbor.
WTF? This is the first I’ve heard of this, and I’m having a hard time understanding — no, I just plain do not understand — what would motivate someone to do this. Saying it is sick does not come close to describing “licking”. It is more than sick, it is senseless madness. It sounds like something that would be done by a person who is certifiably crazy.
My suggestion: take the perp to a nice biosafety level-4 facility like the one at the CDC and invite them to lick a dish containing a culture of any nasty pathogen of their choice, like Ebola or one of the other viral hemorrhagic fevers. Post their reaction on social media (which is a large part of the problem here).Then wash their mouth out with a Tide Pod.
Actually, that’s less violent than Hoyt’s reference to the Roman penalty for bad behavior.
Vile Ariana Grande licks doughnuts and declares “I hate America”.
Three years back. Career ended? Oh hells no. Her trash music is everywhere now.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/tvshowbiz/video-1197200/Ariana-Grande-shares-donut-shop-PDA-licks-donuts.html
I don’t read Sarah Hoyt regularly though I appreciate her when I do.
She’s had some dark posts lately, such as the one neo links. Note Hoyt’s title: “I See Dead Idiots,” because she foresees the licker-types being killed if they persevere with this nonsense. Not by Sarah or her friends (who are equally gleeful in the comments) but by the eventual backlash when the rest of the citizenry have had enough.
Hoyt sees the current cold civil war erupting into hot:
I expect trouble to start around or shortly after the elections. There is no way we can stop them cheating. There just isn’t. If we try it just brings the mess earlier and harder.
If what I expect is what’s coming down the pipe, unrest will be isolated, sudden, unpredictable. Most of your days will be completely routine and normal.
…
Don’t go out unarmed. Now, this depends on the laws in your region, and also your licensing. Because you don’t want to throw yourself at the mercy of the system. But at the very least, carry a knife. Always. Mailbox? Knife. Groceries? Knife.
A weighted cane (or umbrella depending on where you leave) makes an excellent weapon. And no one can deny you the ability to carry them.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/06/27/thoughts-from-the-road/
Dark. Darker. Are things that dire? They aren’t good. Reminds me of the Leonard Cohen lines:
And there’s a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong.
You see, you hear these funny voices in the tower of song.
–“Tower of Song”
Typhoid Mary gave typhus to many dozen people by stubbornly refusal to give up her job in food preparation for restaurants. She simply did not believed that she had the infection.
I don’t want to see our food despoiled by random vandals who break the rules of food purity and our civilized confidence that goes into the distribution and sales of food. I have read in the past about people spitting into food during preparation and I have always found the idea totally disgusting, outside the bounds of any acceptable human behavior and it should be treated as criminal activity with enough punishment to keep it from ever recurring again.
Perhaps finding those who despoil food guilty and then making them register, for life, as food perverts after they have served some hard jail time would be a good start.
Lefty won’t be satisfied until social capital has been destroyed in America to the point that all stores will be like liquor stores in bad neighborhoods, where all good for sale are displayed behind plexiglass, and handed over to you after you have paid the bored clerk behind the barrier to hand them over to you.
This is just another sign of our civilization turning in on itself. Soon, we decent folk will be demanding more and more cameras watching, ever watching, our streets, our food sources, whatever and wherever. Privacy has lost its meaning and soon we will have little or none.
Don’t go out unarmed. Now, this depends on the laws in your region, and also your licensing. Because you don’t want to throw yourself at the mercy of the system. But at the very least, carry a knife. Always. Mailbox? Knife. Groceries? Knife.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/06/27/thoughts-from-the-road/
–Sarah Hoyt
Have I not been paying attention? In 18 months or less is this a real possibility that one must pack a weapon just to check the mailbox?
Or that someone — vigilantes or the government, though not our good selves — are likely to crucify the Licker people en masse and it will be regrettable good thing?
And somewhere behind that is the idea that we’re going to need crosses lining every major highway in the West before this is solved and the barbarians pacified.
I respect Hoyt more than a bit, but I’m not on the same frequency, at least not yet.
For an entertainment break I bring you “Mike & the Mechanics” singing their hit, a bit of right-wing, political subversion, called “Silent Running.” Back when MTV was MTV.
___________________________________
Take the children and yourself
And hide out in the cellar
By now the fighting will be close at hand
Don’t believe the church and state
And everything they tell you
Believe in me, I’m with the high command
Can you hear me, can you hear me running?
