Personally, I think Lynch is off the mark with his "at least a thousand" comment. I think his logic isn't totally flawed, and I can see how he came to that conclusion, but I also think it's hyperbolic. Based on a lot of the messaging coming from the Democrat party right now, I think many of them are bracing for a "soft landing" in the event of a Trump victory in November. Not all of them, obviously - when it comes to the candidate and her camp, they're hysteria seems to be mounting - but the party as a whole is not as unified as they often appear to be and I think that, overall, many will reluctantly, begrudgingly, but ultimately go along with whatever happens without "activating the bat signal", as it was said, to call for another "Summer of Love". I certainly think some will (not naming names, but you can guess), and I know for a fact there will be deranged lunatics that come out and act like fools, but they will be sporadic and poorly organized. In the event of a Kamala victory... well, I don't think much will happen, to be honest. Lots of kvetching, sure, but markedly less violence overall. Then again, I had a friend posit that such an environment may embolden bad actors to harass and act violently towards those still banging the MAGA drum, which is definitely a possibility.
No matter which way it goes, I believe there will be small, localized, largely inchoate outbreaks of violence. We can only hope that it remains that way and doesn't escalate into an American equivalent of Italy's "Years of Lead" - decades of sustained violence that, while largely sporadic and low-intensity for the most part, still ground on for almost twenty years. The body count wasn't in the thousands (Wikipedia estimates that across all the factions, the total amount dead was 428 - ghastly, yes, but not 1k), but the events themselves are so shocking that, when I was reading about it, I couldn't believe that it took place in a first world, Western-aligned "liberal democracy" like Italy. While unlikely, it is a possibility, and in my opinion the worst case scenario outside of an outright civil war.
I keep saying - until the economy goes, a lot of the doomer stuff is off the table. Even people who talk about this stuff frequently underestimate the power of bread and circuses in terms of maintaining social order. As long as bellies are full and good times can be had, there's just no incentive to fight over politics.
The Years of Lead example shows how hard it is to rack up a high body count unless there's fighting going on daily or massive firepower employed. Even The Troubles took years to reach 1,000 deaths. If enough people were dying to put us on pace for 1,000 dead by April, I think public outcry would bring an end to it first.
I like Lynch as well, but he is very young. Remember, he's a YouTuber who started by trying to make money at alternative-history videos before deciding doom and gloom quasi-civil-war political commentary was more lucrative. It doesn't mean he's wrong, but he has no real expertise to back up his opinion, and his livelihood is tied to his heterodox opinions. He also lacks actual experience with either armed conflict or political leadership, which may be why he underestimates how hard it is to kill 1000 people in political violence.
Finally, anyone who says the French Revolution "birthed liberal democracy" needs a history refresher. The French are on their 5th republic since 1789; we're still on our first. The Frenchies actually have a very poor track record at that liberal-democracy thing. Thomas Paine may have used similar language in both revolutions, but it was the American one that "birthed liberal democracy". (Which is an oxymoron, BTW. I'm still looking for a publisher for a piece on that subject.)
I don't like playing the age card, but it's true - with age comes wisdom. I think Lynch is a living reminder that a little knowledge can be dangerous. Tim Pool, who's been predicting civil war for a while, even says 1,000 dead is over the top. And I'm very intrigued by how the aging of the population doesn't seem to factor into Lynch's calculation, even as he cites demographics often in his videos. In his debate with Scott Greer, it's Greer who actually hints at significance of America's age structure with respect to predicting civil war. If our country's median age was still 28, I'd be even more worried than I am currently about civil war breaking out.
So yeah, we're headed towards civil war, but it's also not going to be as dramatic as Lynch and others are making it out to be.
There are a few things here that deserve more discussion than a brief comment, but I’ll try. First, America is in a very strange position economically. We command the world’s economy, but are increasingly hollowed out from within. The easily accessed natural resources are gone and the vast majority of the population no longer has access to a fallback secure existence like a family farm. You literally have around 300 million people who live or die based on that agricultural lifeline that is itself very brittle and dependent on the “grid.” Any kind of real disruption in that pipeline will cause a major crisis very quickly, especially if the disruption is seen as political.
Second, unrest in 2016 and 2020 came at a period where there was still a reasonably healthy economy. In four years, we have gone from being able to reasonably live to the majority of people having to make painful decisions about how and where to spend their money. The fact that Trump, who is honestly a hack politician, is doing so well at this point is because people don’t care where or how they get respite, just that they get some. No one cares what economic analysts are telling them about how good the economy is when they have to choose what necessity they are going without.
Third, there is a psychological effect that comes into play here, something along the lines of the madness of crowds. Basically, people’s inhibitions to an act are overcome when they see others doing it. It is not peer pressure or copycat behavior, but lowered inhibitions. Slippery slope might be an accurate term. The rise in school shootings is a great example of this, where the only consistent correlation to the rise in school shootings is the rise in school shootings. No one can or wants to identify this, because it means there is no fix. In a charged political environment, violence is likely to accelerate.
