🚀 go-pugleaf

George Worley wrote:
> 
> In article <6pkqd3$fem@umbc8.umbc.edu>
> on 28 Jul 1998 11:23:15 -0400, jjasen1@umbc.edu (John "E.R." Jasen)
> wrote:
> 
> >Merlin Dorfman <dorfman@netcom.com> wrote:
> >> John "E.R." Jasen (jjasen1@umbc.edu) wrote:
> >> : Merlin Dorfman <dorfman@netcom.com> wrote:
> >> : >      If for some reason the armed forces did get into a  war with
> >> : > armed civilians, the armed forces would win easily and the destruction
> >> : > of life and property in the country would be enormous.
> >>
> >> : Ummm ... No. Even if the military 100% sided with the government, the
> >> : conclusion would be the inevitable destruction of the armed forces, then
> >> : whatever is left of the government.
> >>
> >>      Blatant nonsense.
> >
> >Hardly. The civilian population outnumbers the military by about 250:1.
> You are assuming that every one will back the ones revolting... not
> everyone that has a gun will back the ones revolting.   We as a nation
> have all ready been thru this once a little over a 100 years ago in a
> war that call the Civil War... tell me who won that war?  Not the
> unrecognized civilian militia called the Confederacy.   In Kentucky
> and Tennessee I have relatives where brothers fought against each
> other.  One such case was that of my Great Great Grandfather and his
> brother, as my Great Great Grandfather decided that the Union was
> right for him while his younger brother decided that the Confederacy
> was right for him so each went their own way.  As the story goes about
> my Great Great Grandfather and his brother, they met on the
> battlefield  at Shiloh and as the fight escalated my Great Great
> Grandfather found himself in a hand to hand fight with his brother.
> His brother surrendered to him and both survived the war.
> 
> You are living in an fantasy world if you think that when this
> supposed uprising comes that all of the civilians will follow... it
> didn't happen in the Civil War and will not happen now.  I have guns,
> and currently if some group was to take up arms against the
> government, I would side with the government.

Ah - and now I see that we are both barking up different trees, albeit in the
same neck of the woods. Less of a failure to communicate than attempting to
speak to the wrong end of the horse as it were.

This is the point which you seem to be unable to grap here, and I don't think
it's a matter of deliberate obtuseness on your part, nor on ours.

Thanks for sharing the opinions above, they're valid and enlightening... but
are missing the point of the discussion.

We're less concerned here about some uprising of cranks in the backwoods, an
instigated revolution for whatever reason, and more concerned with the public
reaction if a party, or parties, or more properly a particular mindset
reaching across both mainstream political Parties, were to simply decide that
they, the "government" (which pointedly includes the Civil Service and the
"military-industrial complex" also known as the "Beltway Bandits") were the
sole legitimate power and to hell with We the People. Their mindset is that
all Americans are silly irresponsible hicks with the intelligence of
chimpanzees and the educations of dunces, and must be managed for their own
good. Essentially we're talking about the sort of paternalism that one sees in
the best-intentioned of guards at facilities for the mentally-deficient. For
the most-part they mean well however if they decide to molest the patients,
there's simply nothing the patients can do about it; they're locked in,
locked-down, and have neither weapons nor tools.

Such institutions - and some believe, increasingly the Federal Government
Civil Service Bureaucracy is becoming such - have a variety of tools to manage
the inmates. Primarily, there's talk. You can talk and talk and talk about the
issues, never change anything, or one can throw a minor sop to whoever is
making the most noise, and otherwise change nothing. One can also, by reliably
throwing the sops to whichever inmate is most amenable to "reform" in
accordance with the goals of the keepers, create division within the ranks
(though in reality there are no ranks, only a bunch of sadly-wacko individuals
with remarkably disparate delusional systems), seed informants, and empower
petty tyrants. All sorts of very low-level social tricks and manipulations can
be used, from keeping one floor of the institution in starvation and rags, to
flooding another floor with interesting drugs (many of which are addictive),
pampering another floor, creating trustys, elevating the most vicious to the
position of screws, etc etc. Also, you may allow the inmates to elect their
representative to petition management, and in most cases, if the request is
reasonable management will comply but only so long as it serves management,
and management will in no way acquiesce to anything resembling greater freedom
for the inmates outside of conditions of widespread fire or uncontrollable
riot. Now realize well that all of the above-described chicanery is quite
appropriate to an institution such as a prison, but it is not at all
appropriate to a society of free equals of normal intelligence. It is one
thing to be governed, and governed by common consent to the _vox populi_ or
the _res publica_. It is another thing to be managed.

