I’m missing your thrust with this paragraph, Tris. Can you re-cast it? Are you saying that if people are too apathetic to even vote, then they couldn’t possibly become revolutionaries? Or are you saying something else? And what do you mean by the last sentence?
I assume E means “porn” in the way many consider the “Left Behind” books to be porn for fundamentalist Christians.
Yep, I read it as “Republic of Texas porn”.
It just makes no sense that regular army units would refuse to put down revolutionaries, while national guard units have no problem following orders. It seems to me that both groups are pretty similar. In any case, the national guard is commanded by the governors of the states, not by the president, so it makes no sense that the “government” would use national guard units that the federal government has limited authority over.
In any case, the question is unanswerable, since we do not in fact have an armed insurrection against the US government.
If the political situation deteriorated to the point where a large armed insurrection was actually ongoing there’s no telling what the various presidents, congressmen, governors, national guard units, militias or regular army units will be doing or capable of doing, since the situation would be so far removed from our current situation. Why is there a large popular armed insurrection? Just how popular is it? How did the federal government lose its mandate? Do state governments function at all? Does any part of the federal government function anymore? Has the economy collapsed, and if so can the federal government even fund a regular military anymore? Do we still have a volunteer army, or are regulars conscripted? Would this make them less or more willing to shoot revolutionaries? If the army is so sympathetic to the revolutionaries that they won’t shoot them, why isn’t the army joining the rebellion?
The bottom line is that the American people will eventually get the government that they want. We won’t have a fascist government unless we all decide together that fascism is OK with us. We won’t have an armed revolution unless lots and lots of people decide that a revolution is neccessary, which would mean that peaceful political change has become impossible for some reason. Why is there a new civil war? What side is the army on, and why? Unless we know what caused the revolution we can’t answer the question.
In order for an uprising to be successful, a rebel army is not enough. You need to have rebellions in the military, the police, and you need a takeover (or shutdown) of the news media. In a huge and diverse country such as the US, it’s pretty near impossible.
So, those “Left Behind” books have sex scenes, too? And fundies are okay with that?
Republic of Texas porn, Rapture porn… whatever happened to pizza delivery guy porn? What’s next, tongue-in-cheek porn?
At the risk of responding seriously to a joke, “porn” in this case refers not to hard-core sex, but literature that exists simply to gratify the basest instincts of its audience. So Republic of Texas porn wouldn’t neccesarily include hard-core sex scenes, although it might, but rather an illogical and unlikely scenario where traditional godfearing manly Texas patriots defeat the liberal effete socialist atheist east-coast totalitarian dammyankees of the Federal Government. The idea isn’t to provide a realistic scenario, but rather to provide material for Republic of Texas diehards to masturbate over.
Oh, hush. It was… well, conservative porn. No sex. But the lesbian president and her lesbian army chief of staff made the SS… I’m sorry, Secret Service, a private army with tanks and all, and assassinated dignified conservative senators and mandated various minimum this, and confiscate guns that…
The First Army marches into Texas… against the Texas National Guard? I don’t know if they’d win. Assume, if you will, the Armed Forces are in one war, say, out of Afghanistan but in Iraq, that the Army is… displeased with their CiC, and thus Texas has control of all military bases.
Also assume that carpet bombing and nukes are, for the moment, out of the question.
I have to find this book, it was so… horrifying. I’ll try to dig it up tonight.
This site (it’s from Texas, by the way) lists about 17 instances for federal troops were sent, or at least requested, to quell domestic riots.
That summary doesn’t even touch the times that federal troops were deployed during the Civil Rights era to make sure that African-American students were allowed to enter formerly segregated schools. The only thing that stopped that from becoming an armed uprising is that most of the yahoos who wanted to block the students were smart enough to know their chances against an armed and fully equipped soldier.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743499204/qid=1126780217/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-4649421-6883836?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Here’s the book in question. Well written, if only it weren’t for the characters and situations.
Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
The West Point Motto is “Duty, Honor, Country.” Their duty is to obey the lawful orders of the officers over them, like those of the Commander in Chief. All military officers promise to guard the US against “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” We don’t have to guess as we have an axample in the Civil War. The military of the Union in that war was lead by officers of the Regular Army. Those Regular Army officers who sympathized with Confederates resigned their commissions.
