Crawford at Cologne Recreation Lab (2011)
My last post elicited this response from Chris Crawford. I put up it unedited.
This essay triggered a lot considering. I’ve been studying a number of items surrounding this matter and am coming to some horrifying conclusions. I’ve lengthy believed that the American physique politic is slowly disintegrating as a result of the issues of our trendy society have turn out to be too sophisticated for the common particular person to grasp. That is what drives populism, the political philosophy that mental evaluation of political points have to be changed by “frequent sense”. However I anticipated that these issues wouldn’t come to a head for many years. Now I worry that I’ve been too optimistic.
The Supreme Court docket’s swerve to the far proper has obliterated its legitimacy within the minds of the vast majority of Individuals. Ought to a political disaster come up, its decision of the disaster will command no respect; it’ll fail to forestall violence. In the meantime, the appropriate not respects the legitimacy of our electoral system. It’s now making an attempt to “reform” the electoral system in a fashion that can give it a bonus and can concurrently destroy the legitimacy of the electoral system within the eyes of the vast majority of Individuals.
An illuminating approach to consider these points was supplied a few years in the past by a professor at Berkeley. To significantly simplify his concept, all people views authorities as one thing like a mother or father. Conservatives see authorities as a father whose job is to implement the foundations and punish those that deviate from expectations. Liberals see authorities as a mom whose accountability is to nurture and defend the citizenry. These two perceptions of presidency don’t meld effectively, therefore our political polarization. In occasions previous, we hammered out compromises that preserved the system, however of late the appropriate has turn out to be uncompromising and insistent that its notion of presidency should prevail.
I feel we’ll get by means of the 2022 elections with a number of anger and grumbling, however I now worry that the 2024 election will set off the collapse of the American political system and the arrival of great bloodshed. The fitting will reject all of its defeats as “stolen”, and the left will contest elections wherein the appropriate has prevented or thrown out an extreme variety of votes. The left’s challenges will get to the Supreme Court docket. If the Court docket has regained some sense, it’ll reject Republican election-rigging. If it doesn’t, anticipate the battle to spill into the streets. The fitting will eagerly embrace violence, believing that its possession of weapons will assure the bloodbath of leftists and the appropriate’s subsequent conquest of American authorities.
Two years in the past, within the run-up to the 2020 election, my spouse insisted that we buy weapons. She was so paranoid that I indulged her fears and we purchased some small weapons. However now I feel we should always resume training with them.
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