Tag Archives: terrorism

October 21, 2017

Conservatives, Stop Talking About Overthrowing The Government

By wise sloth

A sheriff in Lubbock Texas recently made a surprising comment “predicting” there would be a civil war in America if Obama were reelected. Not long after that a couple of American soldiers got caught plotting to assassinate President Obama. It didn’t surprise me at all that either of these events happened, and it worries me that I was so unsurprised.

The extreme conservative right has been beating the civil war drum since 2008, and what started out as a slow clap has finally worked itself up to a fevered pitch, and I blame conservative shock jocks and Fox News pundits almost entirely for this. They’ve been acting like fire and brimstone evangelical preachers this whole time. It’s just taken them this long to play enough hymns and preach enough sermons to get the conservative base worked up like a church revival.

I don’t know why they’re doing it, but I can see what the end result is. They’re poking a bear with a stick, and by “bear” I mean “millions of people who already own A LOT of guns and resent authority.” And by, “poking with a stick,” I mean, “feeding sensationalized disinformation to…” it was only a matter of time before a self-proclaimed Republican somewhere in America acted on what people had been thinking after watching Fox News.

The thing about that is, yeah, the American government is completely broken. That’s been front page news since we were born, but civil war won’t fix that. All it will do is make America turn its gargantuan war machine on itself and shoot itself in the foot. No group of Tea Part militia men could possibly defeat the U.S. military no matter how many shotguns and rifles they owned.

If a rogue group of battle-hardened veterans started attacking politicians, the American government would have to declare martial law on all of its citizens, which would needlessly inconvenience and infuriate an already stressed out, anxious, and fearful population. The worst consequence of even a small scale violent rebellion in the United States would be shutting down travel and business. That would stop people from working, getting paid, or buying goods. If roads were shut down or became unsafe to travel on, then consumer goods would stop reaching markets. Once grocery shelves ran dry, very few Americans living in suburbs or cities would have any way of getting more food except to fight their neighbors for it, and since there are so many guns in America, that’s a recipe for total collapse of civil order. Anything remotely resembling civil war in the United States is a lose/lose situation for everyone except America’s enemies. Anyone doing any saber-rattling is either completely detached from reality or wants America to lose.

The ironic thing about all of this is that there’s a perfectly sane, nonviolent solution to all of these problems built right into right-wing, conservative values. Conservatives, you want government out of your lives. You want to set the laws where you live. You don’t like handouts. You believe in hard work, fiscal responsibility, and fair compensation. And between the lot of you, you’ve also got a ton of money.

You could channel all of those strengths into butting heads with a bankrupt government that’s going through the death throes of an unsustainable empire while being bled dry by welfare queens and an unnecessarily huge and epically wasteful military… but you expect the American government to collapse if another Democrat gets elected anyway. So why not just let the government you hate so much die a natural death? Then you can be the first in line to pick up the pieces instead of being the first to drag yourself out of the rubble you went out of your way to create.

And let’s be honest here for a minute. If the Chick-Fil-A protest was any indicator of how prepared you are to put your money where your mouth is or endure hard times, then armed rebellion is not an option for you. You will fail, but if you know one way or another, America is heading towards its next great depression, then the most important thing you can be doing right now… is preparing for a great depression.

During Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, he raised over $500 million from conservatives, and all of that money got flushed down the toilet when he lost. Imagine how big of a trailer park you could build with $500 million. You could build a trailer park the size of Pecos County, and since Donald Trump is on your side he could Trump it up. With or without trailer houses, you could build your own conservative Utopia surprisingly easily in this day and age. Then all the godless liberals can go to hell inconspicuously outside your walls while you wait for the rapture securely inside.

If you build your own cities then you’ll get to do things your way there. If you design your city to be sustainable then you won’t be dependent on your government. The fewer people are dependent on the government, the fewer people the government can depend on in return. You can assert and enjoy your independence by simply living independently, but that means moving off the grid and building new infrastructure.

You might not want to move off the grid though. You might feel like you paid for the grid with your tax dollars and therefore it’s owed to you. Well, as true as that may be, that grid is broken and unsustainable. It’s a cash sieve. It’s a white elephant. The smartest thing anyone can do is move out of the suburbs and into sustainably designed, self-sufficient communities. If everyone did that then it wouldn’t be a problem when the old system finally dies from eating its own tail. Then we could all just pick up the pieces without having to fight each other over scraps.

On a final note, I just have to ask, was Jesus a builder or a fighter? If you want the world to be a better place then build a better world. That option is still on the table. In fact, the more violent and destitute America becomes the more you’ll wish you had built a sustainable world when you had the chance. If you ever get to thinking that you can bomb your way to a better world, just ask any Iraqi how well that works.

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October 14, 2017

4 Reasons Terrorism Doesn’t Work And 4 Alternatives That Do

By wise sloth

4 REASONS TERRORISM DOESN’T WORK

1: Governments already kill more of their own citizens than you can.

Every country locks its own civilians in prisons for nonviolent, victimless crimes where, with few exceptions, they’re raped and beaten until they’re thrown out in the streets with felony convictions that ruin the rest of their lives. Every country sells tobacco, alcohol, and toxic food to their civilians. They also enforce laws that prevent the poor from being able to afford the medicine they’ll need to save their lives after getting sick from the poisonous food they bought at the grocery store. To make life even scarier and more impossible, most governments set the minimum wage below the poverty level.

