David Hines

Time for the final "DAYS OF RAGE" tweetstorm: the "what does it portend?" edition.

It's taken me a long time to work through my thoughts on things. Sorry about that. This stuff really isn't pleasant to think about.

Political violence is like war, like violence in general: people have a fantasy about how it works.

This is the fantasy of how violence works: you SMITE YOUR ENEMIES IN A GRAND AND GLORIOUS CLEANSING BECAUSE OF COURSE YOU'RE BETTER.

Grand and glorious smiting isn't actually how violence works.

I've worked a few places that have had serious political violence. And I'm not sure how to really describe it so people get it.

This is a stupid comparison, but here: imagine that one day Godzilla walks through your town.

The next day, he does it again. And he keeps doing it. Some days he steps on more people than others.

That's it. That's all he does: trudging through your town, back and forth. Your town's not your town now; it's The Godzilla Trudging Zone.

That's kind of what it's like.

I'm going to talk about some nasty things here. I do not want any of it. But some or all of it could happen. Some of it already is.

In 2017, I am very pessimistic about America's future, to the point that I think the country should seriously consider a National Divorce.

Everyone feeling nice and at ease now? Good, let's get started.

Let's not mince words: the United States of America is currently engaged in a cold Civil War.

In North Carolina, the Repub governor lost re-election, so the Repub legislature convened a special session to limit powers of the post.

Democrats nationwide howled w/ justified outrage; as we all know, legislators who dislike a governor should flee state to block quorum...

...facilitate occupation of government buildings by mobs, and have allies execute secret raids on homes on the governor's supporters.

All of those are things that the Democrats did to oppose a Republican governor in Wisconsin, and the Democrats were pretty cool with it.

This isn't a cutesy "both sides" argument. Nor am I calling out the press for bias, or politicians for hypocrisy (that's later).

My point is: *notice the Left and the Right use fundamentally different tactics?* No accident. They're different cultures.