Can you hear me running, can you hear me calling you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep7W89I_V_g
huxley:
I’m not on that wavelength either.
But I think the article is good nevertheless on what I see as its main point, which is the anarchy and distrust these people are attempting to sow.
Look, for example, at what has already happened to the trick-or-treating of our youth. One of the ways it was combatted was that now all candy must be factory-wrapped or it’s thrown out. Another way is that many kids just don’t go trick-or-treating anymore. We used to go out without adults, and we ate everything in sight.
neo: Oh, it’s a good article and I agree with your points.
Frankly Hoyt shocked me with those two posts and I’m mulling them over. Are things much worse than I thought?
It’s one thing for trick-or-treating to be scaled back; other thing to have to pack to check the mail.
neo: Authorities never caught the Tylenol tamperer-murderer. Seven died of cyanide poisoning. Now most OTC medications are tamper-proof.
They never caught the 2001 anthrax mailer either. Discouraging.
Not all licking is bad. Just sayin’.
I am for public caning of the lickers.
They are guilty of biological terrorism that could cost the life of an innocent.
Edward: Apparently they identified a licker in Texas. She faced 2-20 years, but since she’s a teen so she’ll be dealt with as a juvenile. Her adult boyfriend is another matter.
https://pix11.com/2019/07/05/ice-cream-licker-identified-as-texas-teen-will-not-face-adult-charges/
As I recall, authorities got serious about tampering after the Tylenol poisonings.
These miscreants could have benefited from a little more “school yard justice” when they were growing up.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/nyregion/marianne-williamson.html
Sister Marianne W is the closest you will ever get to see what happens when Ymar runs for President.
They never caught the 2001 anthrax mailer either. Discouraging.
It may have been a Deep State false flag operation to get DHS up and running. A sort of Reichstag fire.
They eventually tested the anthrax white stuff and it came from a US (black ops) bio warfare lab.
Those labs are not as insecure as HRC’s servers, btw.
Yuck. This is something I wish I’d never heard about, similar to the phenomenon of a waiter spitting in the food of a difficult customer (unbeknownst to them). It never occurred to me that this type of thing happened, and now that I know about it I’m probably (generally) nicer to food service workers as a result. Don’t want to risk it! Ultimately, I think the licking phenomenon is yet another example of what Glenn Reynolds calls “social media as a social disease.” Would this even be a thing if people couldn’t post video of themselves doing it? Ugh.
“It is nevertheless a sort of psychological terrorism, a seemingly sociopathic desire to shout out a big F-U to the entirety of the society in which the perpetraror lives.”
Those who declare themselves to be an enemy of civilization must be excluded from it.
Starting with Ariana Grande; arrest, prosecution, imprisonment followed by permanent loss of citizenship and deportation.
“Breaking of the social contract”….that would be males going in to female public restrooms and locker rooms and female only teams because they are confused about their own gender and then calling everyone who refuses to validate their delusion as “ haters”.
I was wondering if the Mike + The Mechanics song, “Silent Running,” might actually be left-wing. The writer does leave it vague in the lyrics.
It was the 80s, Reagan was President and many were worried about right-wing churches and nuclear war. (Moi!) So the line, “Don’t believe the church and state,” sounds like it could go left-wing.
But the song is a stern father to son message, not the preferred format for progressives, and goes on about praying to God the Father and the Spirit. Plus handy instructions for guns and ammunition. So I’m sticking with right-wing.
The writer has gone on record to say this much:
The story is about the idea that this father of the family is ahead in time, so he can look back and see what’s going to happen in England, and it’s not good. He’s trying to get a message back to his family to warn them that the impending disaster is coming. Hence the line, ‘Can you hear me, can you hear me calling you?’
Geez. Even the music of the 80s was much better than today’s weak buffet.
Huxley – about the knife thing…. I am a sailor and a mariner’s knife is hard to use in an emergency during a race. A friend showed me his Gerber assisted-opening knife and I now have about six of them. The ones in the boat bag have wrist straps so I don’t lose them overboard. I also have a safety knife (it looks like a heavy duty letter opener) to give to a youth on my boat if they go do foredeck work.
But my other knives are in my purse, car, bedside table, and my pocket. I never leave home without one. I use them so much outside in the garden that the knife sharpener is attached to my garden basket. I use the knife enough in everyday life that it is no big deal to carry it everywhere.