Fourth, we have a distinct template of competing ideologies. Obviously, these have existed in many times and places, but we have gone from bickering points of view to openly hostile ones. The “culture wars” are an example. In turn, this has been weaponized by pretty much every entity in the nation. People treat any position now as a zero sum game. Cooperation becomes impossible and agreement is seen as a betrayal by other members of that same side. On top of that, each side expects a unified voice from their own. For example, I’ve had a couple of gay friends express a great deal of reservation in private about the trans movement, and they’ve told me that when they brought it up in a larger discussion, they were basically ostracized. I’m generally conservative, it vehemently oppose the death penalty. That has caused quite a bit of heat to come my way from other conservatives at times. I think global warming is real. More heat. You can’t be on the left and be anti-war now, either. Interests drive some of this, but it makes no sense on other things. Agreement is dead. It is this kind of ideological inflexibility that puts people on edge and fearful.
Fifth is the dehumanization of the other side, somewhat related to the above. The rhetoric from the left crossed over into describing the right as subhuman morons, maybe orcs if you will. I haven’t seen as much of this from the right, but I think it might get ramped up soon. It is easy to harm others when you don’t see them as the same as you.
Sixth, I’m not so sure that age is as much of a factor as it once was. By and large, people are healthier longer, delay adulthood, and are not getting established as soon in life, if at all. Ryan Routh may have been an outlier, but I am not so sure. The question is whether or not there is a large enough body of disaffected people who are still capable of violence. It is tempting to make an incel joke here, but there is an increasingly large body of men who see their prospects as bleak.
I could expand on all of those, but that is sort of a nutshell take. I do think it is sort of dumb for this Lynch guy to put a figure out there. History makes liars out of those who try to predict the future. I do think that there is a lot more fuel on the fire than there has been in recent years and a thousand people isn’t a whole lot out of 300 million or more. On the other hand, our entertainment media has done a wonderful job of giving people the impression that things are wildly more violent in the real world than they actually are. However, crime in any major city nets a few hundred dead each year, so maybe it’s not that big a number.
Going to be quite interesting next week, either way. My prediction will be that Harris “wins,” though half the country will not accept it, and maybe rightfully so. Color revolutions can happen at home, not just abroad.
1. America's economic strength was rooted in its abundance of resources, land, and people. It's been whittled down to just people. We're still the world's largest market, but China is proving to be stiff competition in that regard.
2. I think what's really happening with the economy is that it's two-tiered. Lyn Alden pointed out the other day that asset and property owners are doing well. But those without significant assets nor property aren't. This is a classic recipe for revolution. It's just that in 2024 America, these are things that cross party lines. I suppose it's all just a matter of who people blame more. Traditionally, you blame the Right, but the Right no longer represents the status quo, so that explains why the Left is getting more of the blame these days. Throw in immigration and inflation, and you've got a lot of discontent.
3. We all want to be judged as individuals, but the reality is, you don't get a good read of who someone is until you see how they behave in a group setting. Initially, I thought that nobody would try to assassinate Trump again because the first attempt failed, but after additional attempts, I wonder if they're going to keep going for it because he's still standing after all the hits he took. The fact he keeps surviving only makes the challenge more enticing. It's very possible all it takes is one act of violence to get enough people up in a tizzy to spark a conflagration.
4. It was never possible to resolve the culture wars politically. Someone said on X last week that we need to find a way to compromise on morals. It was a statement so stupid, I couldn't believe they didn't think about it first before posting. If you compromise on your morals, you're either a weak person or they were never morals in the first place. We've reached the logical end state of trying to settle cultural and moral questions through politics. It doesn't work.
5. Both sides are guilty of harsh rhetoric, but the Left is utterly abusive in the way it speaks of America, Americans, Whites, and people on the Right. They also think dehumanizing rhetoric is bad only when the Right does it because Hitler, apparently unaware that all mass murderers, regardless of ideology, utilize dehumanizing language.
6. Being healthier longer means you don't die of natural causes at 60-70 years old. It doesn't mean that aging doesn't hit you or that older people are more driven to engage in risky behavior. There's just no getting around the fact there's not a single country with 55% of the population over age 30 dealing with a civil war/revolution. We're going to see large-scale violence, but it'll be of short duration because of the relative lack of young men.
The last time 1,000 homicides occurred in New York City was 1995. St. Louis, arguably America's most violent cities, tops out at a few hundred homicides a year. If a coast-to-coast SHTF does occur, maybe we'll see 1,000 dead by April, but again, it'd have to be a pretty significant event. That's 6 to 7 people dying daily on average just to political violence. Killing one person is easy, killing hundreds is much more difficult, unless you're using artillery and dropping bombs.
I too believe Harris will win, but barely. The Right's response is harder to gauge, but the Left's is more predictable. I can imagine Harris basically telling her side to "go crazy" and riots happen anyway as the Left is now smelling blood. If Trump wins, however, they'll do that as well as pull out all the stops to not certify the election results.
I also wonder if the crisis we experience is something along the grid going down, as you said. An extended time with an internet “glitch” could cause a lot of crazy problem.
