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The storming of Capitol Hill

1/25/2021

2 Comments

 
I'm gonna have to set some ground rules here first.
First and foremost, I oppose political violence in all its forms.
Politics is supposed to be what happens when violence isn't the only option yet.
If you're going to make any manner of call to the tune of "But it's OK when it's OUR angry mobs!", feel free to shut up. Do so somewhere I don't control, if you must.
Moving on.
This is going to be more questions than answers, to be perfectly honest. I'm not a part of any team investigating the storming, nor am I actively talking to anyone who is. And I'm damn sure not about to teach some sort of build a better insurrection class. This is more or less going to be a collection of thoughts without conclusions.
Two things keep popping into my head as I look over the storming of capitol hill.
The first is a memory. In my younger days, when I still thought the security field was going to be my life's work, I had the chance to pick the brain of a veteran bodyguard. Once I'd gotten a couple of drinks in him, he told me that the ugly truth of executive protection is that there's really nothing you can do about a trained professional that doesn't care if they survive so long as they take out their target.
The silver lining of that ugly truth is that the vast majority of trained professionals prefer to live to spend their fee, and that the ones who don't care if they survive usually don't care to put in the needed training and experience either.
The second thing that came to mind is the learning curve of infantry leadership. Being a grunt isn't that difficult. While there's some physical rigor involved, most of the work involves maintaining skills and equipment. If you can play a team sport of any kind, you can figure out being a grunt.
The learning curve for LEADING grunts, on the other hand, is so steep it might as well be a cliff. By the time someone is effectively leading a dozen people, they're more or less a chess player's mind in a pro athlete's body. It's a big part of why most grunts muster out after their first enlistment or two.
And that's with time, resources, support, and sanctions. Trying to do so clandestinely with volunteers off the radar just makes it more difficult.
Put pins in both of those, they'll be important later.
The next thing that came to mind is that an event like the Storming of the Capitol has been building up for some time.
(Pay very close attention to discussing what the Storming WAS as opposed to what the storming COULD HAVE BEEN. People are already shuffling between them to suit their own narratives. I'll try to make the differences as blatant as possible).
I was overseas during the 2008 inauguration, but the SPLC's report shows a lot of scattered individual incidents of violence and crime around the country centered around hatred and/or opposition to President Obama.
Inauguration day of 2017, I mentioned news reports claiming that protests in D.C. alone had 200 arrested, 6 cops hospitalized, with a burning limo and smashed businesses on K street.
What with the Women's March being the day afterwards, further talk of damage was subsumed by the news cycle.
We all saw what happened this summer, starting with the death of George Floyd, so I'm not going to review that too much.
The current known damage from the Storming is 4 rioters (1 shot by an officer, 1 trampled by the crowd, 1 heart attack, and 1 stroke) and 1 police officer dead, 56 DC officers injured, and 60 Capitol officers injured, 15 of them hospitalized.
IED's were found on the Capitol grounds, DNC and RNC offices, and a case of Molotov cocktails were in one guy's truck.
Next, a brief (HA!) history of right-wing militias.
From a certain point of view, they really didn't come into prominence until federal law enforcement needed a new villain in the late 80's. Vietnam was over. The left-wing bombing campaigns of the 70's were over. The Iron curtain was crumbling. And these agencies, particularly the FBI and ATF, needed to justify their funding fast.
There's more to it than that, but in hindsight, it's not hard to see Ruby Ridge and Waco as tragic fuckups by feds too eager to justify their budgets and ROE's. Both Weaver and Koresh could have easily been arrested in nearby towns with no loss of life. Instead, sieges and unnecessary deaths happened.
Then the Oklahoma City bombing happened, and all the attention given to various militias now had the deadliest terror attack on US soil to justify it.
The weird thing about militias themselves is that although they may spawn lone wolves that go on to commit deadly attacks, a militia attacking as a group is rather unlikely. Since Oklahoma city (planned by 4 people, tops), the right-wing attacks that have successfully occurred have been by ones and twos as opposed to organized groups (The Rudolph bombings, the Charleston shooting, Charlottesville, the list goes on).
There have been a few standoffs with law enforcement (two by the Bundy family in Nevada and Oregon, once by the Montana Freemen back in the 90's) but nothing on the scale of Oklahoma City. Mostly for the same reason that we won't see another 9/11. For all the security theater, it's the exploited loopholes used by the attackers that are now forever closed that does the prevention. And no OIC wants to be in charge for the next Waco.
Another reason militias are unlikely to do much damage as groups is less obvious. While a lot of digital ink has been spilled lately about the white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement and the military, the reverse is also true. Right-wing movements are ridiculously easy to infiltrate. The FBI is a lot of things, but hurting for white dudes between 30 and 60 ain't one of them.
And infiltrate they do. The major reason we haven't heard about group attacks by militias is that they attract informants and get rolled up in the planning stages. it only hits the news a few times a year, and with no explosions or deaths to headline, they fade from memory quick.
Generally, any militia group bigger than a bowling team has at least one member reporting everything to the law. Hell, that's what got charges dropped against the Bundy family when they occupied a nature center in Oregon. When it came out that over a dozen members were federal informants, the judge threw it out. And I quote, "I am not presiding a conspiracy case with more informants than conspirators."
So, are militias capable of large-scale attacks?
Maybe.
But any wanting to encounters both the infiltration problem and the grunt leadership learning curve mentioned above.
FWIW, I do think there's some leaders at that level in right-wing militias somewhere. Some of them actively recruit veterans. And the Obama administration's downsizing of the military kicked a lot of career-minded NCO's to the curb.
But I don't think any have led or done major planning on an attack yet.
Which comes around to the storming of the capitol.
Without knowing what was planned, there's no idea of knowing what was successful.
Anything I can think of, from hostages to lynchings to electoral disruption, runs into two words:
Then What?
Remember the dilemmas above? Being good but not suicidal and a huge leadership learning curve?
I keep running into those whenever I think about what the plan was.
It's entirely possible that someone planned one of those things, and when they found their targets gone, just aborted the mission and vanished into the crowd.
But again, unless some informant was in on it and submits their knowledge as evidence in a trial, we're not going to know.
About the only thing I can say about the trials is to be ready for disappointment.
I get being furious that a pack of howling shitgibbons invaded congress, assaulted cops, and trashed the place. The disgust, the fear, the rage, I absolutely get it.
Unfortunately, we've been setting some uncomfortable precedents when it comes to prosecuting people who do such things in the context of a protest.
It doesn't help that both parties are playing for political advantage, and Trump's impeachment trial is wrapped around the entire thing.
So I expect to see a lot of wrist slaps, fines, probations, and suspended sentences when hours of video show Qboy Mcdinglenuts joining the crowd, wandering around the chamber, and then leaving.
I expect to see political system-gaming all around.
But for now I also don't expect to see a convoy of the 15th Igloo division attacking government buildings either.
And given all the rest of the bullshit that's still possible this year, I can't help but be grateful that looks to be off the table.
Take care of yourselves out there.
2 Comments

