American Internal Conflict: The War At Home

When crime becomes a way of life, an entitlement of sorts, one doesn’t take that away without a serious fight.

Andreas Probst, 64. A casualty in America’s simmering low-level war.

In my last entry, I explained how the the United States is headed towards a low-intensity, long-term conflict along it’s border with Mexico due to drug trafficking and illegal immigration. I explained how this will be a “total war,” not because all aspects of society will be mobilized and committed to a war effort like during the world wars, but because the impact of the war will be felt at all levels of society. There won’t be any escaping its effects, one can only be oblivious to its origins.

However, no conflict will be anywhere near as “total” as the one I think is already underway. It might be a stretch to call it a “war,” but it’s certainly an armed conflict and not all armed conflicts are wars, after all. It’s a low-intensity conflict, one that most Americans have decided to live with because it’s so diffuse and normal. This conflict is America’s increasing struggle with crime. No matter what anyone says, crime is a national security issue - living free from chaos and disorder is the whole purpose behind civilization. A society which cannot maintain order and uphold the rule of law and do so in a predictable fashion is a failing society and must correct course immediately.

I don’t doubt most Americans will continue to live with crime - all societies experience a certain amount of it - but it’s going to get a lot more difficult to do so. It’s not just about crime rates, but about how predictable it is. Most Americans will be fortunate enough to not become victimized, but it’s just as true that more of us will be at risk of victimization than ever before.

Killing Because They Can

In shockingly perfect example of what this conflict looks, video emerged over the weekend of an incident that happened last month in Las Vegas where two masked young men went on a joyride, deliberately colliding with another video, then culminating in an intentional strike on a man riding a bicycle (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT):

https://twitter.com/ghostbrowser8/status/1702795772092395828

From the New York Post:

A retired California police chief appeared to be deliberately mowed down and killed while riding his bike in Las Vegas by a laughing teenage driver whose pal can be heard saying “Yeah, hit his ass,” video of the incident shows.

Andreas Probst, 64, was killed after he was deliberately struck while out for a morning bike ride around 6 a.m. on Aug. 14, according to Las Vegas police.

The unidentified 17-year-old driver of the Hyundai was arrested by police soon afterward, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

The teen has since been charged with murder, after police discovered a video posted to social media that allegedly showed him deliberately hitting the man.

I don’t know how to describe a crime like this. Sure, it’s heinous, but there’s something particularly abhorrent about this sort of killing. They weren’t angry when they did this, they were gleeful. They took pleasure in killing a man. This was neither a matter of losing one’s temper nor a cold-blooded act. To top it off, it happened in broad daylight, in plain view of witnesses, and they filmed it! What would motivate someone to do this?

Unfortunately, this sort of thing may be more common than realized. Here was an incident that occurred in Huntington Beach, California over the weekend (WARNING: MORE GRAPHIC CONTENT):

https://twitter.com/510STATEOFMND/status/1702895771291705646

From NBC 4 Los Angeles:

A minor has been arrested in a series of hit-and-run crashes in Huntington Beach that included one death and which police believe were intentional.

The Huntington Beach Police Department said the youth, between 14 and 18 years old, was arrested around 9 p.m. Tuesday within the city. One of the crashes claimed the life of 70-year-old Steven Gonzales, according to the police department.

And:

The unnamed suspect was booked into the Orange County Juvenile Hall on one count of homicide and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon.

The HBPD said that officers responded Sunday night to three calls of cyclists being hit by a driver within a half-mile radius and within the span of 45 minutes.

Once again, a minor is the perpetrator. Mischief is one thing, but this is far beyond that. It’s too soon to tell whether this is indicative of any broader trends throughout society, but it’s still deeply concerning. The role social media plays cannot be overstated, as the pursuit of “clout” is driving young people to engage in cruel and dangerous behavior. The challenge, as I’ve explained in the past, is that this behavior tends to walk the thin line between legal and illegal. But these hit-and-runs are blatantly illegal and neither the prospect of arrest nor jail time seems to suffice as a deterrent.

Whatever the cause, the end result is a spate of “deaths of exuberance.” Coined by commentator Steve Sailer, it describes deaths caused by excess or a lack of self-restraint. All criminals, to one extent or another, enjoy what they do, but crimes of exuberance are committed almost entirely for the thrill of it. It’s especially prevalent among youth, who may not yet possess the ability to murder someone in cold blood, but harbor no objection to using violence, either, especially against the innocent and weak.