Second, “people are just trying to get a respite anywhere” and they found that in Trump. Agree 100%. There’s an odd spirit, mood, attitude - call it what you will- in people. They seem to want our political leader to be a Savior. It seems a crisis in personal meaning and purpose is causing chaos that is moving from the personal to a national level.
Have we lost the ability to lead ourselves, our families, our communities? Many want someone else to take care of them. It’s just a bummer to see this mood come over America.
I have no ability or insight to predict anything. But it seems something will trigger a significant loss of freedom and more oversight by the military. Either political side could initiate this depending on circumstances. I think Neil Howe might write about this? It’s a sad state of affairs overall.
From a foreign perspective, it seems like Democrats are a bit demoralized at this point and simply not as charged up. I think the fact that they’ve been in power for 4 years will calm them.
It seems to me that it takes a while to build up to things and motivate people towards action. The Freedom Convoy and various associated protests only happened a couple of years into Covid tyranny. The George Floyd riots were 3.5 years into the Trump administration.
I also think that many of the most motivated Republicans are out of commission due to January 6 trials. So they aren’t available for conflict.
Therefore I don’t expect major conflict in the next few months. Maybe a couple of years into Trump if he proves very effective and threatens the left’s power base or there is a big external crisis that triggers some deprivation.
I think the Democrats are just "tired." They've already played their hand and it hasn't worked out too well. Being the opposition is where the Left does it's "best" work, because their entire shtick is about trying to overturn the status quo. But what happens when they're the status quo? The cognitive dissonance is too much to reconcile.
BLM is another good example of how the Left quickly ran out of road. Since 2020, nobody cares about police shootings of unarmed Blacks. One of the biggest reasons, I think, is because bodycams have actually shown what really goes on. Yes, police misconduct occurs, but it's outweighed by the number of instances where suspects, many of them Black, simply don't cooperate like a normal person should. I think people are seeing that and might realize, if unconsciously, their heartstrings have been pulled this entire time.
This is why I sort of wish Trump wouldn't win. It sounds ridiculous, but I always look at the longer timeline. I think there's actually more to lose if Trump ends up winning because he's not going to be an effective president anyway and the Left is going to come out guns blazing (figuratively, hopefully). Long-term, the best chance we have is for the Left to be totally discredited, but that's not going to happen with them out of power. So I figure if we're headed off a cliff anyway, let it happen with the Left in power. Either way, their grip on our culture and society isn't going to loosen just because Trump won.
One factor I forgot to add is the Gaza War. The far left is charged up for the Pals, but in response they’re getting cleared out of universities, blackballed from careers… I don’t think they’re in a mood to fight for the Democrats right now.
I understand the thought that the left will discredit itself by governing through hard times, but I think that’s just a silver lining to a dark cloud. There are a lot of institutional advantages to winning: appointing judges, protecting Twitter for free speech, fewer DEi hires, pardons for the persecuted on the right, stopping the border surge, ending electric vehicle mandates… it’s still a lot better to win.
There’s a possibility a Kamala wipeout would chasten and soften the Democrats a bit. It’s also possible that Trump could do a better job this time. Having a president skip a term and have time to think about what to do better next time is not a bad model, actually.
I would not be so quick to write off the capacity of older people to do violence. I'd suggest that there is a strong reluctance to pick up the guns, sure. But when the decision has been made that a true red line has been crossed, and there is no solution other than violence? Old guys are far more likely to know the point of aim on their chosen weapon systems, and for what it is worth, have a lot less life to lose than the young 'uns. "Spray and pray" is basically a young person's technique. Oldsters tend to put the crosshairs center of mass, with proper offsets for cross winds and range, and squeeze, not jerk, the trigger. Takes a lot fewer rounds to stack up a body count when you do it that way, than doing mag dumps of .380 fired sideways at arm's length from a passing car in the general direction of a victim.
I think the 1,000 dead estimate is abhorrent, but could easily see that number getting piled up pretty quickly if push comes to shove in the US of A. The generation out there now in its 40s and 50s has a lot of urban combat vets in it. The six week long second battle of Fallujah twenty years ago in 2004 comes to mind. 107 US (mostly Marines) and allies killed, with somewhere between 1,200 and 2,000 dead Iraqi combatants, and somewhere between 600 and 800 civilian casualties. Wounded counts were far, far higher. That was one six week long fight in one city. It was the deadliest battle in the second gulf war, in terms of outright urban combat, but then there followed most of two decades of low level but decidedly deadly mostly urban counterinsurgency. Not a lot of Blue staters were over there, in Iraq or Afghanistan. I'd estimate at least 2/3 of the US ground combat forces were red state residents when they joined the military, and the Red State percentages may be a lot higher for the combat arms of both the Army and Marine Corps - the folks who did the real fighting. Not saying that Blue states don't have their urban violence - they certainly do. (Take Chicago. No, really, you can have it.) But statistically, that kind of violence tends to be the drive by mag dump pistol flurries type, not the cold blooded door smashing and buddy stack building clearing, body stacking kind. If it comes to concerted Blue on Red American internal violence, I'd be careful not to underestimate just how truly dangerous even relatively small numbers of trained fighters and skilled hunters can be, in contrast to mobs of violent but undisciplined thugs, even roaming about in fairly large numbers. Those numbers melt away pretty quickly under disciplined fires.
