Wednesday, June 27, 2018

The Imperative Of Punishment

     Just now most of the DextroSphere’s attention is on the Maxine Waters and Lexington Red Hen events and the larger sociopolitical phenomenon those developments highlight. The trend line is admittedly bleak. The lunatic Left is emboldened by the Right’s milquetoast response to this point. Blood hasn’t been spilled yet, but the probability is rising sharply. Few have drawn the moral.

     Mike Hendrix reminds us that Ann Coulter drew it seven years ago:

     Liberals are not like most Americans. They are the biggest pussies on Earth, unless they know their victim can’t respond. They’re city-bred weaklings who didn't play a sport and have never been in a fight in their entire lives. Their mothers made excuses for them when they threw tantrums and spent way too much time praising them during toilet training.

     Say what you will about Miss Coulter, she understands cause, effect, and reinforcement. Bad behavior that goes unpunished will increase.

     In the early Seventies, an old sensei of mine, who was about the most peaceable person you’d ever meet, commented in similar fashion on the rising tide of public chaos. When I asked him how he could square his sentiments with his routine emphasis on nonviolent conflict resolution, he merely said “Many clenched fists have been raised. A clenched fist raised high must fall on someone. The rest is as God wills.”

     As you can see, it stuck with me. A complementary nugget appears early in the Illuminatus! trilogy, from the mouth of Hagbard Celine: “If there were more bloody noses, there’d be fewer wars.”

The later the stick of punishment is applied to bad behavior, the more harshly it must be wielded to achieve the desired effect.


     Bad behavior must be punished. The Left’s decision to use harassment and intimidation against conservatives and Republicans is about as bad as behavior gets without becoming legally actionable. Up to now, it’s met no significant degree of punishment. Therefore, as it’s getting its practitioners some of what they want (including a shameful degree of satisfaction), it will increase.

     If it increases past a certain level, it will trigger lethal violence. People will die:

     There’s really nowhere else for the liberals to go but towards embracing widespread violence. The logic of their twisted mindset is such that Normals are not merely wrong and not merely evil, but that normal Americans and those who represent them are the evilest evildoers in evil history.

     This does not leave much room for reasoned debate. In fact, it makes reasoned debate impossible. So, since they’ve taken reasoned debate off the table, there are not a lot of options left for resolving political and cultural differences. There are lies, intimidation, and violence. That’s about it. And the first two have stopped working.

     Colonel Schlichter knows whereof he speaks. If we don’t want that point to arrive – and I certainly don’t – I submit that the time to administer punishment is upon us.


     The key to the thing, once again, is in the Left’s characterization of normal Americans as either stupid or evil. As time has passed, their preference has been revealed: to gain the ends they seek, they need to see us as evil. They mean well; we don’t. That’s where their “analysis” ends.

     There’s no reasoning with one who considers you evil. There’s certainly no compromising with him. He’s out to destroy you. He’ll take whatever opportunity you offer to slip the dirk between your fourth and fifth ribs and twist it. Nor is there any way for you to convince him that you’re not evil. He assumes a priori that everything you say is ultimately aimed at his destruction.

     At that point it becomes war to the knife.

     We haven’t yet seen violence with actual casualties. But we will.


     I know these are somber thoughts. I dislike them as much as any of my Gentle Readers. But the evidence leads in this direction and no other. The decisions that remain are purely tactical.

     Our objective should be clear: We want it to stop. We should waste absolutely no effort on convincing our foes that we’re not evil. We should not imagine even for a moment that any gesture of conciliation or compromise would get them to calm down and return to normal discourse. They’ve abandoned discourse and have chosen destruction.

     The current preponderance of political sentiment in our favor is essentially irrelevant. Mobilized, violent minorities have captured polities in the past. Indeed, the Twentieth Century speaks of several such. We face such a minority today.

     All we can do is punish them. Therefore, punish them we must. All else – times, places, methods, and limits – will be determined by circumstances.

5 comments:

Akaky said...

Good analysis, Fran, and one that I think is going to happen sooner rather than later. The Kennedy resignation will bring the prog hordes into the streets. With Kennedy, the progs knew that on certain issues like abortion and gay rights / same sex marriage, Kennedy would stand with them while on others he would vote conservative. That made him a maybe in a court divided into red and blue. His replacement will be a strict constitutionalist and all of Kennedy's maybe will become definite nos. The Court has been the progressives' main vehicle for getting around the law, popular will, and the actual text of the Constitution. That is about to change and I think some progs will do anything to keep that from happening. I don't see how they can do this, but then that would require your average progressive to think logically and logic doesn't seem to be a progressive strong suit, if you know what I mean. (And I trust all is well with you, the Mrs., and the dogs)

Unknown said...

A story. My brother is a vet (like me) who attended Columbia University when his enlistment ended. I asked him what was it like at such a crazy liberal campus with all you vets (Columbia is fantastic about admitting veterans. I can't say enough about this). He told me that they didn't say a goddamn word to any of the vets. So I asked him why. He told me that they--the "woke" SJWs--just did not want to mess with "big men"--as in large men who have honed their muscles either through demanding work and/or working out, but usually both. He told me that they didn't say "boo" to these guys. Smart move.

Bottom line, it's no coincidence that most of the SJW attacks have been on women.

cruithni said...

" Blood hasn’t been spilled yet…" Steve Scalise would beg to differ.

bryanb said...

it occurs to me that a step further analyzing circumstances of leftist provocation and apparent indifference among authorities could take two parts.

first, that the provocations playing out are *possibly* not heading in unexpected directions, and that escalation will lead to consequences, further degradation and lower acts, more consequences become causes, etc. the people and money driving the leftist agenda are not lacking in foresight or resources, so what are the potential outcomes *hoped for* by the leftists on this path are not yet apparent to us?

second, many if not most people will come to understand this dynamic by reading of it on blogs like this. anyone choosing an escalated response will likely do so after reading / coordinating using the internet or data networks in some form. such activity already leaves a trail of bread crumbs there for the reading - should it be necessary. if ANTIFA for instance is not truly anon (and I doubt it is), they could be shut down very easily by analyzing the network and conversation preceding their sojourns into street violence.

my prediction? when the rubicon is crossed, much of the outrage we observe from the right will comprise an index of persons of interest, flypaper to attract anyone with conservative leanings, and a tool to find and hammer down the nails that start to stick up.

the east german stasi accomplished much the same with meticulous *paper* records, and a huge network of info gatherers. estimates are that 1 person in 7 worked in some way for the stasi. with current big data, way more can be done with far less effort.

i really hope someone can point out how i'm wrong, but big data is real and anyone imagining that power and capability not being used is perhaps uninformed. i suppose i can only hope there is a real schism in the ranks of the elite, and at best we have a real chance for good's triumph, and not monolithic power and a boot stamping on the face of humanity forever.

Chip and Andy said...

"...If there were more bloody noses, there’d be fewer wars."

Yes. The question is how.

Right now the left is, for the most part, like the little brother sticking his finger in your face and taunting 'im not touching you' and the minute you grab his finger to get it out of your face he screams "mom he started it!"

How do we break the finger and stop the taunting without them running to mother and claiming they are the victim?