That said, having the knife gives me a sense of security since I am not yet at the conceal carry point. I have carried a gun to work during a period when a staff member was being threatened. Hey, the police suggested that we both carry and they told us where to aim. And, it was way before CC was allowed in my state.
People are crazy and I would prefer giving an attacker a quick, unexpected stab than be injured myself.
That potential 20 year sentence should deter adults but the juvinile perpetrator in this case will get off easy.
“I respect Hoyt more than a bit, but I’m not on the same frequency, at least not yet.”
huxley and neo: 5 years ago, Sarah wasn’t on that wavelength. I on the other hand, started tuning to it after the 2000 election and locked in on that wavelength since 2002, when I saw so-called fellow Americans taking the side of Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and being willing to go after fellow Americans personally, and declare them “fascists”, racists, Islamophobes, etc. for wanting to effectively defend the country, and embrace any tactic that would harm them.
And I said then that you cannot live in a society with Leftists, people whose word you cannot trust on any matter, who will not keep any agreement that prevents them from controlling your life. (The similarities between the Left and the Islamic doctrines of taqqiya and hudna, which claim that no agreement, promise, oath, or treaty with an unbeliever should be considered binding if keeping it interferes with Islam’s conquests were obvious.)
And I said that there would have to be a separation of them from among us, following the pattern set by the Founders before, during, and after the Revolution, where Loyalists were given a choice: leave the US, renounce their allegiance and STFU, or be killed. Of course, for them to choose that second option, we’d have to be able to trust the renunciation, wouldn’t we?
For saying this, I was routinely mocked and denounced as an alarmist, bloodthirsty, etc. by Sarah Hoyt and her fellow commenters. (I encountered that same reaction other places; here, for example.) Peaceful and legal means, such as the law and the courts, or elections, were enough to prevail.
And now we’ve seen that the Left will corrupt the elections, and ignore the law, and lie about it to our faces, and even commit violence against non-Leftists to advance their power and control us.
So all I have to say is “Welcome to the party, pal! Who’s laughing now?”
It is a fact that POC are less civilized than European Christians. It has been widely reported over the centuries that it is the white person’s burden to raise the savage to a higher human level. Despite the accuracy of this statement, it is rejected by modern liberals- who work tirelessly to revise the historical record, and through the institutions to morph popular Western morality until the white savior becomes the villain in need of saving.
Look to South Africa if you want to see a lesson in how whites will be saved.
It’s possible that I’d lose the bet, but based on the vocabulary chosen, as well as the internal incoherence, I’d risk, oh maybe, 50 bucks against 25, that that was written by a provocateur – or troll as the case may be..
SDN: So you are down with my paraphrase of Hoyt earlier:
Have I not been paying attention? In 18 months or less is this a real possibility that one must pack a weapon just to check the mailbox?
Or that someone — vigilantes or the government, though not our good selves — are likely to crucify the Licker people en masse and it will be regrettable good thing?
I’m wondering how this differs from Bill Ayers’ reported thinking aloud in his Weatherman days, that oh, about 25 million Americans would have to be killed after the Revolution.
I’m not laughing in either case. Are you?
This will only get worse as long as the behavior is platformed on the internet and able to be monetized. Eliminate one or the other, or both, and the incentive goes away.
Disturbing, to say the least.
The toxicity of humanity increases as Red and Blue get increasingly volatile and disturbed emotionally into fighting for their “survival”.
This is to be expected and is not that surprising to me. It was baked into the cake all along.
There is something spiritually wrong with mankind, not just Americans in general. There is a spiritual decay or evil present in humanity, which is not original sin. It is more like current modern day unHoly Voice. Just as there is a Holy Spirit whispering to people that they could overcome Milo’s circumstances, that he is an ally and brother, that he was programmed and groomed to be promiscuous which is not his True or Higher Self, so there is a Voice that calls itself Holy and Divine but is unHoly and Ego based, that says Milo is a problem, that he needs to be ostracized from the grand alliance rolls, because he is uncomfortable or embarrassing.
And people, conservatives, do that to their friends and allies. Imagine what the Leftist alliance, Marxists, Alinskites, Alt Right, Trum supporters will do to their enemies. It is all too easy to Fall, humanity.
To resume harping my usual cord about boundaries, interpersonal and otherwise, and respect for them: I’d say that this is just a milder – in effect if not in terms of vicious effrontery – version of those who deliberately seek to infect others with ailments which their own life choices have brought down on them.