It feels like a doomsday device

1/20/2021

0 Comments

 
It feels like a doomsday device, which was about to explode in my face, instead got thrown off a cliff and exploded harmlessly in the canyon below.
I'm just starting to see the first trails of smoke rise up from the new crater, drawing pretty paths in the sky.
If I had a loved one at hand, I'd probably hug 'em hard enough that bruised ribs would be a potential hazard.
Instead, I've got a cigar in my pocket that I'm too tired to light.
That's what it feels like right now.
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Tribes on my mind

1/8/2021

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Humans are primates. Primates are social animals. We form tribes.
And tribes, across the planet and throughout history, have always had two major internal sins. Sins against the tribe itself.
I'm talking death or exile are the only answers to violators sins.
The first sin is betrayal.
In simple terms, it's choosing the success and well-being of an outsider over that of your tribe. Doesn't sound so bad today. But back in the day, this was "opening the castle gates for the enemy tribe" level shit.
Check out Romeo & Juliet. Two dumbass teenagers choosing the outsider over the tribe gets a half-dozen people slaughtered in days.
In lean years, bad years, famine years, the tribes that survived were the ones who were willing to kill the next tribe over and take their stuff. Everyone alive today, including you and me, are descended from them.
The betrayers? The ones who let the outsider in? They got killed and their stuff got taken.
The second sin has a couple of different meanings, so we'll have to work our way up to wrapping our heads around them.
The earliest term (and you socialist fucks are going to love this one) is loosely defined as "hoarding food away from the rest of the tribe."
Again, it is an act of taking away from your tribemates. Which can lead to their deaths, especially in harsh times.
But obviously we don't scream at people for specifically hoarding food from the tribe today. (toilet paper is a whole nother story)
I could call it unfairness, but that implies fair as a ground state of affairs.
We saw it in cultures that nobody would call fair as a baseline today.
Take feudalism. Nobody alive today would call this a fair society.
But even for what it was, this sin is more the realm of those who enjoy their granted rights but forsake their privileges.
Just being a feudal baron wouldn't be this sin.
But hiding in his castle and refusing to defend attacks to his vassals very much would be.
"Willful cheating in bad faith" is the closest term I can come up with that works today.
These two sins are baked into our DNA. These are the two biggest internal threats to the primitive tribes that we all descended from. And they are still what hits our emotional buttons HARD even when we try to intellectualize.
Unfortunately, tribal instincts don't upscale well. Nor do they account for nuance. the risk:reward ratio in either of those sins was so great that death or exile at the least were the most common punishments for them. Murder one person, rape one person, you MIGHT be allowed to live. But betrayal and cheating put the entire tribe at risk, and the risk of keeping the sinner alive was too great.
Keep that shit in your DNA for a couple millennia, and you can see it short-circuit your brain in real time.
When we find out someone close to us supports or voted for a cause or person we find repugnant, the BETRAYAL light kicks on in our brains. Someone in your "tribe" has chosen a dangerous and repugnant other, when they could have been supporting the tribe instead.
Why they did it doesn't matter.
Not ignorance, not focus on another issue entirely, not honest belief.
None of that compares to the BETRAYAL light kicking on.
Now, we don't live in a tribal society anymore, so death or exile usually aren't on the table.
But shunning? Easy. If you're not tied to someone by needed resources (a coworker you can't shut up in a job you can't quit, a roommate you can't afford to kick out, ect), shunning is easy.
As is ostracism. Doxxing. If you don't want to tell a betrayer how repugnant they are, there's a mob ready and willing to do it for you.
We have successfully outsourced tribal punishments.
But what about the big CHEATING light?
Well, as Americans, we have a baseline idea of what fair and just is.
And while we as a country have a certain admiration for cleverly exploiting loopholes, Willful Cheating In Bad Faith as I described above slams on that big red CHEATING light.
