Seen on the Internets:
I’m not usually big on giving advice on here, but these are unusual times. Please keep in mind I was schooled in Unconventional Warfare (UW) by the best the US Army had to offer, and I personally applied it on behalf of our great Nation. Part of that training and experience involved Information Operations (IO), a detailed and effective method of controlling narratives and inserting key and manipulated information to affect beliefs and situational understanding, resulting in actions supporting “our side” occurring. My advice: stay home and do not get involved in any protests, of any kind, in the coming days, especially not the “called for” armed one on the 17th. I believe many different factions are using IO to try to fuel division and cause ignition of flashpoints that will drive people to accepting an agenda “in the best interests of the country.” Emergency declarations due to “extreme” conditions have been the method of despots since time began. Stay home, spend time with family and friends, exercise your patriotic duty by watching key events on television. Don’t play into the hands of those with destructive agendas. Don’t create or participate in the next “Emergency.” Let those with destructive agendas show up and be exposed on their own.
I’ve never been a very big advocate for protests to begin with, because unless you can turn out in truly remarkable numbers, the lawmakers have been there, done that. If all you can put together is something they see routinely, you’re better off not doing it.
You’re all far better off now (re)engaging with your local communities and figuring out how to route around big tech.
At this point, my protest will be refusal to participate. Particularly the Inauguration, but any other protest in general as well. I do not see how protesting at any point is going to help matters going forward.
I generally have little interest in Inaugurations in the first place, but with the past events, it’s going to be a little tempting to tune in briefly to see how “things are going” — but I’m going to resist any temptation to do even that. The “what if someone held an Inauguration, and no one came?” protest is very appealing right now!
The Presidency is dead to me. The Pretender in office right now — and I say Pretender to emphasize that even if he did win legitimately, he’s chosen to only fan the flames of division, rather than sincerely try to unify us — and I see no reason why I should pay it any heed at this point, one way or the other.
No one can unify us. Trump is the symptom of the division, not the cause. Though he often didn’t help things.
“what if someone held an Inauguration, and no one came?â€
When you think of it, that’s analogous to my assertion that sometimes it would be useful for gun owners to “sit on their hands” and not participate in an election, just to participate.
That sure as #$@! didn’t help us in GA!!!
Just to make my meaning clear: Sometimes it is shortsighted to only look at the next election.
I don’t want to repeat my Old Stories too often, but I recently recounted how a Republican who had stabbed gun owners in the back here in Pennsylvania, ran for governor against Democrat Ed Renndel in 2002, and gun groups fell in body and soul for the Republican, because of course the gun world was going to end if a heavy-duty Democrat won the election. But, Rendell won — twice — and in eight years the world didn’t end. It’s unknowable, but gun owners (actually, their “activist” “leaders”) demonstrating that treachery would not be forgotten, would have been far more valuable.
If you want to blame your recent loss in Georgia on something, blame it on the four-year shitshow that gun owners and the NRA helped create in 2016. All that was accomplished was to “wake a slumbering giant”, and the role the MSM media would play was totally predictable; they were given an embarrassment of riches to work with.
BTW, by “sit one their hands” I wasn’t referring to, all gun owners not voting; just high-profile gun groups withholding endorsements. What individual voters do in the voting booth would be a function of their own consciences.
“…because unless you can turn out in truly remarkable numbers, the lawmakers have been there, done that.”
It’s almost like you’re trolling me for this response, but I’m reminded of our June 14, 1994 “Gun Rights Rally” in Harrisburg, which at that time was the biggest Capitol rally in state history, with ~10,000 gun owners turning out. Many local clubs sponsored buses to transport us there. We impressed ourselves, and nobody more than me.
But the trick there was, that the legislators (more accurately, the Republican Party) had facilitated the impressive turnout themselves — it was part of the 1994 Republican UnRevolution. And it accomplished nothing. That November gun-grabber Tom Ridge was elected governor, and in June 1995 we got the biggest new gun control bill in Pennsylvania in years.
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I went when another rally was attempted in 1995 (it was a convenient excuse to meet with my GOA handler, who had to attend anyway) but without party facilitation, turnout was roughly 30. That was my last rally until 2017, when I noticed that “demonstrations” of several hundred people each were backed up waiting to have their pictures taken on the Capitol steps — all of them convinced they were accomplishing something.
As you observe, legislators walked past large groups, not impressed at all by what was going on — “who are you with, again?” Inside, attendees assigned to lobby their own reps and senators were being deflected to staffers, who displayed “deep concern” and took meaningful notes on their legal pads. And the group’s issue ultimately went nowhere at all meaningful.
What I learned was, that nothing at all had changed in almost 25 years. I was embarrassed I had been convinced it might have.
Protesting DOES move the needle. Its probably 100% of the reason this country has transformed from what it was in the past generations to what it is today. It not only moves politicians but it moves the societal masses and wins the culture war.
Sometimes protests are effective, sometimes they are ineffective. Sometimes they can be counterproductive. And it can sometimes be difficult to predict which protests will be which.
One of the ways protests can be helpful is that they help us see that we are not alone. But they can be devastating if you are expecting (and the organizers are promising) a giant crowd, but no one shows up.
January 6th was really the last day, I think, that it was reasonable to believe that protests could be effective. Since it backfired, now is the time to hunker down. There will be time for protests in the future, though.
What wins the cultural war is the Long March through the institutions.
You mean like Seven Mountains?
At this point, after having seen the Gramscian damage done to our institutions, I almost want to wish them “Godspeed”.
If we don’t launch a counter-march through our institunions, then what should we do?
Come to think of it, I think the proper solution is decentralization. Go back to home-schooling and one-room school houses, privately run. Now that we see what Government does with education, we should no longer fall for the lie that “government needs to force people to have a public education, because we need an educated people for a Republic”. We now know that Government doesn’t educate people.
“I almost want to wish them ‘Godspeed’.”
And they know that, which is why they pitch “victimhood” everywhere.
Sarah Palin’s church is/was “New Apostolic Reformation”.
What everyone appears to forget is that in Germany in the 1930s, the Communists and Nazis were mirror-images of each other in terms of taking turns at projecting their own intentions on their opponents, while sharing identical tactics. For some reason Americans 90 years later seem incapable of seeing the same thing right in their own backyards.
Be careful — right now “decentralization” is a popular far-left theme.
I am happy to announce that I just heard on the radio that a local “Armed but Peaceful Protest” that was planned for January 17th has been cancelled. This is just one State (Utah), though, so there are 49 or so more to go. (I don’t know if there’s one planned for DC, or some other places ….)
Perhaps people are getting the message. Perhaps people are instinctively realizing that now is not the time for protests — it’s now time for “wait and see” — but either way, I have hope that some little measure of common sense will prevail.
I think those protests were entirely a product of someone wanting to hoodwink the right. Red and Yellow? Really?
Absolutely but was it Antifa or the FBI. Color scheme suggests Antifa but the FBI has a long history of doing this stuff.
Pretty sure the ak one was cancelled too.