David Hines

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.

The Left and Right don't just want different things. They also have different abilities, goals, resources, and senses of propriety.

Meaning: *contemporary political violence from the Left and from the Right will look very different.*

I took a detailed look at violence in the 1970s in my earlier tweetstorms about DAYS OF RAGE... (links coming next)

Now, 2017 isn't going to be the 1970s. Goals, situations, and cultures change. The actors want different things. But we can look for hints.

Like, what kind of people will do this stuff?

The mental model we have for domestic terrorism in 2017 is shaped by what scares us: mass shooters and jihad. '70s radicals were different.

'70s radicals wanted to get away with their crimes. They wanted to avoid detection, didn't want to get arrested, didn't want to die.

Most '70s bombers had no moral objection to killing people, but they also didn't go to any great lengths to maximize body count.

That's pretty different from 21st-century mass shooters (who tend suicidal) & jihadists (for whom a high body count is part of the message).

Some suicidal mass murderers choose political targets, though it's uncommon. Overseas jihadists draft depressives, but it takes organization

When we're talking about domestic political violence, we're mostly talking about *stuff that is coldbloodedly plotted by serious people.*