Intro

It's time for a reality check ...

Maybe we’ve reached the point of diminishing astonishment.

But I suspect that much of what we’re hammered with every day really doesn’t make much of an impact on most of us anymore. We’ve heard the same stories too often. We’ve been exposed to the same issues for so long without any meaningful resolution. We recognize that reality is rapidly becoming malleable, primarily in the hands of whoever has the biggest microphone. How else can we explain a society where myth asserts itself as reality, based entirely how many hits it gets online?

We know that many of the “issues” as defined are pure crapola, hyped by politicians on both sides pandering to “the will of the people,” which is still more crapola. Inevitably, it’s not the will of all the people they reflect, but the will of relatively small groups of people with disproportionate political influence.

Nobody wants to face up to the realities of the issues. Nobody wants to say what’s right or wrong – even when it’s obvious and there are numbers to back it up. Most of us are afraid to bring up the realities for fear of being accused of being insensitive or downright mean.

So we say nothing. Until now.

It’s time for a reality check on the fundamentals – much of which is common knowledge to many of us, already. But it might be comforting to know you are not alone …

Monday, July 6, 2020

How does all the chaos and violence end ...

This is a question many of us are asking …

Some think they know, even now. 

Democrats think it ends when they win the House, Senate, and Oval Office in 2020. 

They think the chaos will help them get there.  They are counting on the “energy” and anger of the protestors to help them win big across the nation. They’ve clearly publicly supported the demands of those protesting the shootings of black men and women by police. That’s supposed to help them hold the black vote and gain more young, white and Hispanic voters. 

That, along with the media’s cooperation in successfully – and erroneously – sticking the entire blame for the coronavirus pandemic and the economic shut down on Trump and Republicans, should be enough for a Democrat sweep at the Federal and state level in 2020. 

Democrats believe that when they win control, the chaos and destruction will stop. 

Even if they do win everything, things won’t get any better. The riots will continue. Statues will continue to come down.  Monuments will continue to be vandalized.  Cities will continue to burn. Businesses will continue to be looted. 

That’s because what’s driving the BLM and Antifa folks has little to do with police shootings of blacks, much less with party politics. They don’t like Democrats any more than Republicans, despite what Democrats want to believe.  For that matter, they don’t like the media, either. BLM blacks openly mock the white kids and aging white hippie lefties marching with them.

Candidly, BLM wants everyone to bow down before them and give them whatever they want, which will never happen because what they want is absurd.  BLM knows this, so they’ll settle for terrorizing and intimidating everyone until they are stopped, extorting millions in protection money from big companies until then.  Antifa is more straightforward: it just likes to destroy things. 

Any election is not going to stop them, either way.    

To their credit, Republicans are under no illusion that if they keep the White House, the Senate, and get a majority in the House, the protests will end.  Nobody on that side of the aisle expects the violence and destruction to end anytime soon.   So until the election most Republicans in Congress will do what they usually do in a crisis:  blame Democrats and continue to cower hoping that a show of submission and  ignoring a problem will make it go away.   

The simple truth is that the violence and destruction will not end until ordinary American citizens decide they’ve had enough and refuse to be intimidated by the mob anymore.  This will happen when the protestors do something so egregious, so reprehensible, that the public will no longer tolerate or have any sympathy for the protestors. Even the media will be appalled.

Then the public will demand police and the Feds step in and stop the madness. This will occasion a great deal of pearl clutching among the elites about the need for compromise and reason.

But that ship will have sailed. The line will have been crossed.  

I’m not certain what the dramatic trigger it will be. I am certain however it will happen soon, well before the 2020 election.  BLM and its supporters, and Antifa, keep stepping up the attacks on statues and memorials to people most Americans still believe deserve respect.  They are even attacking monuments to abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and those who fought to free the slaves such as Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.  They’ve also vandalized the  monument to the all-black regiment that fought courageously on the Union side in the Civil War.  Why? 

It’s only a matter of time before someone within the BLM supporters or an Antifa thug goes too far and commits an act that galvanizes the public against both entities. 

The 1963 bombing of the South Baptist Church in Alabama that killed four innocent black girls, the murder of the black and white civil rights activists in Mississippi in 1964, and the actions of Bull Connor against civil rights protestors in Birmingham in  the 1960s, helped to change the opinions of millions of white citizens about recognizing and addressing racism against minorities. 

I’m hoping something as gruesome doesn’t happen by a BLM supporter or some black-clad Antifa wannabe. But it could.  There’s already been an videoed incident at a children’s hospital in Houston where the car of a father and his child was pelted with bricks and bottles by protestors as he and his screaming and clearly terrorized child tried to get out.  This is a very bad trend.   

I believe whatever the trigger is, it will happen well before the election. 

If local and state officials order their law enforcement agencies to continue to stand down after that, more police will resign or retire.  With fewer police around, crime will go up even more. With more crime, and unabated violence and destruction by the BLM and Antifa types, armed citizens will start confronting criminals and the mobs to protect their own property. 

Because no one else will, apparently. Not local officials. Not state officials. 

If you doubt people are already arming themselves because they're scared of how the chaos they see on the news might spread to their neighborhood, you’re not tracking the soaring rate of gun and ammunition sales and requests for concealed-carry permits over the past few months.

Ordinary citizens are already arming themselves to the teeth. They’re also stocking up on ammo. 

It’s a mistake to dismiss these buyers as merely far-right gun nuts and survivalists. The media would love to promote that narrative.  The facts on the ground say otherwise.   

A large number are first-time gun owners. Many live in liberal-run cities. Many live in the liberal-leaning suburbs; some may also be fervent supporters of bans on assault weapons.  They aren’t all right-wing loons, white supremacists, or fanatics preaching the end of days. Far from it.  

They are remarkably ordinary Americans. The one thing they have in common is they are increasingly scared that the chaos will reach them and their families. They are getting a firearm, just in case the very worst happens. They hope it never comes to that.  

But until then they want to be prepared. They'll discover a lot of their neighbors feel the same way. And a lot of them now have firearms, also.  Just in case.          

When they realize so many of their friends and neighbors are armed, they’ll start more confidently confronting criminals and any mob whenever these threaten to appear nearby.     

However, it's also a short hop from that to start taking justice into their own hands. As someone stated succinctly, if the police disappear more crimes will suddenly carry the death penalty. 

In Florida, where I live, people here have a lot of legal latitude to defend themselves and their families with the use of deadly force.  Google “stand your ground & Florida” and “castle doctrine & Florida” if you doubt me.  Along with our high level of gun ownership, and the large number of former cops and military who retire here, especially in Central Florida, Florida is an extraordinarily poor choice to see how far you can go with threatening anyone with violence.   

It's almost inevitable that someone or some group will eventually try. They'll be sorry.  

I also believe where police have been ordered to stand down, violence and destruction by the protestors will increasingly be met by the threat of violence from the public. It's already happened, when neighbors from largely Italian South Philly stood off protesters who wanted to loot their neighborhood Target; another group guarded a Christopher Columbus statue. 

There’s only so much reasonable people will take.  And reasonable people with guns who fear for their lives and property will take even less.  We are getting close to that point. 

If the attacks and destruction continue across the country, and if the police and Feds don’t intervene soon, I’m fairly certain the general public will. 

All it’s going to take is a trigger event. 

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