For example, the dentist who deliberately infects his patients, the vicious husband who gave AIDS to his wife because he didn’t see why she should survive if he did not, or the widespread impulse of some persons who are rejected as being obnoxious or toxic – as they well may be – to stick their ass in the face of those who express disinterest in their fate; in other words, to get back at “the haughty”.
For those of this mindset and moral constitution, “Attention must be paid!” (to the annoying and undesirable) according to Rollo May. Or as Obama put it, “Tolerance is not enough”. Or as these scum of humanity mentally frame it, ” Love me, and share my fate, and feel my pain, or I’ll kill you”.
For people born into this Illusion that is Maya, they believe all too easily that this life is what matters. They do not believe in an eternity or their own soul. Their ego and dark side whispers to them that this is how to get ahead, that learning Alinsky and freezing enemies, that arguing here, making fun of people for being wrong, and elevating yourself because your folk wisdom is right, is somehow gonna be the right decision that propels your individual or family or clan or tribe to VICTORY. To the point where you can’t get tired of winning, VICTORY, and Greatness.
That voice is like the voice of the addict, of the addiction itself, because it is the mortal instinct to survive that is the enemy of the Divine. It turns out that is the voice of Satan.
(Lucifer is a different entity and that name was created by humans. His Hebrew name is Hey El, El the same as Gabri El and Micha El)
State religion has externalized evil to be the Other, since it is easy for the State to control Enemies of the State because they can be Othered, burned at the Inquisition trial stakes, and punished by the State powers.
Evil, however, properly and still exists in the human heart, not in the “external” sources. In a sense, the Christ exists simultaneously with the Heart of Evil in the minds and hearts of men and women. There’s always a devil whispering to you and always an angel whispering to you. It is just naturally more coherent for our minds and bodies to listen to the devil, for that is our biological birth destiny.
The thinking of a mortal is very different from that of an immortal. If your life is going to end soon by the hands of the enemy, then it is time to naturally do everything you can to end the threat. But an immortal does not recognize the existence of a threat because they cannot be killed and they know. They can only “allow” others to kill their body. These are completely diametrically different viewpoints. For those that believe in a Resurrection, their minds may slant towards the Divine but much of their behavior is still stuck in the physical realm and body. Belief in itself is not enough because these are merely good intentions. How do people actually act, do they act as if they have an immortal soul or not?
Do they obey Authority and believe Might is Right? Do they believe that they have the power to judge others when their own glass houses are full of problems? When Republicans have circular firing squads, such as here, then it gets pretty obvious that people’s fighting instincts are not always to their best interests. But the ego is that which punishes you for giving you the wrong decision to make. It is the thesis and the anti thesis at the same time. It motivated you to fight to survive, and then punishes you with guilt and mental problems after you have survived or failed.
But at the very least, carry a knife. Always. Mailbox? Knife. Groceries? Knife.
Sword. Sword. Other stuff.
I am reminded that in the martial arts or self defense communities (shoot em ups) it has become popular to make fun of other people’s choices, as if their choice somehow matters to your own personal self survival due to internet arguments.
This toxicity and decay of human values, will continue, so long as people refuse to kill evil. Sometimes that is a refusal to kill the Leftist alliance, sometimes that is an obedience to the survival imperative and the voice of VICTORY in Greatness to fight the enemy but not kill them. But sometimes that is just listening to your own private unholy Spirit telling you what to do all the time.
And I said then that you cannot live in a society with Leftists, people whose word you cannot trust on any matter, who will not keep any agreement that prevents them from controlling your life
You were a few years earlier than me on that wavelength of energy. I awakened in 2007 to the “domestic enemies in USA” that were more of a threat than the barbarians at the gates people kept being distracted by.
Then I backlashed from that energy, since it was actually not that productive. As humans don’t have the guts to do anything about it, always looking at themselves in the navel and saying “we are powerless”. I no longer expect a bunch of human slaves to do anything useful.
I expect the Divine to do something useful. But humanity thinks the Divine is a fantasy and also insane. Thus I am insane to them and they are insane to me.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
The first sentence is probably true; though I was unaware this kind of thing in particular was bringing significant monetary returns in terms of views.
The second point is probably too optimistic … fads, even vicious, illegal, and harmful ones existed and spread and even became ideologically programmatic long before YouTube or Worldstarhiphop.