It would take an army to kill as many civilians as those countries let die every year. It would be illogical to expect terrorism to hold any leverage over countries that make a full-time job out of terrorizing and slaughtering their own population.

2: You will be killed in retaliation to justify war spending.

Attacking a world superpower is tantamount to personal and ideological suicide. When you attack a superpower, it will attack back. Period. There’s no question about that. Even if a terrorist kills him/herself in their attack, the superpower will still need to attack somebody in retaliation. So they’ll invest billions of dollars into killing you, not because they even care about your ideology but because you went out of your way to give them an excuse to kill someone for money.

3: Everyone you know and love will be killed in retaliation.

And since the largest, most powerful militaries in the world are riddled with bureaucracy, inefficiency, and un-accountability they’re probably going to end up imprisoning and bombing more of your innocent neighbors than your actual associates. If/when/before that happens, you really have to take a step back and ask yourself what terrorism really accomplishes. It just sets in motion a domino effect of murder and mayhem until there’s nobody left to be angry at. The only people who really win are the bullet and bomb merchants.

If you truly have an ideology worth spreading, the worst thing you could possibly do is kill a bunch of innocent civilians. All that’s going to accomplish is getting you and a significant number of like-minded individuals killed, and your ideas are going to die with you.

4: You will make the world hate and reject your ideology.

You’re not going to die as a glorious martyr either. You’re going to be demonized, and your ideology is going to be demonized right along with you. Even if your ideology isn’t demonic, you’ll have made it demonic in the public eye.

Bad Luck Brian Meme: "Kills innocent civilians for the glory of his religion. Now everybody hates his religion."

Some terrorists kill themselves and other people because they believe they’ve been pushed up against the wall. Terrorists say they were forced to use violence as a last resort against overwhelming odds. That’s the line we hear, anyway, but when have the police ever raided a terrorist’s bomb-shack and found a door-length list hanging on the wall of every other method the terrorists had tried before finally resorting to violence? Never. Terrorism isn’t the last resort of courageous men. It’s the first idea of uncreative fools. Here are a few ideas that have worked for other people, which you and your organization should consider trying before resorting to violence:

4 ALTERNATIVES TO TERRORISM THAT DO WORK

1: Bribery

Maybe you have a righteous ideology that you want your government to adopt. Killing innocent people will obligate politicians to reject your ideology. However, history shows that nothing motivates politicians better than money. Instead of funding terrorist training camps, just fund a politician’s political campaign. Even if your ideology doesn’t make any sense and is blatantly in the disinterest of the common citizen, you can still get a politician to sign legislation that will force your ideology onto others. Why do you think America cares so much about Israel? It’s not because America loves Jews. It’s because American politicians love Jewish campaign donations and business connections.

2: Outreach

The Catholic church tried to spread Christianity by the sword. Now the Crusades are remembered by believers and non-believers alike as a prime historical example of FAIL. However, Christianity still spread all the way around the globe because the Christians changed their tactics. They sent missionaries to foreign lands to set up schools, hospitals, orphanages and poor houses. The locals didn’t (usually) fight off the missionaries. The locals came to them. Then, once the locals were lured inside the church the Christians pulled a bait-and-switch and pushed their manifesto on them. Hundreds of years later, Africans, Hawaiians, Maoris, Alaskans, Native Americans and countless other ethnic groups are still worshiping the God who stole their land and erased their culture.

3. Propaganda

You don’t have to kill your enemy to defeat them. Ultimately, what’s your enemy? Your enemy is the ideas in people’s minds. Defeat the ideas and you convert your enemies into your allies. Then you win twice.

If your ideology isn’t sound enough to convince people to adopt without violence then you need to seriously consider whether your ideology is worth spreading at all. If your ideology can convert people without violence then why use violence?

If you have an ideology worth killing/dying for then you must have a giant manifesto detailing your cause, right? If you don’t, then you have to ask yourself what you’re killing/dying for. How do you spread an idea? You put it into a book and then circulate copies of that book. Your money would be better spent on ink than bullets. You don’t even have to be subtle about the fact that you’re spreading propaganda with a bait-and-switch agenda. Just make it cute and funny. If you want to get into people’s minds then DO get into their books and television; DON’T kill them.

4. Regrouping and rebuilding

Joseph Smith had an ideology he wanted to spread. He was killed for his beliefs, and his followers were brutally persecuted by Christians. Afterwards, his followers didn’t start burning churches and attacking government buildings. They moved out into the country and built a new nation based on their ideals. Unfortunately for them, the United States forced them to accept annexation as a state instead of being able to start their own country, but even after that happened they still didn’t start burning churches and blowing up government buildings. They set up schools in places Christians had already done the groundwork of wiping out the local culture. They sent missionaries door to door all over the world to spread their manifesto and convert people’s minds by talking to them, and they’ve had far more success that way than violence could have ever achieved. They haven’t taken over the world yet, but that’s no reason to start killing people. Point in fact, at the time of writing this a Mormon is running for president of the country that wouldn’t let Utah be its own country. Regardless of whether Utah is a state or a country, it’s still a stronghold of the Latter-day Saints, and it became that way through hard work, not violence.

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