Here’s yet another example which happened over the weekend (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT):

https://twitter.com/DavidRoseFOX13/status/1703548052341190706

From FOX 13 Seattle:

KING COUNTY, Wash. - A gas station cashier in Normandy Park is recovering after a relentless assault Friday night. 

“I mean, my face hurts. But my pride I think hurts more.” Leah Johnston said.

The Seattle woman can be seen on security footage suffering blow after blow, from a single suspect, as five others rob the Friendly Normandy Market of cash and handfuls of merchandise from the cigarette case.

There was less than $100 in the till.

Police describe the suspects as young, driving a stolen Kia and Hyundai—both cars were later recovered.

“Kids don’t seem to fear anything anymore,” Johnston said. “There’s like, no repercussions for them the way there used to be.”

The attack, which lasted roughly 25 seconds, ended with Johnston on the floor, enduring kicks from her assailant. 

“They were laughing. They had no [regard] for anything. They don’t care anymore,” said Johnston.

What do you do about this? How does this get stopped? This is where the “armed conflict” or, if you prefer, “war” aspect of this comes into play. The fact is, this isn’t being stopped, not through judicial means. The legal system is clearly neither preventing nor sufficiently punishing these crimes. We live under an anarcho-tyranny, after all, a system that gives criminals every chance to redeem themselves, though they almost never do. Since the upheaval of 2020, anarcho-tyranny has become more entrenched and criminals more emboldened than ever before.

Sailer explained the dynamic last year:

Obviously, the promotion of Black Lives Matter discouraged the police.

A more speculative causal influence is that the triumph of BLM encouraged blacks to behave like a triumphant army sacking a besieged city: to steal, to party, to fight amongst themselves over petty insults. There was a noteworthy upsurge in blacks acting like the protagonists in Grand Theft Auto. Speeding drunk to the club with an illegal handgun tucked in your waistband is fun.

And:

Instead, both times the triumph of Black Lives Matter was framed as a crucial moral crusade to rescue the Good People from the Bad People. Both times, but especially in mid-2020, our culture devolved into a mania of pro-black and anti-white bigotry. For example, shortly after George Floyd’s death, the nation’s newspapers promoted “blacks” to “Blacks.”

For months in the eyes of the national media, blacks Blacks could do no wrong no matter how many shoe stores mostly peaceful protesters looted. (Finally, just before the election when Philadelphia erupted in rioting, Joe Biden got the word out to the press that, seeing how he really needed to carry Pennsylvania, could they ease up on egging on anarchy in the streets?)

If you keep being told by important people day after day across all channels that you are wonderful and law enforcement shouldn’t apply to you, why wouldn’t you believe them. Wouldn’t that boost your ego, make you more exuberant?

Sailer is speaking specifically about crimes committed by Blacks and though Blacks aren’t the only people who commit crime, it’s dishonest to act like they aren’t the most significant part of the discussion when it comes to it. Look at how many Blacks were killed by homicide or in motor vehicle accidents in the wake of COVID and George Floyd in 2020:

Source

The numbers speak for themselves. They went up for other races too, but their numbers remain well below that of Blacks. Since “Black Lives Matter” has been the mantra of our times, it ought to make a reasonable person wonder: what have the last few years been for? What did we all lose our minds in 2020 for, if this is the outcome?

Systemic Disorder

It seems only logical to conclude that the chaos and disorder was the objective. No, I’m not saying the Regime “wants” people to die, but the events of the last few years, along with the efforts of groups like Black Lives Matter, were intended to allow certain people to get away with living their lives entirely on their terms, under the pretense of social justice. It’s a racist, unjust system, after all, so enforcing the law would be the wrong thing to do. There’s just no way you could if this is what you actually believe.

It seems the legacy of 2020, then, was to humiliate a country, liberate a peoples from oppressive structures like the rule of law, while doing nothing to improve to lives of said peoples, to say nothing of anyone else. “They don’t need to follow your rules, just make sure you follow yours” seems to have been the lesson. Sure, criminals are still being charged and put on trial, but the process either insufficiently punishes perpetrators or finds a way to get the pressure off of them.

An incident I’m certain I once talked about on this blog has gone to trial and an outcome has been reached. It’s unbelievable:

Even a video showing the crime in progress, with absolutely no question as to the identity of perpetrator, isn’t enough to convict. He savagely beats an aging Asian American man and yet jurors can’t decide whether the man is guilty or not? The lone juror who held out is either stupid or is ruling in favor of the assailant. In either case, such a person shouldn’t be serving on a jury. There’s no way justice can be rendered, even if the accused is ultimately entitled to a fair trial.