Only severe and ruinous sanctions will have some effect. But here, nowadays, in a society wherein physical assault is tolerated and shrugged off as no big thing by many, where buggery and child molestation is accepted by a surprising minority of the population, the low in disgust, high in we-are-all-one, crowd, will work to subvert really severe punishments.
And they will do so on the basis of their primordial collectivist “principles”: which state that you have no right to maintain a distance. That you express racist and homophobic impulses by refusing their spittle and “rejecting and devaluing their bodies”. And they will then frame insanity this as a revolutionary political act performed in the name of human [ their insane version of “human”] progress… just as the German Reds did in the sixties in promoting homosexuality and child sex as a way of attacking exclusivity, and the notion of the private.
Peaceful and legal means, such as the law and the courts, or elections, were enough to prevail.
And now we’ve seen that the Left will corrupt the elections, and ignore the law, and lie about it to our faces, and even commit violence against non-Leftists to advance their power and control us.
So all I have to say is “Welcome to the party, pal! Who’s laughing now?”
I understand that emotional position, for I was in it much of the time. Although I don’t remember you originally talking about this so many years ago. But that is not an indication of anything, as many people write here that I don’t remember now.
It depends on how it is framed. To most people, if you talk in a certain way, they automaticalyl dismiss you as a conspiracy theorist. Which is likely how you came across. This is a defense mechanism, aka Mk Ultra mind conditioning. There’s not much you can do about that.
Huxley – about the knife thing…
Liz: I get the knife thing, generally speaking. I have a Swiss Army knife with me just about all the time, though I use it mostly for slicing open boxes, snipping loose threads and opening the odd wine bottle when no one has a regular opener. I have a variety of other knives, including a tactical job, which I can open one-handed, right or left.
However, my real concern is Hoyt’s insistence on the likelihood that it hits the fan around the next election and ordinary citizens will be advised to carry a serious weapon just to check the mail.
I’ve read enough history to know that bad things happen to good nations. The US is exceptional but not exceptional to that rule. Still, in 18 months or so?
Then there’s her notion of crucifying Lickers along miles and miles of highway….
In the Old West you could rob banks or you could rob stage coaches the way Black Bart did and as long as you didn’t kill anybody in the commission of these robberies you would serve 5 or 10 years in the penitentiary and probably get released for good behavior after a while.
But, if you were stupid enough to steal a $10 horse, they hanged you right then and there upon your capture, no trial, no appeal, no nothing besides the rope, because horse thievery could not in any way be tolerated, due to social circumstances. Horses were too vulnerable to theft, and the only way to discourage stealing them was to be absolutely merciless with the miscreants who stole them.
I think it’s the same way with these Lickers. If your rob money or stuff from the story, you get a trial and a short sentence; if you lick the merchandise, well, you’re worse than a horse thief.
Imaginary social constructs are imaginary. They can have real life consequences, but only when enforced with the same lack of concern for the “special circumstances” of the people who break them as reality has for people that try to break the laws of physics. Otherwise the whole civilization dies, and barbarians devour its corpse.
.. if you lick the merchandise, well, you’re worse than a horse thief.
JAMES SOLBAKKEN: So a Licker should be hung on the spot? Or maybe tortured some first, since a Licker is worse than a horse thief?
I am indignant too about Lickers, but crucifixion, hanging and death by Ebola infection, all strike me as rather skewed punishments.
So, society disintegrates. Surely it has nothing to do with inflationary money policy which kicked into high gear with Greenspan, went superluminal after 2008, and has gutted the productive economy and channeled paper wealth to the already wealthy leaving real wages stagnant since the 1970’s.
Surely, raising the price of Chinese imports will solve the problem.
They attack the high-trust society, partly to force you to trust the State instead (more laws, seals & cameras, enforcement), and partly because of envy (for they know themselves to be untrustworthy & untrusted.)
Progress takes a licken’.
So how does the scenario work?
(1) People tamper with ice cream containers by licking.
(2) Democrats steal 2020 election with voter fraud.
(3) Society breaks down.
(4) Carry knife or gun when checking mail.
(5) Crucify Lickers along highways until order is restored.
(7) sex drugs and rock n roll
(8) dogs and cats living together
😉
Huxley: However, my real concern is Hoyt’s insistence on the likelihood that it hits the fan around the next election and ordinary citizens will be advised to carry a serious weapon just to check the mail.