As sports fans, we get into fights in the stands when a referee makes a bad call.
Now scale that up.
Historically speaking, watching cops confront and kill people isn't all that significant. Part of the job since we turned the words "shire reeve" into "sheriff."
But if you keep seeing people who look like you being confronted and killed by cops while people who don't look like you keep walking away alive?
The big red CHEATING light flashes on.
Seeing the person you didn't vote for win on a procedural technicality?
The CHEATING light flashes on.
Watching people get away with shady shit that just happens to benefit them and fuck you?
The CHEATING light flashes on.
Watching people condemn you for getting violent, only to turn around a few months later and get violent themselves?
The CHEATING light flashes on.
Watching people get violent, then turn around and talk shit about you a few months later when you're getting violent?
The CHEATING light flashes on.
Bear in mind, absolutely nothing I've used as an example needs to be true for this to happen. It just needs to be presented that way just enough to flip that light on.
And then, any reasons, excuses, or circumstances face long uphill battles to get any sort of measured response.
Because our brains are back in the day when that light coming on means the person flipped it was going to get us and everyone we cared about killed.
With all that shit in mind, think back on the past few years.
No fucking wonder we're all exhausted, terrified, heartbroken, and pissed off all at once.
Those fucking lights have been going off on a regular basis for years.
I woke up this morning to find that a Capitol police officer died in the hospital. He was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
And all I could think of is that sometime in the future, an "unarmed" rioter is going to be shot and killed by a cop, and two people who used to like each other are going to see "BETRAYAL" going off on each other. And only one of them will remember that officer and that fire extinguisher.
So, how do we change this?
No idea.
Humanity sure as fuck hasn't tried changing these instincts.
We sure as hell know how to exploit them though.
They may not label them "BETRAYAL" and "CHEATING" or make the historical connection. But I guarantee you every political operator, rabble-rouser, PR guru and marketing suit knows how to flash those lights in a way to make people do what they want. And they're all playing everyone at once.
I mean, for fuck's sake, Among Us made a popular game out of making your character's personal "BETRAYAL!" light go off.
Knowing that it's happening only does so much. You and the person you're seeing the light on top of both have to recognize it and investigate it.
And we need to police our own tribes.
Tribes work together when leaders make subordinates behave around the other tribe.
AND when leaders in the other tribes stand back and LET THEIR OWN LEADERS DO IT.
Sitting back on your ass and insisting the other side do what you want only makes you look like someone too clueless to realize that they don't answer to you.
Romeo and Juliet again.
Act 1, scene 5. The party. For those who got distracted by the horny teenagers when that happened, it's a Capulet shindig, the Montague boys crash it. Tybalt goes to old man Capulet, asking for permission to throw hands.
And the Old Man shuts Tybalt the fuck down. Capulet makes it absolutely clear that, mortal enemies or no, they became guests the moment they walked in the door. Tybalt is NOT going to make the Old Man look like a bad host in his own house. And he's in for a world of hurt if he tries.
"Be quiet, or I'll make you quiet."
It's quite possibly one of the most peacekeeping moments in the entire show. The party didn't last forever, because tragedy. But it's clear that proper manners are extremely important when dealing with people you regularly try to kill in a place where doing so isn't ideal.
Fun side note: depending on staging, it's entirely possible the Montagues have no idea that this exchange is going on. Think about that the next time you don't see someone on the other side being told to behave.
Tribal conflicts suck.
But there are some big differences between tribal conflicts where everyone minds their manners and tribal conflicts that are complete free-for-alls.
TL:DR
Watch for your BETRAYAL and CHEATER lights going off.
And
Police your own.
Take care of yourselves out there.
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    Jay Peterson

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