In another ergregious example, it looks like you can effectively get away with killing cops now:

Sure, he stood trial and sure he was convicted of manslaughter in what was an obviously intentional killing, coupled with clear evidence of premeditation. It used to be that killing cops was basically an automatic murder conviction, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer. If you think manslaughter convictions are going to deter future cop-killers, if you think these cases aren’t being politically adjudicated, “systemic racism” is the last thing you need to worry about.

At the risk of indulging in too much outrage, here’s one last example. I need to drive home the point that the system can’t and won’t save us. In this case from 2021, a serial killer named Billy Chemirmir was initially saved from conviction because a single juror chose not to convict him, despite a seeming preponderance of evidence. He was eventually found guilty of that killing, along with one other. But his case does prove the legal system is incapable of maintaining any kind of order in our society. Chemirmir killed at least 18, all elderly women (mostly White, none Black), was convicted of murdering only two of them, while the rest never went to trial. He died in prison the other day at the hands of a fellow inmate. Ironically, it was another criminal who rendered the justice the state couldn’t deliver.

All this is to say: if you still think the system can be relied upon, you’ll be disappointed every single time. Yet we’re all at its mercy. Right now, it’s doing a splendid job of keeping us all in line, but for how long this can go on, that’s anyone’s guess.

You Can See It From Here, Because It’s Here

Is it just me, or does the Bay Area of California already look like it’s at war?

https://twitter.com/DionLimTV/status/1701379205156769963

This is a video of two armed men approaching a store at a gas station, one of them carrying a rifle. Make no mistake about it: the criminal class is heavily-armed and you’re not taking their guns away without a serious fight. Someone worried about “gun violence” in America has no clue how much more of it would need to occur to disarm the criminal class.

Then there are the brazen thefts taking place in broad daylight. Some of us may be tired of seeing these videos, but if the reality of the situation hasn’t set in by now, only something like this happening to you might (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT):

https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1704200570867708105

Like I explained a few weeks ago, this is the new normal. There’s no going back and things aren’t just going to get better on their own, unless they run out of people to assault and kill and things to steal. Those in charge won’t do anything about it, nor are we as citizens allowed to do much of anything, either. So, what’s the alternative?

Daisy Luther over at The Organic Prepper addressed the specific issue of “flash-mob” and smash-and-grab robberies ravaging the country:

There’s an epidemic spreading across America, and it isn’t the one the mainstream media is talking about. It’s the epidemic of flash mob robberies. This is not only causing problems due to the violence and trauma inflicted on those present during the event. It’s also driving up costs even further in a nation facing unprecedented inflation.

According to Loss Prevention Magazine, each event costs retailers approximately $700,000 for every billion dollars in sales, and it’s happening almost daily.

A lot of people seem to brush off flash mob robberies as a bunch of kids who got together through social media getting out of hand. But they’re symptoms of a bigger rot: organized crime and neutered criminal justice policies that are spreading across our country fast.

The article, which I hope you’ll read in its entirety, cites evidence showing these crimes are the product of tremendous amounts of coordination. Yes, there’s exuberance involved, but so is money. Organized crime uses people, mostly young, who are chomping at the bit to commit crime and pays them for it. It’s a dangerous way to live, but when nobody’s stopping you, danger hardly discourages.

Perhaps nothing better underscores the reality of the situation than this article from The Washington Post, published this past September 11. The nation’s capital and the Regime’s seat of power has always been one of the most violent places in the country,

Violent crime has long been a part of Washington life, the worst of it during the early 1990s when drug trafficking propelled the annual homicide toll to nearly 500 and D.C. earned an inglorious reputation as America’s “Murder Capital.”

The volume of carnage these days is not nearly as high, and most D.C. residents are unlikely to ever be a victim of violence. Yet a sharp rise in crime over the past year — punctuated by reports of homicides, brazen shootings and carjackings by armed teenagers — is rattling a city already struggling to recover from a pandemic that upended its rhythms and ravaged its once-thriving downtown.

As the nation’s capital, D.C.’s stature as the focus of global attention and tourism remains secure. Yet months of persistent gun violence are causing many Washingtonians to question their safety and commitment to the city with an intensity perhaps unseen since the drug wars.

“It’s worse in some ways, like a wicked spirit is out there,” said Ronald Moten, 53, who was arrested for selling crack in the 1990s before working with youngsters to keep them from committing or becoming victims of crime. “You used to not have to worry about crime unless you were associated with the streets, with drug dealing. Now you could just be going down the street, going to the car and you can be killed.”