So, yeah, push comes to shove, 1,000 dead in a nation the size of the USA in 6 months? That might only be a handful of pitched battles in five or six cities at most, with some random outliers tossed in elsewhere in other cities. The bulk of America has about had it with Antifa and leftist loonies stirring up insurgent urban violence in American city centers (basically all Democrat run, incidentally, for some reason), as police forces are ordered to just look on, or in many cases, are assaulted themselves with minimal response. The carefully choreographed "Far Right" loons with their painted shields, who show up in those rental vans once the camera crews are in place, and may well be mostly deep state agents provocateur anyway, will not be the real issue. They seem to be basically Leftist controlled playing pieces, near as anyone can tell. No, the real stuff will hit the fan blades when the gentlemen and ladies down at the VFW decide that enough is well and truly enough, and go home and break out their gear and their guns. If that should happen, 1,000 fatalities may well just be warm ups. Not that I in any way advocate such violence. I pray to God it never comes to that, and I do so daily. But should it. I would not underestimate the ability of actual urban combat vets to stack up the bodies of their opponents with efficient, and rather disproportionate violence. Ask any Marine veteran of Fallujah how that's done, if you don't believe it can be. They still know how, and may God have mercy on the souls of those who think they don't. Again, I pray it never comes to that. Simon Tanner is right - hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. But hunting season is just around the corner, so its a good time to get to the range and reconfirm your zero.
I appreciate you taking the time to write all that. That said, where do I begin? LOL
The issue isn't any one person's capacity for violence. I think most men, at least "red" men, are willing to use violence to protect themselves, their family, property, and others. However, what I'm talking about is violence at scale. This is simply not something you can do without a disproportionately large number of young men. You have to have large numbers of people you can send through the proverbial meat grinder and replenish losses. Also, wars have a biological component to them: ironically, it's what prevents an ecosystem from becoming outstripped of resources. We can and should lament the fact men are more expendable than women, but it's a biological fact: no ecosystem can manage an excess number of males. It can't manage an excess number of young people, either. Whether it's the chicken or the egg, all Third World shitholes have that one thing in common: too many young men, too many young people.
America today isn't a place with too many men or too many young people. It's why the country has managed to be stable for so long, despite all the stressors. Second World Latin America, on the other hand, still has more young people than not, which explains why they have so much political instability, but no war/revolution. The fact is, we cannot escape our biological selves. Women have a hard time coming to terms with this, but so do men, particularly older men. That said, the older you get, the more risk-averse you become. So while I don't doubt the ability of older men to use violence when needed, they're also not the kind of people who are going to go out and wage an insurgency. You're just not going to get past the fact that no country with 55% of the population over age 30 has an ongoing war/revolution.
I still think we're going to see large-scale violence in this country, because it happens periodically. Like I said in the essay, most of our violence is at the hands of the young, dumb, and fat, and we've got lots of those types. But I don't think it's going to last long, regardless of the level of intensity. It's definitely not going to last long enough to rack up 1,000 bodies. By the time we're at 100 deaths, people are going to realize things have gone off the rails and there will be calls for order to be restored by any means necessary.
Obviously, if an SHTF lasting for months, accompanied by a Without Rule of Law situation, were to occur, you'd rack up a high body count in a hurry. But not only is that unlikely, it's not useful to consider, either, since that'd be the literal end. Unless those well-trained combat veterans and hunters are marching out to the cities, I strongly doubt we're going to see clashes between militias and gangs at a large scale, though one or two isolated incidents are definitely likely. In 2020, we saw riot mobs descend upon smaller cities and towns, only to be deterred by residents with guns.
You refer to the group Patriot Front - someone who was once recruited by them said a while back that they weren't a fed-operation, though it's likely federal and other law enforcement agents have infiltrated the group. He said these are perfectly normal, well-adjusted White men, many of them with military experience, who've become fascists. Honestly, I don't know how to feel about that, whether to be heartened or unnerved. My gut tells me they'll go much the same way as the Silver Legion did and fascism is impossible to implement in a country as big as ours with a culture that values individualism so much, but I'm still not sure what to make of them. The guy who was recruited by them mentioned one former Army officer who was part of the group carrying around a picture of Francisco Franco in his wallet. LOL There's a LARPy element to it.
About combat veterans - they comprise a very small percentage of the population. This isn't post-WWI or WWII, where you can millions of men with military training because they were conscripted. Rudyard Lynch actually argued once, correctly, that bringing back the draft is actually quite dangerous for this very reason. Anyway, my point is that combat veterans aren't just disproportionately small in number, they also tend to live in certain areas of the country. From what I'm hearing through the grapevine, a lot of these guys are just hunkering down, preparing to protect their communities and plots of land. Maybe there's some talk about what to do if the Regime really does cross the line or the far-leftists, aggrieved Blacks, and illegal immigrants do show up in their neck of the woods, but it's still the case that for there to be a war, the enemy has to be near.