Two thoughts:
1. Things go bad slowly then all at once.
2. There were riots over Trump getting elected by the weekend. Antifa marches routinely and in at least one city, Portland, has taken to beating people they decide are Nazis on a regular basis. What do you think their response to a Trump re-election will be either the week of or at the Inaugural?
Actually, I do have a third point. It does not take a majority deciding things need to fall apart for things to fall apart. It just takes enough to break a few critical systems or put enough fear into people. The latter, will soon spiral.
Herb: One thought:
Sure, things go bad slowly then all at once. And things have been going bad slowly. But things can go bad slowly for a long, long time and my sense is that we are nowhere near the tipping point of “all at once.”
I was surprised Hoyt and her commenters believe that tipping point is so close. Neither in Hoyt’s blog (so far as I have noticed) nor in neo’s has anyone offered a substantial argument that it is.
Back in the late sixties and early seventies American cities were on fire with riots and bombings numbered in the thousands. There was much apocalyptic feeling that our government and society were about to collapse into chaos. However, as I recall, we never came close.
Perhaps you would care to make the case that we are next November.
“But things can go bad slowly for a long, long time and my sense is that we are nowhere near the tipping point of “all at once.”” – huxley
The think about tipping points is that they are always a surprise.
Perhaps you would care to make the case that we are next November.
I will make the case it is wise to be prepared for it next November. I will not predict it will absolutely happen.
Back in the late sixties and early seventies American cities were on fire with riots and bombings numbered in the thousands. There was much apocalyptic feeling that our government and society were about to collapse into chaos.
First, if Trump wins I expect a repeat of the bombings and riots of the 70s. If you live in a major urban area, a reasonable person would be prepared for self-defense at all times in that case.
Second, there are two critical differences between those days and today. The first is the shift of the Overton Window towards the radical leftists, at least in the media. If someone in 1976, at the height of it all, if someone had claimed the Betsy Ross flag was a symbol of slavery John Chancellor would not have had him on NBC Evening News. Both MSNBC and CNN had on people to make that case. When Andy Ngo was attacked CNN, the only network to cover it, had people contend he deserved it. Not to mention he was repeatedly called conservative and right-wing which makes the words meaningless. The spokeswoman for the Human Rights campaign, the largest gay rights org, said Ngo, who is gay, deserved it and would benefit from it. She had to retract, but that she initially felt safe to say it is telling. Former 70s bombers are college profs without any jail time and one, Bill Ayers, got a front page profile on the NYT (in the worst case of bad timing in history on 9/11/2001). All these have emboldened leftist violence. Multiple Trump rallies featured violence outside started by black block types. They have only escalated since then.
That might not make things worse than the 70s if not for one factor. Unlike the 70s, more and more people on the right are ready to answer in kind. Asked about violence in Portland, which he has been reporting on for years, Ngo said, “Antifa starts it, but the Proud Boys finish it.” Although the Proud Boys are, in most cases, smart enough to not throw the first punch they show up ready and hoping to find. They are also better at it.
So, now we are looking at a repeat of the 70s with cheerleaders for the left wing violence at two major TV news networks and much of the mainstream press. How different is the context of Vox, which is considered mainstream left, from Ramparts back in the day? At the same time we have a faction of the right ready to throw down.
How long would it take for people in a city to have to do one of two things:
1. Shelter in place, ready to repel a gang.
2. Pick a side and fly colors just to get protection.
You might say, what about the police? Look at policing in Portland, Berkeley, or Charoletteville today and compare it the 60s and 70s riots, or even the LA riots. I work on the assumption if I am near an Antifa protest and Antifa decides I’m a Nazi it is okay to punch that the police will let them.
So, I expect the 70s. I think they are more likely than not if Trump wins. I think there is a 1 in 4 chance of such a 70s devolving into 20s Weimar because we have increasingly normalized political violence and some people on both broad sides have presented themselves ready to fight.
Once both sides openly engage in, and start, fights the spiral can happen very quickly.
If you the math I’d say it is 1 in 8 if Trump wins that happens. I put Trump winning, right now, at 2 out of 3 so call it a 1 in 12 chance. I think there is a path to violence with a Trump loss, but on a longer tail so we’ll hold to 1 in 12 or roughly 10% chance.