The randomness is reflected in statistics showing sharp increases in crime in areas where it is less expected, as well as the jarring details of individual incidents: a military interpreter from Afghanistan killed while driving a Lyft on Capitol Hill; a construction worker slain as he arrived for work at 6 a.m. at Howard University; a spectator shot to death as he watched an Adams Morgan soccer match.

Earlier this summer, Moten said he was entering a Connecticut Avenue nightclub when three men “in hoodies” tried to rob someone who was leaving. “A gun went off, and I had to dive to the ground,” he said. “People don’t care. They rob them in Georgetown and Connecticut Avenue. They’re going to the Wharf. Now, it could be anywhere.”

Washington, D.C. is hardly the only capital city in the world that has a crime problem, but it has also been uniquely dangerous throughout its history. The randomness described in the story shows the barriers that used to keep crime confined in the rough neighborhoods have fallen apart completely. There’s just no escaping it now. Between the situation in the Bay Area and Washington, plus the rampant theft, it’s all both physically and symbolically indicative of where the country is headed.

More from The Washington Post:

“I’m so used to this,” said Jordan, who lived in Southeast during the city’s drug wars. The mayhem of those years — rooted in turf battles between drug gangs — made more sense to him than the crime that involves youngsters now.

He worries that city officials are focused more on easy answers — requesting the National Guard, for example — than identifying root causes of violence. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it; there’s no rationale,” he said. “These young people don’t have any limits to what they’ll do because they don’t value life.”

Floyd, who coaches kids in Ward 8, said he finds it difficult to connect with teenagers focused on building their Instagram personas, posting images of themselves “smoking weed and having the big gun on their hip. Their clout is the ‘likes,’ the followers, the engagement. We’re living in a world we’ve never seen before.”

In recent weeks, Floyd said he has gone to court to appeal for probationary sentences for three teenagers, including a 14-year-old who brought a gun to school and a 16-year-old involved in a series of armed robberies. While committed to being a mentor, Floyd said he worries that he’s helping to enable criminal behavior.

“I want to do whatever I can to give them the best chance,” he said. “The flip side is, with me doing that, they never learn their lesson, so we’re here next month.”

As long as people continue to attack something besides the immediate problem, there will never be a solution. The mentor cited in the passage above clearly doesn’t want to take a hard-line approach to dealing with crime in the city, but also readily admits that his attempts at reforming these young men don’t work. Something tells me people like him have been trying this for decades, maybe generations. Nothing has changed. Until a mindset shift is achieved, nothing will.

America has dealt with high crime before and got through it. The trends are now reversing themselves. It’ll have to get much, much worse before people begin taking it seriously again, but I’m not sure this time we have the type of leadership in power, nor the will, to do what needs to be done. Not only that, I’m not sure the public will is there, either. Our country is being run, top to bottom, by people intent on its unraveling, and are voted into office by people who seem to approve of what they’re doing. Why else would they keep voting for them?

More importantly, we are all running out of places to run to so we can escape disorder. What happens when there’s nowhere left to go?

Usually, it ends up in a war.

The War On The Streets

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this country is at greater risk of civil war due to crime and disorder than it’ll ever be over an unpopular ex-president going to prison. And no, this won’t be a legitimate civil war, with well-defined combatants and a struggle for control of governance and territory. Not yet, anyway. It’ll instead be a struggle played out at low levels against those who seek order and rule of law versus those who seek to impose disorder and what they regard as their right to pursue exuberance at any cost. The fact it’s going to be fought at low levels makes it easier to pretend like it’s not happening, but that’ll become much harder to do in the coming years.

What will this low-intensity conflict look like? We’re already seeing it unfold, except for now, the fight remains largely one-sided. The real fighting isn’t likely to begin until state, society, or both decide this can’t continue and elect to take the fight directly to the criminals. It’s going to happen eventually; anarcho-tyranny might be working out for the Regime today, but they cannot allow the situation to get completely out of control, either. It’d undermine what little legitimacy they still retain.

The fighting is likely to escalate if police begin cracking down on crime, leading to inevitable accusations of racism and systemic oppression. Either that, or citizens fight back more vigorously, maybe engage in vigilantism, which end up being cited as evidence of threats against “Black life,” as if life in their community wasn’t deadly to begin with.