Personally, I think Lynch is off the mark with his "at least a thousand" comment. I think his logic isn't totally flawed, and I can see how he came to that conclusion, but I also think it's hyperbolic. Based on a lot of the messaging coming from the Democrat party right now, I think many of them are bracing for a "soft landing" in the event of a Trump victory in November. Not all of them, obviously - when it comes to the candidate and her camp, they're hysteria seems to be mounting - but the party as a whole is not as unified as they often appear to be and I think that, overall, many will reluctantly, begrudgingly, but ultimately go along with whatever happens without "activating the bat signal", as it was said, to call for another "Summer of Love". I certainly think some will (not naming names, but you can guess), and I know for a fact there will be deranged lunatics that come out and act like fools, but they will be sporadic and poorly organized. In the event of a Kamala victory... well, I don't think much will happen, to be honest. Lots of kvetching, sure, but markedly less violence overall. Then again, I had a friend posit that such an environment may embolden bad actors to harass and act violently towards those still banging the MAGA drum, which is definitely a possibility.
No matter which way it goes, I believe there will be small, localized, largely inchoate outbreaks of violence. We can only hope that it remains that way and doesn't escalate into an American equivalent of Italy's "Years of Lead" - decades of sustained violence that, while largely sporadic and low-intensity for the most part, still ground on for almost twenty years. The body count wasn't in the thousands (Wikipedia estimates that across all the factions, the total amount dead was 428 - ghastly, yes, but not 1k), but the events themselves are so shocking that, when I was reading about it, I couldn't believe that it took place in a first world, Western-aligned "liberal democracy" like Italy. While unlikely, it is a possibility, and in my opinion the worst case scenario outside of an outright civil war.
I keep saying - until the economy goes, a lot of the doomer stuff is off the table. Even people who talk about this stuff frequently underestimate the power of bread and circuses in terms of maintaining social order. As long as bellies are full and good times can be had, there's just no incentive to fight over politics.
The Years of Lead example shows how hard it is to rack up a high body count unless there's fighting going on daily or massive firepower employed. Even The Troubles took years to reach 1,000 deaths. If enough people were dying to put us on pace for 1,000 dead by April, I think public outcry would bring an end to it first.
I like Lynch as well, but he is very young. Remember, he's a YouTuber who started by trying to make money at alternative-history videos before deciding doom and gloom quasi-civil-war political commentary was more lucrative. It doesn't mean he's wrong, but he has no real expertise to back up his opinion, and his livelihood is tied to his heterodox opinions. He also lacks actual experience with either armed conflict or political leadership, which may be why he underestimates how hard it is to kill 1000 people in political violence.
Finally, anyone who says the French Revolution "birthed liberal democracy" needs a history refresher. The French are on their 5th republic since 1789; we're still on our first. The Frenchies actually have a very poor track record at that liberal-democracy thing. Thomas Paine may have used similar language in both revolutions, but it was the American one that "birthed liberal democracy". (Which is an oxymoron, BTW. I'm still looking for a publisher for a piece on that subject.)
I don't like playing the age card, but it's true - with age comes wisdom. I think Lynch is a living reminder that a little knowledge can be dangerous. Tim Pool, who's been predicting civil war for a while, even says 1,000 dead is over the top. And I'm very intrigued by how the aging of the population doesn't seem to factor into Lynch's calculation, even as he cites demographics often in his videos. In his debate with Scott Greer, it's Greer who actually hints at significance of America's age structure with respect to predicting civil war. If our country's median age was still 28, I'd be even more worried than I am currently about civil war breaking out.
So yeah, we're headed towards civil war, but it's also not going to be as dramatic as Lynch and others are making it out to be.
Max, fascinating article. Thank you for your analysis. I certainly hope the 1,000 death prediction is wrong.
There are a few things here that deserve more discussion than a brief comment, but I’ll try. First, America is in a very strange position economically. We command the world’s economy, but are increasingly hollowed out from within. The easily accessed natural resources are gone and the vast majority of the population no longer has access to a fallback secure existence like a family farm. You literally have around 300 million people who live or die based on that agricultural lifeline that is itself very brittle and dependent on the “grid.” Any kind of real disruption in that pipeline will cause a major crisis very quickly, especially if the disruption is seen as political.
Second, unrest in 2016 and 2020 came at a period where there was still a reasonably healthy economy. In four years, we have gone from being able to reasonably live to the majority of people having to make painful decisions about how and where to spend their money. The fact that Trump, who is honestly a hack politician, is doing so well at this point is because people don’t care where or how they get respite, just that they get some. No one cares what economic analysts are telling them about how good the economy is when they have to choose what necessity they are going without.
Third, there is a psychological effect that comes into play here, something along the lines of the madness of crowds. Basically, people’s inhibitions to an act are overcome when they see others doing it. It is not peer pressure or copycat behavior, but lowered inhibitions. Slippery slope might be an accurate term. The rise in school shootings is a great example of this, where the only consistent correlation to the rise in school shootings is the rise in school shootings. No one can or wants to identify this, because it means there is no fix. In a charged political environment, violence is likely to accelerate.
