• Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I saw it in BLS data. And it’s important because of the insurgency numbers I brought up too. 3 and 10 percent are high enough numbers. Plus everyone below that range as well.

    I want to be very clear about something. I am not trying to recruit for the barricades. I would like to avoid this scenario very much. I agree that most people are going to stay indoors and call the authorities. That’s how these things go at the start. But humans are weird. The longer it goes on and authorities seem unable to keep order, the more support an insurgency gets, as long as they keep bystander casualties low enough and they stay on message. So doing things like abducting and killing police officers with a history of complaints would be productive to their cause. No matter how horrifying it is on it’s own. Things like blowing up the Stock Exchange are productive to their cause.

    What happened in Maryland was a punitive campaign of terrorism. I bring it up, not because it changed anything, but to show how easy such things can be. If you can lock down an entire state, then you can certainly lock down the executive class in an area; make it deadly to commute to work in a suit, town car, or helicopter.

    But these things never stay on track. Just like extremism, there’s always more, because it’s not a monolithic group. Even the Taliban was four large groups and hundreds of smaller ones. Especially when other radicals perceive it to be working. Groups like ELF are already established and may decide to join the violence instead of just targeting property. And that’s nothing to the KKK and Neo Nazi groups deciding it’s the race war they’ve been preparing for. All we need after that is any one of fifty Governors going full dictator to fight back with state sponsored terrorism and the descent into failed state will be complete.

    These fucking idiotic rich people think they’re above consequences and they’re going to drag our country into a pit from which it cannot ever emerge intact. They’re going to blow the lid off all the extremism in our country because they just had to buy another trip to space.

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Those targets are pretty broad - personally I’ve always made sure I can wear aloha shirts to work, but lots of perfectly nice people have jobs that require suits. The people you’re after don’t actually have to commute anywhere if they don’t want to, If they feel endangered they’ll just work from safe places and make their lackeys cannon fodder. You can paint a nice morally perfect scenario where the well-meaning shooters “keep bystander casualties low enough,” but once they get frustrated and redefine “viable target” as whoever looks the part, people will die for the crime of not being able to afford getting fired. And like I said, in 20 years the world will look the same.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Yeah they’re broad because I’m not trying to do planning work for someone who wants to do this. But I spent a decade of my life fighting and training to fight insurgents. They aren’t going to let a little bit of travel stop them. And when the angry people with guns say to stop wearing suits, you stop wearing a suit.

        • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          When people with guns say jump you jump - and then when those badasses win their moral victory they stop saying jump? Yeah good luck wit dat.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            Well if you don’t like them you hope they lose or you join the effort against them. You don’t commit suicide by challenging them as a civilian.

            • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              Exactly, that’s why I discourage supporting the vigilantes in the first place. Not a popular POV here but oh well.