Well, the dialogue is snappy, the pacing is good. I actually managed to read the whole thing, despite expelling it across the room with great force at several points. There’s some nice parallel structure, and the ending is interesting.
Is this the appropriate place to note that in the First American Revolution (April 1775, the Shot Heard ‘Round the World and like that) the Rebels were the National Guard? The Minutemen on Lexington Green and at the bridge at Concord were elite companies of the Mass. militia designated to report, armed and equipped, on thirty minutes notice. The organization was a hold over from the French and Indian Wars and a fair number of its members were veterans of that series of conflicts. The muskets fired at King George’s soldiers in 1775 were muskets King George had issued to the citizen soldiers of the King’s colony and the balls they were fired were bought and paid for by the Royal Exchequer. In 1775 the King had lost the monopoly of military force to a colonial militia he no longer controlled. I don’t see any realistic possibility of that happening today or in the foreseeable future in this country.
Of course, the present unpleasantness in the Middle East, Castro’s revolution in Cuba, The Philippine Insurrection and the Mexican resistance to the Imperial delusions of Napoleon III might serve as a more useful model to any present day revolutionaries than the example of the American Revolution.
Could anyone imagine how this scene would play out on the evening news? Armed insurrection in Topeka? Guerrilla warfare in Seattle? Carpet bombing of Austin? American military forces being leveraged against American citizens on their own soil? I do not think our collective stomachs are strong enough to permit such an abomination in a modern age. Public opinion wouldn’t allow any military action, be they National Guard or federal armed forces, to kill Americans, revolutionaries or no. An offensive in downtown Boston wouldn’t last the afternoon before the crushing tide of public opinion would force it to a resolution. While I would be tremendously sorry to see them go, a peaceful resolution is in almost every way superior to a civil war.
In past wars, dehumanizing the opposition was the key in turning young men into killing machines, and such a trick wouldn’t work against the good people of Detroit. Even our highly trained servicemen and women are not numb to the idea that they would be killing their own brothers or sisters.
Your mood may vary.
Gee. If I recall correctly the Ohio Guard wasn’t at all hesitant about opening fire on unarmed students at Kent State.
Meanwhile, the Gretna police threatened New Orleans storm refugees at gunpoint to turn around and not come across into their parish. Depending on the situation, we may not need an organized campaign of dehumanization to compel forces to fire on their fellow citizens.
Of course, the flipside is that the National Guard troops stationed in the N.O. Convention Center barricaded themselves in so that they would not be forced to get into a conflict with the refugees in other parts of the building. They specifically said that they did not want another Kent State on their hands.
Yes, but they hadn’t been ordered to go into the other part of the structure and “restore order” had they?
The idea that the armed forces wouldn’t wage war on insurrectionists just because they are fellow citizens is ludicrous.
Making demons on others is so easy that it is really frightening when you think about it a little.
Again, it depends on the level of unrest. In general, I agree; but when the insurrection is small, and the risk of killing innocent civilians is quite high, I think some troops (NG or not) might be reluctant.
Here’s the relevant Convention Center quote, btw:
Another thing. If the Army and National Guard are unwilling to take up arms against their fellow Americans, why exactly are the armed revolutionaries so eager to take up arms against their fellow Americans?
Look, the military can only crush an actually existing armed rebellion. Why does that rebellion exist, and why is it armed? What is the aim of the rebellion? Are they right-wing white separatists, are they left-wing marxist guerillas, are they christian reconstructionists, are they islamic fundamentalist jihadis, are they regional secessionists, or what? Why are they armed, why can’t they resolve their differences with the rest of us peacefully? If they have so much popular support that the army refuses to fight them, why can’t they get their agenda passed politically?
The point is, if they’re popular they don’t need to fight the army because everyone will agree with them. If they’re unpopular they won’t bother fighting the army because an armed uprising would be doomed, they’ll stick to terrorist tactics like Tim McVeigh, they’ll be fighting local police and the FBI rather than the military.
Why did the armed revolutionary movements of the 1960s fail? Because they had absolutely no support from the average American and because any legitimate grievance from the revolutionaries could be addressed politically. If we postulate that our future rebels can’t get a peaceful redress of grievances because the US has turned fascist, then it’s pointless to speculate what the army would do, since it would be a completely different army, a completely different government, and a completely different citizenry.