Increasingly, we are being managed. Management inevitably regards itself as a
beast apart from the unwashed masses of the toilers, _even in a system where
the corporation is owned entirely by corporate employees_. Failure on the part
of the unwashed toilers to aggressively unify to counteract management
initiatives which remove options from the toilers, leads inevitably towards
management directing the future course into fields wherein only management's
intended path is safe to walk. It is the opinion of many that we are now
entering into sufficiently restricted areas, into complexities of machination
and quadruple-cross scheming, that to attempt to counteract management is to
commit corporate suicide, _and management prefers that this be the common
perception_ for on the one hand it causes the unenlightened to yeild to
management's "better understanding of basic principles" and causes
management's rivals, as well as its loyal opposition, to become disorganized
in the process of attempting to discern the _precise_ details and thus the
strategy, of management. Indeed, having been led into a mine-field, we can
only hope that the leaders know what they are doing.

And probably they do. But what is the goal here? To lead us to greener
pastures, or to get us in the center of a mine-field, from which we may exit
only as permitted by whichever management cares to escort us out? We aren't
much seeing the greener pastures, except as shown us through the windows of
our televisions. Our televisions tell us that we are in an age of
unparallelled prosperity, as measured by the prices of stocks on the various
exchanges. Yet the average high-roller stock has a profits-to-earnings ratio
of something like 24; which is a margin-call equivalent to fifteen times that
which collapsed Wall Street in 1929. But money is being made! Isn't it?
Rather, more money is being printed, it has to be in order to cover for the
double-dozen inflation of the stocks issued. People are speculating in double
digits, and interestingly enough, taxes are being paid at record levels,
propping up the printing of bogus specie in a Ponzi Scheme of incalculable
proportion. Essentially, all that is happening right now is that, of all of
the vast numbers of zeros to the right of the leading digit, more are now
collecting in the accounts of government and management.

Simultaneously, we see credit extended at profligate levels, all unregulated
by the government which clearly ought to rein this in. Why do they not?
Clearly, it is better that citizens hover on the edge of default. Why?

If every citizen who is free-and-unencumbered by debt were now to go and buy
gold, and take possession, and guard it themselves, this entire charade would
collapse. as it is, at present, perhaps the sole route to "wealth" remaining
in America is to overextend one's self on credit; then one may have all of the
shiny toys one may wish. At present, the bankruptcy law even allow one to
default on payments, and keep many of the shiny toys - but you may not retain
gold bought on credit, nor, as a rule, may you retain weapons sold on credit,
for some reason, the first thing that people hock is their defense.

Soon we shall see that management has been purchasing gold, and extending
false credit to unqualified recipients, and urging "investment" in
grossly-overinflated "stocks" and "bonds" which are, I needn't say here,
merely paper. Soon we shall see management pull the props out from under all
of that paper and we will see at-least a double-digit devaluation of all of
that paper. At that time, there will be such unrest, and such disorganization,
that the public will cry out to be led blindfolded into that mine field "to be
protected from what is outside". We are in that mine-field _now_, many
believe.

The best advice I could give anyone right now is to buy gold or other
industrially-useful metals such as platinum or vanadium, as much as possible,
from anyone who will sell it to you, and also buy a good safe, and buy the
weapons which, for now, you are permitted to own. And expect that when things
come crashing down, people will come to take both from you. 

This is a mindset which is incresingly widely-held, regardless of the truth of
it.

However, keep in mind, that taking payment in metals and nonperishable-foods
can do little to save the balance-of-trade nor recoup losses inherent in
playing the markets, there will be an adjustment and all we can hope for is
that management won't let things crash so hard that the adjustment reduces us
all to barbarism. But so long as we all retain our weapons, we believe that
management has no option but to soften the adjustment as much as is
practicable. If, however, we abandon our weapons while management retains
theirs, this inevitable adjustment will _not_ be moderated, but rather
accellerated and dropped on the world like a load of bricks, so that the
foolish toilers can riot all they want as they starve, locked-out of the plant
where they've been replaced by automation.

Of course, this may be simply Millenial Paranoia. But a lot of people do
believe, to return to the initial subject, that there will be no uprising
against the government of the United States, and I would not in any case
support such an uprising, I value my oath. The common conception is that
elements of the government, instead, would engage in a very quiet uprising
against the American people, reduce them to poverty, and lead them in rags to
their chains.

_That_ I will fight against.


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