LF: 1775 . . . Again?

When people desperately trying to avoid a fight are left no choice but to fight, they are often the fiercest fighters imaginable.

The reason being an explosion of righteous anger – of berserker fury – directed at the bullies who will not leave them be.

Governor “Coonman” Northam of Virginia is such a bully.

He intends to rescind the current, ancient and long-acknowledged legal right of Virginians who aren’t criminals to possess more than single shot rifles and pistols – by criminalizing anyone who does possess them.

These newly minted “criminals” will then be required to turn in their formerly legal firearms to the government or be subject to Hut! Hut! Hutting! by armed government workers sent by the Coonman to enforce his criminal acts.

These acts include the criminalization of any “training” – even without firearms – which the Coonman and his supporters consider potentially “anti-government.”

This is a recipe for 1775.

Another bully – Thomas Gage, the British military governor of Massachusetts – attempted a “Coonman” in that year, which lit the fuse of what became the Revolutionary War. He sent armed government workers – Redcoats – to confiscate the weapons of the colonists – who had finally had their fill of being bullied. These long-ago AGWs eventually gunned down several colonists on the village green at Lexington.

Word of the massacre spread and the people rose in response, fighting back with whatever means available, harrying the column of armed government workers as it made its way back toward Boston, some 18 miles away.

The fury incited by that long-ago “Coonman” was subsequently described by himself:

“These people show a spirit and conduct against us they never showed against the French . . . They are now spirited up by a rage and enthusiasm as great as ever people were possessed of and you must proceed in earnest or give the business up. A small body acting in one spot will not avail, you must have large armies making diversions on different sides, to divide their force. The loss we have sustained is greater than we can bear. Small armies cannot afford such losses, especially when the advantage gained tends to do little more than the gaining of a post.”

Eight years later, those furious colonists finally succeeded in getting the bullies off their backs – permanently.

They probably never imagined that homegrown bullies even worse than “Coonman” Gage would eventually arise to torment them.

The current “Coonman” may not realize just how very tired the people are of being bullied – and how willing they are to fight, if a fight is forced upon them.

The “Coonman” feels confident. He has the full weight and force of the government and all its means at his disposal. He has legions of armed government workers available to enforce his writ.

But he hasn’t got the fury – and that is something he ought to reckon with, before it it is too late.

I speak from a rural SW Va county, in which most of the people living here know one another. Know they are not criminals, no matter what laws the Coonman may hurl characterizing them as such.

It is a very different to “red flag” and sic police department Hut! Hut! Hutters! on someone in a suburban home whose neighbors have no idea who he is than it is to order local sheriffs – who know their neighbor – to Hut! Hut! Hut! him on orders from Richmond. There is no “gun violence” problem in my county and everyone knows it. They therefore understand that what Coonman is proposing is not some kind of needed curative but the criminalization of almost an entire populace by distant tyrants who are loathed by almost the entire populace.

People such as Coonman are viewed as illegitimate foreigners; creatures who speak a foreign language, even though it is English. People here have had enough. The differences are irreconcilable. And the resentment is boiling.

Look at a map of the last election. The state remains overwhelmingly red – but the blues control the entire state government. It is because the blues – like a cancerous mole – control the densely populated counties adjacent to the federal capital. The reds no longer have a say in state government – and people who have no say tend to get angry. Right now, they are extremely angry.

It could get out of control very quickly.

It will be hard for the Coonman and his followers to portray 90 percent of the people living in the counties outside of Northern Virginia and Richmond as “criminals” by passing laws transforming them into criminals.

If this thing starts, it will not end until one or the other side is no longer capable of fighting. It will be no-quarter-given. It will be awful.

But it will be righteous.

And it may be the only way.

Don't be eager for a civil war, Virginia. the result will be the same for you as the last time.

You have to win this fight at the ballot box. you cannot win it on the battlefield. The correlation of forces has not improved for rebels since 1861, and unlike 1776, there's no French Army or French Navy out there to secure the win for the rebels.

I would add that, at this time, they cannot win this in court either. Note that all this pandering is about laws that do not exist. It is about proposed legislation, to be taken up, or not, in the 2020 legislative session.

If the majority of voters in Virginia support this legislation, and the majority of legislators pass it and the governor signs it, it's the law. The minority has recourse to the courts. If the courts do not side with them, they have some choices to make.

The best choice is to put forth the political effort to PERSUADE the majority to change its mind. There are ways to do that: keep track of the statistics, of crime and victims. Show the people that the gun legislation didn't work as designed, but DID have bad side effects. Convince the people to change the law. That may or may not work, but that's democracy.

The other choices are various forms of rebellion and resistance, which don't convince the majority, just anger them, and which only result in various levels of worsening losses to the rebels (depending on whether they are peaceful "passive resisters" or wage open warfare a la 1861.)

But as it stands, none of the bills is law, and none has even made its way to committee. At this point, one can hardly prevail in court to prevent the legislature from considering a bill.

It is just a tad premature for some to respond to the right pandering about the end of the world, because of the left pandering to its radicals by proposing a bunch of bills which, if adopted, would be unlikely to survive judicial challenge. (For decades, the right has pandered with bills to outlaw abortion, knowing any such law had no chance of survival. One more Trump appointee, and that may change.)

At this point, there is nobody to go to war against but the drafters of several bills. The bills have not even received a vote in committee. They have merely been pre-filed, and sit in an inbox someplace, awaiting the start of the 2020 session so they will actually be filed.

[Eric Peters] Look at a map of the last election. The state remains overwhelmingly red – but the blues control the entire state government. It is because the blues – like a cancerous mole – control the densely populated counties adjacent to the federal capital.

I think he meant that there are now more blues than reds. They are largely transplants from out of state, concentrated in northern Virginia, in the burbs of D.C.

The real political flashpoint will come when Texas goes blue, and the urban liberals try to Californicate rural Texas.

But if Texas goes blue, rural Texas, too, will comply with the law, one way or the other. There will be no strategic depth in the country, by that point, to be able to resist.

And here's the thing, the country doesn't HAVE to go Blue, but it will unless the Red get smart and reasonable. The whole reassertion of white race consciousness, etc, is not the way. Nor will we ever return to laissez-faire capitalism. Really, what the Red need to do is return to Nixonism, but without the scandals (or, rather, with a willingness to politically engage in scorched earth against the Democrats when they try to manufacture scandal out of Presidential faux pas).

But I've learned that my saying what needs to be done persuades nobody on the Right. It is pretty much the voice of the centrist independents around whom our status quo is built, and who will continue to get their way. It would be a lot less traumatic if the Red learned to like Purple better. I'd prefer not to have to keep fighting them and presiding, partly, over the crushing of their traditional beliefs and dreams. I'd prefer to leave more of the traditions intact and for the Red to accept necessary change to make the country better.

You're not center. You are left. What you consider right is center. What you consider extreme right is right.

In general, I agree with the laws of the USA as they are currently constituted, and with the governmental and military posture of the USA. The proposals from the Republicans, and the Democrats, to significantly alter the laws and the posture of government do not appeal to me: where we are - the existing status quo - suits me well. I think we have found a good compromise position - the "sweet spot", as it were - and I generally resist the Right and the Left when they want to careen off into crazy land in ways that will upset the status quo. I am concerned with making the status quo BETTER, more effective, more efficient. I am not interested in any major structural changes to anything important - not the military posture, not the tax codes, not the regulatory structure, not the welfare state, not the general structure of public services. I think it all works about as well as people are ever going to get, and that both sides propose things that are impracticable, expensive and that probably will function poorly.

If a determination to preserve the status-quo against left AND right is not center, then I don't know what is.