Rod Dreher: Neckbeard Militias Are Not My Enemy

[Kamaji]

Neckbeard Militias Are Not My Enemy

By:  Rod Dreher

January 14, 2022

Good morning. It’s Covid Day Five for me, and I want to tell myself that this is getting better — my throat doesn’t hurt anymore, and maybe my voice is coming back, a little — but I also know from this week’s experience that there’s no predicting what any day is going to be like.

*  *  *

Xi Jinping, I will never forget you.

I want to draw your attention to this important essay in UnHerd by a writer named James Pogue. He lives in northern California, in what blue-state libs would call the Redneck Belt, and he says that the blue-state experts who are predicting an American civil war have no real understanding of the people they fault as antagonists. Here’s how it starts:

I moved recently to a remote part of Northern California, where in a couple weeks an election will decide whether or not allies of the local militia take control of the county government. It’s a fraught situation, in a part of the country that’s often described by journalists, myself included, as being on the verge of civil war.

This can be a hard thing to explain. Just before I sat down to write this, I was at a bar where a liberal guy invited a not-so-liberal guy out to the parking lot. The liberal showed off a fly rod he’d built, and the redneck showed off a not-at-all-legal belt-loaded gun that he’d built. They came back smiling. Everyone mostly gets along fine. The incidents that seem to show overt cracks in the social order are very rare — occasional spats at restaurants or threatening visits to trailers, county board meetings moved online for safety.

They’re usually non-violent, and so wrapped up in the baroque Facebook-driven personal drama that colours life the rural American West these days that any honest observer has to wrestle with questions about whether or not they portend a real breakdown. The numbers of people involved are tiny. The divides aren’t really about Trump, race, class. They aren’t really about anything that fits into mainstream America’s understanding of why civil violence feels so possible in this country, unless you count the fact that basically everybody around here has guns.

*  *  *

Pogue’s contention is that the information system that tells professional extremism-watchers what is actually happening in the country is in trouble, and sending decision-makers information that confirms their biases. I’m old enough to remember the line that the G.W. Bush administration repeated ad infinitum in its successful effort to convince the American people to support its war of choice on Iraq: that even though we can’t be absolutely sure we know what WMDs Saddam has, “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” My point is that the ruling class always has a reason to exaggerate threats, because that is what justifies its power, and its power grabs.

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Source:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/neckbeard-militias-are-not-my-enemy-live-not-by-lies/

[Kamaji]

This is such an important point! Along those lines, it is the Left in power, both in government and private industry, that is moving on every possible front to make Americans more race-conscious, suspicious, and antagonistic on race matters. This is the same dynamic that I’ve characterized this way regarding LGBT:

[Smokin Joe]

I have a fairly liberal neighbor. We talk, and i have become good at sliding off subjects that are too contentious just for the purpose of maintaining the peace. He is, after all, a decent fellow, and we have more common ground than most would think, me being pretty darned Conservative, and all that.

On the way down the street, to help the grandkids with yet another crisis, I spotted him unloading a stove from his pickup, by himself, on the icy street. I pulled up beside him, we got out and helped him unload the stove and secure it to the dolly he's brought. We may disagree on some political issues, but still, I couldn't see leaving him to possibly damage the new stove when we could help. Yes, we talked vaccines (he and his wife are jabbed, me not, but his wife is a doctor, and has bought the sales pitch) I just said I'd done a lot of medical journal research, decided to remain in the control group for "science's sake", and we had a laugh over that.

Civil exchanges are the order of the day, it is only in the hyperbole of the Mass Media, the Politicians on Capitol Hill, and bureaucrats in dozens of offices where the Civil War is imminent. Those and their race baiting brethren are the ones who stand to gain profusely from pushing unrest to the point of violence and grabbing all the power (and money) they can, because those who are alleged to benefit from all those liberal causes inevitably end up saddled with some harmful policy or otherwise get the nasty end of the proverbial stick.

But it is this sort of non-contentious interaction that humanizes those of us who can be branded one way or another as those hated subhumans who always appear just in time for someone to call for their elimination, and that works both ways. While there are some who would not see the common ground we all share, even if they were face down in it, most people are people, who want better for their kids, who worry about where their next meal/paycheck will come from, and paying their bills. 

Keep in mind that this only works with civilized liberals (small 'l') not rabid communist types, but random acts of kindness help undermine the narrative...and that is essential to sweeping the foundations out from under the Left's house of lies.

[Kamaji]

I have a fairly liberal neighbor. We talk, and i have become good at sliding off subjects that are too contentious just for the purpose of maintaining the peace. He is, after all, a decent fellow, and we have more common ground than most would think, me being pretty darned Conservative, and all that.

On the way down the street, to help the grandkids with yet another crisis, I spotted him unloading a stove from his pickup, by himself, on the icy street. I pulled up beside him, we got out and helped him unload the stove and secure it to the dolly he's brought. We may disagree on some political issues, but still, I couldn't see leaving him to possibly damage the new stove when we could help. Yes, we talked vaccines (he and his wife are jabbed, me not, but his wife is a doctor, and has bought the sales pitch) I just said I'd done a lot of medical journal research, decided to remain in the control group for "science's sake", and we had a laugh over that.

Civil exchanges are the order of the day, it is only in the hyperbole of the Mass Media, the Politicians on Capitol Hill, and bureaucrats in dozens of offices where the Civil War is imminent. Those and their race baiting brethren are the ones who stand to gain profusely from pushing unrest to the point of violence and grabbing all the power (and money) they can, because those who are alleged to benefit from all those liberal causes inevitably end up saddled with some harmful policy or otherwise get the nasty end of the proverbial stick.

But it is this sort of non-contentious interaction that humanizes those of us who can be branded one way or another as those hated subhumans who always appear just in time for someone to call for their elimination, and that works both ways. While there are some who would not see the common ground we all share, even if they were face down in it, most people are people, who want better for their kids, who worry about where their next meal/paycheck will come from, and paying their bills. 

Keep in mind that this only works with civilized liberals (small 'l') not rabid communist types, but random acts of kindness help undermine the narrative...and that is essential to sweeping the foundations out from under the Left's house of lies.

It also demonstrates, by way of comparison, how toxic social media is.  Social media strips each of us - or at least allows us to rid ourselves - of most of our humanity, and that typically causes many interactions that would otherwise remain civil if conducted in-person to become full of rancor and hate.

[Free Vulcan]

The reality is, the FedGov simply doesn't have the numbers.

What do they plan to use? Police? The Military? The very people they regularly bash, punish, and attempt to ostracize from society?

Where do they plan to go? The cities are where the unrest is, and the very territory the FedGov ignores.

A race war is fantasy as America is already fairly segregated, with minorities in the urban areas, and whites in the suburbs and rural.

The FBI isn't big enough or equipped enough to be an occupying force. They can only rule by fear as long as there is civil order. False flags have their limitations.

The FedGov statist cabal and their sycophants always forget about the states and governors. Or the courts for that matter. Or the budget, or any other reasonable logistics.

I think they want to create anarchy so that other nations can take advantage of us and establish territory. Problem is all the other nations are just as financially bad off as we are. I'm not sure they can pull that off either.

But that's not going to stop their desperate grasp for power to get on board with The Great Reset, but they may find it all blows back in their face.