Fourth, we have a distinct template of competing ideologies. Obviously, these have existed in many times and places, but we have gone from bickering points of view to openly hostile ones. The “culture wars” are an example. In turn, this has been weaponized by pretty much every entity in the nation. People treat any position now as a zero sum game. Cooperation becomes impossible and agreement is seen as a betrayal by other members of that same side. On top of that, each side expects a unified voice from their own. For example, I’ve had a couple of gay friends express a great deal of reservation in private about the trans movement, and they’ve told me that when they brought it up in a larger discussion, they were basically ostracized. I’m generally conservative, it vehemently oppose the death penalty. That has caused quite a bit of heat to come my way from other conservatives at times. I think global warming is real. More heat. You can’t be on the left and be anti-war now, either. Interests drive some of this, but it makes no sense on other things. Agreement is dead. It is this kind of ideological inflexibility that puts people on edge and fearful.
Fifth is the dehumanization of the other side, somewhat related to the above. The rhetoric from the left crossed over into describing the right as subhuman morons, maybe orcs if you will. I haven’t seen as much of this from the right, but I think it might get ramped up soon. It is easy to harm others when you don’t see them as the same as you.
Sixth, I’m not so sure that age is as much of a factor as it once was. By and large, people are healthier longer, delay adulthood, and are not getting established as soon in life, if at all. Ryan Routh may have been an outlier, but I am not so sure. The question is whether or not there is a large enough body of disaffected people who are still capable of violence. It is tempting to make an incel joke here, but there is an increasingly large body of men who see their prospects as bleak.
I could expand on all of those, but that is sort of a nutshell take. I do think it is sort of dumb for this Lynch guy to put a figure out there. History makes liars out of those who try to predict the future. I do think that there is a lot more fuel on the fire than there has been in recent years and a thousand people isn’t a whole lot out of 300 million or more. On the other hand, our entertainment media has done a wonderful job of giving people the impression that things are wildly more violent in the real world than they actually are. However, crime in any major city nets a few hundred dead each year, so maybe it’s not that big a number.
Going to be quite interesting next week, either way. My prediction will be that Harris “wins,” though half the country will not accept it, and maybe rightfully so. Color revolutions can happen at home, not just abroad.
1. America's economic strength was rooted in its abundance of resources, land, and people. It's been whittled down to just people. We're still the world's largest market, but China is proving to be stiff competition in that regard.
2. I think what's really happening with the economy is that it's two-tiered. Lyn Alden pointed out the other day that asset and property owners are doing well. But those without significant assets nor property aren't. This is a classic recipe for revolution. It's just that in 2024 America, these are things that cross party lines. I suppose it's all just a matter of who people blame more. Traditionally, you blame the Right, but the Right no longer represents the status quo, so that explains why the Left is getting more of the blame these days. Throw in immigration and inflation, and you've got a lot of discontent.
3. We all want to be judged as individuals, but the reality is, you don't get a good read of who someone is until you see how they behave in a group setting. Initially, I thought that nobody would try to assassinate Trump again because the first attempt failed, but after additional attempts, I wonder if they're going to keep going for it because he's still standing after all the hits he took. The fact he keeps surviving only makes the challenge more enticing. It's very possible all it takes is one act of violence to get enough people up in a tizzy to spark a conflagration.
4. It was never possible to resolve the culture wars politically. Someone said on X last week that we need to find a way to compromise on morals. It was a statement so stupid, I couldn't believe they didn't think about it first before posting. If you compromise on your morals, you're either a weak person or they were never morals in the first place. We've reached the logical end state of trying to settle cultural and moral questions through politics. It doesn't work.
5. Both sides are guilty of harsh rhetoric, but the Left is utterly abusive in the way it speaks of America, Americans, Whites, and people on the Right. They also think dehumanizing rhetoric is bad only when the Right does it because Hitler, apparently unaware that all mass murderers, regardless of ideology, utilize dehumanizing language.
6. Being healthier longer means you don't die of natural causes at 60-70 years old. It doesn't mean that aging doesn't hit you or that older people are more driven to engage in risky behavior. There's just no getting around the fact there's not a single country with 55% of the population over age 30 dealing with a civil war/revolution. We're going to see large-scale violence, but it'll be of short duration because of the relative lack of young men.
The last time 1,000 homicides occurred in New York City was 1995. St. Louis, arguably America's most violent cities, tops out at a few hundred homicides a year. If a coast-to-coast SHTF does occur, maybe we'll see 1,000 dead by April, but again, it'd have to be a pretty significant event. That's 6 to 7 people dying daily on average just to political violence. Killing one person is easy, killing hundreds is much more difficult, unless you're using artillery and dropping bombs.
I too believe Harris will win, but barely. The Right's response is harder to gauge, but the Left's is more predictable. I can imagine Harris basically telling her side to "go crazy" and riots happen anyway as the Left is now smelling blood. If Trump wins, however, they'll do that as well as pull out all the stops to not certify the election results.
Well written, John.
I also wonder if the crisis we experience is something along the grid going down, as you said. An extended time with an internet “glitch” could cause a lot of crazy problem.