It’s when we decide to fight back that the scale and scope of the problem will become undeniable. Anyone who thinks criminals will go into hiding or seek out a more respectable lifestyle are in for a rude awakening. When crime becomes a way of life, an entitlement of sorts, one doesn’t take that away without a serious fight. If they could be deterred, they already would’ve been. This is especially true when there’s no shortage of people, including in positions of high influence, willing to throw their weight behind them. I doubt we’re going to see public support on the scale of the BLM riots of 2020, but even without widespread public support, there exists plenty of critical mass to wreak serious havoc. They’ve proven it time and time again.

In addition to more crime, I’d also expect to see more civil unrest and, at worst, something resembling an insurgency. Not all that different from gang warfare which already exists, but waged actively against state and society. It has a political element to it, since criminals and groups like BLM see themselves as victims of an unjust society and crime is a way for them to fight back against those they perceive holding power. Law enforcement, already stressed by defunding, lack of manpower, and poor morale, will be stressed even more and there’s not much help coming on the way.

Eventually, it could come to look like the wars against crime in places like Latin America, most notably in the favelas of Brazil. Certain to be exacerbated by the flood of drugs and illegal immigrants over the southern border, you can see why it all amounts to a “total” war. There’s just no escaping it, even at the local level. France is just about on the verge, as evidenced by the riots that took place over the summer. It’s just going to be a matter of how bad it gets where you are.

In closing, I want to tie the broader American low-intensity conflict with the coming U.S.-Mexico border war. After releasing my last entry, a reader shared the following remarks via an intermediary [bold mine]:

Even worse, the recent flood of military, aged males into our country — combined with escalating sales of guns — presents an internal threat most people don’t recognize.  Most Americans that want a gun for safety bought them by now, yet gun sales still rise.

Undoubtedly rising crime and uncertainty accounts for a significant portion of current sales, yet my concern is that a leftist, domestic force is being built.  A hidden leftist movement already exists (ANTIFA hasn’t gone anywhere) but it IS arming, and it will make common cause with the cartels. The coming destruction from within is analogous to the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.

If you believe that analogy is too much of an historical stretch, consider that in many America cities controlled by Democrats we see not only legalized drug usage — benefiting the Cartels who undoubtedly give money to the black Marxists running these cities — but in some areas Democrats are PROMOTING drug use with safe zones and needle giveaways.  Democrats are junior partners, their policies directly benefit the cartels and this is no accident.

You may find these remarks overly partisan, but that doesn’t make them wrong. The point I want to get across is that there already exists a well-armed, violent criminal class in the country with many more to replenish their ranks, but we now also have to worry about the flood of migrants coming over the border, a critical mass of which tend to be military-aged males:

Source

15,000 is the equivalent of a U.S. Army division. Does anyone really think all these men are going to find jobs and become contributing members of society? Or, like most masses of migrants, end up becoming an underclass from which criminals are recruited and become mobilized into an armed force capable of terrorizing the populace or, worse, upend society?

If you still can’t see it from here, I’d love to know what you’re seeing instead.

What do you think? Do you consider a protracted, low-intensity conflict stemming from uncontrolled crime a possibility Do you think that conflict is already here? Let’s discuss in the comments below.

UPDATE: The daughter of Andreas Probst delivered a statement at a press conference concerning the murder of her father after he was struck by a joyriding teenager and his accomplice:

https://twitter.com/shanermurph/status/1704495715047571611

The eagerness with which specifically White families of crime victims have come to downplay the racial angle in these stories is disturbing and seems like something they’ve been coerced into saying. There may very well not be a racial angle and I’m glad to see there are people out there who don’t ascribe everything to race.

But if race had nothing to do with it, why even bother to go out of your way to tell people not to talk about it? I can understand some people simply don’t have the stomach for the drama and don’t want to become the public face of a loaded topic. It’s just strange, is all I’m saying.

I will wholeheartedly disagree with Ms. Probst that this has nothing to do with the political and culture wars. If “family values” are the problem, then inevitably, so are our politics and culture. What are family values if not culture? Culture is downstream of politics (or upstream, depending on your perspective), meaning politics will inevitably enter the picture. As I hope I’ve argued convincingly now, our leaderships’ conception of what order and rule of law constitute is very much a part of the conversation. To say this is merely an issue of social media and family values ignores why these kids are killing so exuberantly and why our family values have declined. These aren’t isolated from each other, not entirely.

It’s when I hear remarks like hers that I become strangely indifferent to the family’s plight and suffering. I know that sounds callous on my part, but if they’re going as far as to tell us to react to their story in a prescribed fashion, I don’t know. I don’t like being told what to say, but I hate being told what to think.

What about you?

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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