Risk is not just the odds of something, but the odds time the cost (yes, that how professionals in risk work it…that is the heart of everything from actuarial work to financial hedging). I think such violence, if I have to put a monetary cost on, is the inability to go to work for at least three months (I work downtown), total, and loss of one of my vehicles or similar property damage. So the risk is 3% of my income and a new car.
How much are you will to do to prepare for that? I already try to be ready to be stuck in the house without power for 2-4 weeks just as natural disaster/winter weather preparation. I generally carry a knife for utility and protection. If I see that coming I suspect I’d move to 6-8 weeks with an allowance for water being out more often, and carry a backup knife. Going CC is situational, but I’ll probably make sure I am full up on ammo at home. Might look at some reconfiguration of a weapon.
YMMV, but that’s my case and what I think is reasonable to prepare for.
Herb on July 12, 2019 at 1:39 pm said:
Perhaps you would care to make the case that we are next November.
I will make the case it is wise to be prepared for it next November. I will not predict it will absolutely happen.
* * *
Excellent analysis and advice, and well presented.
My priority will be getting the grandkids taken care of.
Herb: Thanks for a well-considered, good faith response. I hope you come back, as the spirit moves you.
However, I can’t say I find your comment persuasive. I was alive in the late-sixties/early seventies period. No one I knew felt any concern for self-defense in that period beyond ordinary caution. No one I knew felt they ought to carry a gun or a knife. No one I knew suffered for the lack of arms unless they were involved in drug dealing — a circumstance beyond the scope of our discussion.
If that’s the terrible 2020 future you envision which requires being armed at all times … .
Jeez. The death toll of those times: JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X, Kent State, all the civil rights killings. We haven’t seen anything serious like that except the attempted mass shooting of Republican representatives (though only Rep. Scalise was hit) by James Hodgkinson.
The sixties/seventies chaos didn’t happen over night from one incident. We are still a long ways from that and even 60s/70s came nowhere near the breakdown you and Hoyt imagine.
But history is strange, who knows and all that. I suppose the US could come to that someday, but I say the Hoyt scenario is way overblown in the near future.
The think about tipping points is that they are always a surprise.
AesopFan: The thing about tipping points — the big terrible ones people go on about — they usually don’t happen.
Reminds me of the Tom Wolfe bit conservatives love to quote, and rightly so:
The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
The left and the right play that game.
Huxley:
I would suggest you remember the shootings by Malvo and Mohammed in the DC area and the murder of police officers that followed Furgeson (Black or Blue Lives Matter). Not so long ago. One set of political murders stoked by Islam the other by the media. It wasn’t conservatives pulling those triggers.
Ask the Ceau?esco’s about tipping points, or look up preference cascade. They were all good until they weren’t. Romania is better off though.
A side note, on the quote above, which is allegedly by Cicero:
Snopes says it ain’t so, it’s actually an invention by Taylor Caldwell in her novel Pillars of Iron.
I know, it’s Snopes. But I don’t automatically refuse to consider the possibility that Snopes might be right about something. And the article does offer at least one piece of checkable evidence.
(You have to scroll down past more than 1/3 of the page to get to the actual story. There’s a lot of preliminary stuff about Trump and Putin.)
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cicero-treason-quote/
I would suggest you remember the shootings by Malvo and Mohammed in the DC area and the murder of police officers that followed Furgeson (Black or Blue Lives Matter). Not so long ago. One set of political murders stoked by Islam the other by the media. It wasn’t conservatives pulling those triggers.
om: Yes, I know of those.
Somehow I don’t count them in the same league as JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. Or even Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. Or Medgar Evers. There was plenty of lesser killings back then as well.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. Hoyt’s notion that the US becomes worse than Argentina or Weimar Germany in 18 months simply seems stupid and hysterical to me. Sorry.
It could get that bad eventually, but not that soon. I remember how apoplectic many commenters here were that Obama was going to Chavez at any moment during his administration. It didn’t happen.
There are a lot of steps to that level of collapse. Barring an asteroid strike or WW3, we have a lot of work to do to get there.
One thing the terrorists have now (Antifa is a terrorist group), that they didn’t have in the 60s and 70s, is near-instant communication. That allows mobs to gather and coordinate far better than in the past.
That makes planned rioting exponentially more destructive on a shorter timeline.
Also, roaming predators can call in their buddies when they find a soft target, which was much harder pre-cell-phone days, much less WiFi and instant messaging and texting etc.
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