Second, “people are just trying to get a respite anywhere” and they found that in Trump. Agree 100%. There’s an odd spirit, mood, attitude - call it what you will- in people. They seem to want our political leader to be a Savior. It seems a crisis in personal meaning and purpose is causing chaos that is moving from the personal to a national level.
Have we lost the ability to lead ourselves, our families, our communities? Many want someone else to take care of them. It’s just a bummer to see this mood come over America.
I have no ability or insight to predict anything. But it seems something will trigger a significant loss of freedom and more oversight by the military. Either political side could initiate this depending on circumstances. I think Neil Howe might write about this? It’s a sad state of affairs overall.
From a foreign perspective, it seems like Democrats are a bit demoralized at this point and simply not as charged up. I think the fact that they’ve been in power for 4 years will calm them.
It seems to me that it takes a while to build up to things and motivate people towards action. The Freedom Convoy and various associated protests only happened a couple of years into Covid tyranny. The George Floyd riots were 3.5 years into the Trump administration.
I also think that many of the most motivated Republicans are out of commission due to January 6 trials. So they aren’t available for conflict.
Therefore I don’t expect major conflict in the next few months. Maybe a couple of years into Trump if he proves very effective and threatens the left’s power base or there is a big external crisis that triggers some deprivation.
I think the Democrats are just "tired." They've already played their hand and it hasn't worked out too well. Being the opposition is where the Left does it's "best" work, because their entire shtick is about trying to overturn the status quo. But what happens when they're the status quo? The cognitive dissonance is too much to reconcile.
BLM is another good example of how the Left quickly ran out of road. Since 2020, nobody cares about police shootings of unarmed Blacks. One of the biggest reasons, I think, is because bodycams have actually shown what really goes on. Yes, police misconduct occurs, but it's outweighed by the number of instances where suspects, many of them Black, simply don't cooperate like a normal person should. I think people are seeing that and might realize, if unconsciously, their heartstrings have been pulled this entire time.
This is why I sort of wish Trump wouldn't win. It sounds ridiculous, but I always look at the longer timeline. I think there's actually more to lose if Trump ends up winning because he's not going to be an effective president anyway and the Left is going to come out guns blazing (figuratively, hopefully). Long-term, the best chance we have is for the Left to be totally discredited, but that's not going to happen with them out of power. So I figure if we're headed off a cliff anyway, let it happen with the Left in power. Either way, their grip on our culture and society isn't going to loosen just because Trump won.
One factor I forgot to add is the Gaza War. The far left is charged up for the Pals, but in response they’re getting cleared out of universities, blackballed from careers… I don’t think they’re in a mood to fight for the Democrats right now.
I understand the thought that the left will discredit itself by governing through hard times, but I think that’s just a silver lining to a dark cloud. There are a lot of institutional advantages to winning: appointing judges, protecting Twitter for free speech, fewer DEi hires, pardons for the persecuted on the right, stopping the border surge, ending electric vehicle mandates… it’s still a lot better to win.
There’s a possibility a Kamala wipeout would chasten and soften the Democrats a bit. It’s also possible that Trump could do a better job this time. Having a president skip a term and have time to think about what to do better next time is not a bad model, actually.
I would not be so quick to write off the capacity of older people to do violence. I'd suggest that there is a strong reluctance to pick up the guns, sure. But when the decision has been made that a true red line has been crossed, and there is no solution other than violence? Old guys are far more likely to know the point of aim on their chosen weapon systems, and for what it is worth, have a lot less life to lose than the young 'uns. "Spray and pray" is basically a young person's technique. Oldsters tend to put the crosshairs center of mass, with proper offsets for cross winds and range, and squeeze, not jerk, the trigger. Takes a lot fewer rounds to stack up a body count when you do it that way, than doing mag dumps of .380 fired sideways at arm's length from a passing car in the general direction of a victim.
I think the 1,000 dead estimate is abhorrent, but could easily see that number getting piled up pretty quickly if push comes to shove in the US of A. The generation out there now in its 40s and 50s has a lot of urban combat vets in it. The six week long second battle of Fallujah twenty years ago in 2004 comes to mind. 107 US (mostly Marines) and allies killed, with somewhere between 1,200 and 2,000 dead Iraqi combatants, and somewhere between 600 and 800 civilian casualties. Wounded counts were far, far higher. That was one six week long fight in one city. It was the deadliest battle in the second gulf war, in terms of outright urban combat, but then there followed most of two decades of low level but decidedly deadly mostly urban counterinsurgency. Not a lot of Blue staters were over there, in Iraq or Afghanistan. I'd estimate at least 2/3 of the US ground combat forces were red state residents when they joined the military, and the Red State percentages may be a lot higher for the combat arms of both the Army and Marine Corps - the folks who did the real fighting. Not saying that Blue states don't have their urban violence - they certainly do. (Take Chicago. No, really, you can have it.) But statistically, that kind of violence tends to be the drive by mag dump pistol flurries type, not the cold blooded door smashing and buddy stack building clearing, body stacking kind. If it comes to concerted Blue on Red American internal violence, I'd be careful not to underestimate just how truly dangerous even relatively small numbers of trained fighters and skilled hunters can be, in contrast to mobs of violent but undisciplined thugs, even roaming about in fairly large numbers. Those numbers melt away pretty quickly under disciplined fires.
