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Welp, back from the penalty box/fishing trip and I've missed the whole shitshow last week.
So let's start there: How about that preference cascade?
We all had our whacks at guessing which point was peak woke. I feel uncontroversial in saying the past month has been the drop. A
coupletrans school shooter, the Charlotte train snuff film and the assassination of Kirk, all in a few weeks. A real perfect storm of narrative-puncturing events. Coupled with Trump in office, the economy not being too terrible (yet?), and the completion of the right-wing media sphere, I believe this is the the political realignment so long and so far incorrectly predicted.First off, on the nature of the conflict: We are not at war, but the list of stages between now and then is getting very short indeed. Peaceful societies have to work up to civil wars. A generation of kids have to grow up with regular violence radicalizing them and turning into a reciprocal cycle. It must grow in scale, and eventually involve the tacit support of legitimate governments at the state and local level. And both sides have to build social, legal and financial structures to support their violent wings, even if they "disavow" some of the specific actions.
But these violent exchanges happen regularly and are regularly defused. The Days of Rage lead to Reagan, and we enter a new cycle. Reagan leads to the fall of the USSR, which leads to Clinton, which leads to Waco and Ruby Ridge which leads to Oklahoma City, and it was tamped down. 9/11 redirected the narrative and the direction.
If you want my "Schelling point" for when we are actually staring down the barrel of civil war, it's that you will be able to make six figures enlisting to fight for one side or the other. The reader can judge whether that's fair and exactly where our politics are in relation, but that's how I see it.
So we're not there yet, let's talk about the filthy politics of it all!
I lived through one of these preference cascades before, on 9/11. I didn't have the context for it at the time, but I do have some perspective now. The pendulum will not be kind to either side here. The Right spent the moral capital they gained by the destruction of the twin towers on two wildly expensive wars that destabilized large parts of the Middle East and fucked up our foreign policy for two decades.....so far.
The left spent the moral capital they gained from the right doing all that plus the religious ecstasy of the First Black President on ...well, you know.
I have no faith the Right will be any "better" this time around, because politics is people and people are assholes. Especially in large groups, especially when ingroup/outgroup dynamics are making them crazy. Moral certainty is a hell of a drug. A lot of social and legal norms have been thrown into the bonfire of Donnie Jay. The tech boom has entered the Monopoly phase, and neither our politics nor our society seems to be responding well to the adjustments needed.
Both sides of any conflict will have their aggressive, radical wings. To the degree each side keeps their radicals in check, violence can be avoided. But each time a real or perceived violent attack happens, it bolsters the radicals and weakens the moderates. There is no point running around looking for intellectual consistency, because groups are not homogenous and most people are hypocrites. To the degree the center-left allowed their radical wing to run wild, or fed their violent fantasies, the center right will have that much harder a time restraining theirs.
My takeaway from this whole process, spanning the thirty years of my political consciousness, is that no ideology can resist reality forever, and being in power, in control of the narrative, drives people to resist reality. Whether that's the "democratic aspirations" of third world, seventh century revanchists or the definition of "woman".
The pendulum swings, and the only time you can slow it down is when it is on your side. If you're on the right, look at the people on the left who have spoken out at various stages of these past two decades. Remember those names. They tried, too little and too late for sure, but even so and generally at some cost.
For those on the left, look at those on the right who are holding their convictions, who are calling for peaceful (even if hypocritical/oppressive) responses, rather than in kind, with blood, this week.
If you all can't feel closer to them than you do to your own violent wing, give the radicals a call. It'll cost you six figures per man, and a lot more than that before it's over.
I'm constantly struggling over this both sides fig leaf people keep throwing out there for the sake of unity. This is only accomplished because they weigh January 6th against all the Floyd riots and all the Ferguson Riots, CHAZ/CHOP, the siege of the federal courthouse, attacks on the White House so bad they had to evacuate Trump during his first term, etc. It's a farcical comparison, but they keep making it. Even assuming Jan 6th was every bit as bad as they claim, they honestly believe it makes us equal? A single day of terrifying violence for legislators versus months and months of wondering if your town would burn down, or a mob would form outside your home, for years and years?
There is no unity, and there is no both sides. Nobody is afraid of the sorts of violence that erupts simultaneously in every city as when Democrats get restive. At most they are afraid someone might get it in their head to try to take a scalp of their own. But I'd be shocked if it succeeded. Remember it took the Left 2 attempts on Trump, a home invasion on Tucker Carlson's family, sending violent mobs after Supreme Court Justices, endless credible threats against Tim Pool and Nick Fuentes, before they finally got a kill. Charlie Kirk is just the 9/11 to the 1993 WTC bombing. They've been trying this whole time in a way the right hasn't.
They aren't even bombing transition clinics! Think about that. They consider violent extremism just saying "I don't think we should transition children". People used to blow shit up they didn't agree with. Thats how thoroughly they've framed the conversation, that your speech is considered violence on par with their actual violence. The only way the left could possibly get more violent is if their paramilitary troops (Antifa, BLM, etc) had actual military hardware instead of black masks and molotovs. Think about how much room the right has to get more violent before you start pulling "both sides" on me.
I live in a purple city directly bordering Portland, with its 100+ days of riots. There was even a Proud Boys vs Antifa fracas in a park 5 minutes from my house that made the national news. Yet, I never for one second worried about my town burning down or a mob forming outside my house. These "mostly peaceful protests" were still fairly isolated to very specific small urban areas. I guess if you were unlucky enough to live next door to a police precinct, you'd have reason to fear those things, but there has not been cause, IMO, for any general panic over these things, even near the heart of the problems.
I didn’t worry about a mob getting my house, quiet. But I (quite irritatingly for tax reasons) live at the far edge of sprawling city limits, and I hated getting texts from the mayor’s emergency alert regarding ‘citywide’ curfews (aimed at the greater downtown) that the threats were real and while not that close, closer than I’ve ever experienced. Watching enjoyable shops and restaurants be wrecked, likewise. Watching the ones that posted “minority-owned” signs in their windows and on Instagram being laughed at for thinking it made a difference (the mockers were right; it made no difference), likewise.
Minneapolis is 4 or 5 times further away than Washington but had far more direct impact on my life.
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