The counterrevolution will be armed, too
A loud-mouthed minority of well-armed “patriots” will participate in whatever conflict emerges with a claim to be the successor of the Jan. 6 insurrection. But there’s a quieter majority, equally well-armed, that could cut either way. Those who think they might find little resistance from their neighbors in pulling off Civil War II ought to think again.
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was no surprise to journalists who managed to wander outside the DC Beltway. Their observation was often based on the prevalence of Trump signs along rural roads and the streets of small-town neighborhoods in the flyover states. Many liberal Americans in those areas no doubt were inclined to rethink exactly who it was who lived in their neighborhoods.
I was one of them. And though I did need to reassess who it was who lived in my neighborhood, I had to conclude that I was one of them. I lived right there along with enough folks, apparently, to give Donald Trump an electoral college win. Which is not to say I found the experience pleasant — in fact, I still gag at the thought of Trump occupying the White House — but hey, that’s America. Enough of my neighbors thought the Trump experiment was worth their vote. And I survived by knowing that enough of my neighbors were as gagged by that as I was.
In 2020 the neighborhood turned it around, voted in Joe Biden. But thanks mainly to the former guy, it was the rockiest transition since the Battle of Fort Sumter.
The loud-mouthed group, who unironically call themselves patriots, have managed to make the point that an armed response to the next presidential election, should it not go their way, is within the realm of possibility. Most of the neighborhood now acknowledges that possibility. Although it seems unlikely that law enforcement and/or the military could be mustered to support the patriots’ position in any significant way, that also — jaw-droppingly — now seems within the realm of possibility. And so there is agreement: Civil War II is possible.
As they contemplate this potential future battlefield, the patriots and their supporters would do well to assess the capabilities of those who might oppose them. Like me. I would oppose them. As would millions like me.
I am a Vietnam-era veteran, having served 3 years in the U.S. Army. I had a desk job — MOS 71Q, an information specialist. A journalist. But like all my fellow soldiers, I learned how to field strip an M-16. To fire a .50-caliber machine gun and a .45-caliber M1911A1 sidearm. To throw (and seek cover from) a hand grenade. To don a gas mask. To serve the country honorably and without sacrificing my humanity or compassion. When I was discharged from the service, everything I owned in this world fit in an olive-drab Army-issued duffel bag, strapped behind me on the seat of a 750 Yamaha.
I was also a hippie. When I joined the Army, after working construction between semesters at Penn State, I had hair down to my shoulders, providing some comic relief for the barbers and lines of nervous young recruits at the reception station at Fort Dix, N.J. Subsequently, during a long career in corporate America, I pretty much kept it short. But now in semi-retirement, my freak flag seems to have flown back to its 1970s roots, so to speak.
I grew up in Central Pennsylvania — in deer country, where factories shut down for 2 weeks during doe season, where fathers taught their sons and daughters how to hunt and fish. I got a tube-fed semiautomatic .22-caliber rifle for my 14th birthday. During hunting season my father and older brother taught me how to use an array of high-caliber hunting rifles and shotguns. In the Army I qualified as an expert marksman, the highest certification offered, and was the best shot in my company.
And now the patriots, led by a failed president and reality show host with his corps of Ivy League-educated propagandists, have for some reason bought into the misconception that they own me. And of the many facts of which they appear ignorant is the one that holds that the Second Amendment also applies to me (although I very much favor a more regulated approach to gun ownership in general).
I bring this up only to point out that I now live in a lovely, quiet neighborhood in South Florida, and I would like to see it stay that way. I don’t know what the patriots expect to face when and if they feel it’s time to pick up arms, when they finally get an answer for that young man who asked Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point USA rally in October, “When do we get to use the guns?” If he happens to be in my neighborhood when that answer comes, I’ll be ready to discuss it with him.
That’s the thing about domestic violent extremism: it happens domestically, in neighborhoods. And you can never be quite sure who lives here.
Originally published at http://kcroes.wordpress.com on December 29, 2021.