So, yeah, push comes to shove, 1,000 dead in a nation the size of the USA in 6 months? That might only be a handful of pitched battles in five or six cities at most, with some random outliers tossed in elsewhere in other cities. The bulk of America has about had it with Antifa and leftist loonies stirring up insurgent urban violence in American city centers (basically all Democrat run, incidentally, for some reason), as police forces are ordered to just look on, or in many cases, are assaulted themselves with minimal response. The carefully choreographed "Far Right" loons with their painted shields, who show up in those rental vans once the camera crews are in place, and may well be mostly deep state agents provocateur anyway, will not be the real issue. They seem to be basically Leftist controlled playing pieces, near as anyone can tell. No, the real stuff will hit the fan blades when the gentlemen and ladies down at the VFW decide that enough is well and truly enough, and go home and break out their gear and their guns. If that should happen, 1,000 fatalities may well just be warm ups. Not that I in any way advocate such violence. I pray to God it never comes to that, and I do so daily. But should it. I would not underestimate the ability of actual urban combat vets to stack up the bodies of their opponents with efficient, and rather disproportionate violence. Ask any Marine veteran of Fallujah how that's done, if you don't believe it can be. They still know how, and may God have mercy on the souls of those who think they don't. Again, I pray it never comes to that. Simon Tanner is right - hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. But hunting season is just around the corner, so its a good time to get to the range and reconfirm your zero.
I appreciate you taking the time to write all that. That said, where do I begin? LOL
The issue isn't any one person's capacity for violence. I think most men, at least "red" men, are willing to use violence to protect themselves, their family, property, and others. However, what I'm talking about is violence at scale. This is simply not something you can do without a disproportionately large number of young men. You have to have large numbers of people you can send through the proverbial meat grinder and replenish losses. Also, wars have a biological component to them: ironically, it's what prevents an ecosystem from becoming outstripped of resources. We can and should lament the fact men are more expendable than women, but it's a biological fact: no ecosystem can manage an excess number of males. It can't manage an excess number of young people, either. Whether it's the chicken or the egg, all Third World shitholes have that one thing in common: too many young men, too many young people.
America today isn't a place with too many men or too many young people. It's why the country has managed to be stable for so long, despite all the stressors. Second World Latin America, on the other hand, still has more young people than not, which explains why they have so much political instability, but no war/revolution. The fact is, we cannot escape our biological selves. Women have a hard time coming to terms with this, but so do men, particularly older men. That said, the older you get, the more risk-averse you become. So while I don't doubt the ability of older men to use violence when needed, they're also not the kind of people who are going to go out and wage an insurgency. You're just not going to get past the fact that no country with 55% of the population over age 30 has an ongoing war/revolution.
I still think we're going to see large-scale violence in this country, because it happens periodically. Like I said in the essay, most of our violence is at the hands of the young, dumb, and fat, and we've got lots of those types. But I don't think it's going to last long, regardless of the level of intensity. It's definitely not going to last long enough to rack up 1,000 bodies. By the time we're at 100 deaths, people are going to realize things have gone off the rails and there will be calls for order to be restored by any means necessary.
Obviously, if an SHTF lasting for months, accompanied by a Without Rule of Law situation, were to occur, you'd rack up a high body count in a hurry. But not only is that unlikely, it's not useful to consider, either, since that'd be the literal end. Unless those well-trained combat veterans and hunters are marching out to the cities, I strongly doubt we're going to see clashes between militias and gangs at a large scale, though one or two isolated incidents are definitely likely. In 2020, we saw riot mobs descend upon smaller cities and towns, only to be deterred by residents with guns.
You refer to the group Patriot Front - someone who was once recruited by them said a while back that they weren't a fed-operation, though it's likely federal and other law enforcement agents have infiltrated the group. He said these are perfectly normal, well-adjusted White men, many of them with military experience, who've become fascists. Honestly, I don't know how to feel about that, whether to be heartened or unnerved. My gut tells me they'll go much the same way as the Silver Legion did and fascism is impossible to implement in a country as big as ours with a culture that values individualism so much, but I'm still not sure what to make of them. The guy who was recruited by them mentioned one former Army officer who was part of the group carrying around a picture of Francisco Franco in his wallet. LOL There's a LARPy element to it.
About combat veterans - they comprise a very small percentage of the population. This isn't post-WWI or WWII, where you can millions of men with military training because they were conscripted. Rudyard Lynch actually argued once, correctly, that bringing back the draft is actually quite dangerous for this very reason. Anyway, my point is that combat veterans aren't just disproportionately small in number, they also tend to live in certain areas of the country. From what I'm hearing through the grapevine, a lot of these guys are just hunkering down, preparing to protect their communities and plots of land. Maybe there's some talk about what to do if the Regime really does cross the line or the far-leftists, aggrieved Blacks, and illegal immigrants do show up in their neck of the woods, but it's still the case that for there to be a war, the enemy has to be near.
Hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. That’s all you can do without perfect foreknowledge.