Update, Terrorism vs Insurgency, and Other Topics

California, Washington, and Oregon have apparently announced a pact, and the eastern states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are creating a regional working group to help coordinate their efforts against COVID-19.

Which is not unreasonable. (This, btw, is why I'm skeptical about efforts to get rid of government. You might get rid of whatever you currently call government, but the need for coordination/administration etc generally doesn't go away, and will take on the same form, albeit under a different name. Maybe you have a private 'mutual aid organization', which you all pay some membership fee to. Whether you call it 'mutual aid' or 'government', a 'membership fee' or 'taxes' it all tends to act the same in the end. But that's for a later discussion.)

But it sets the stage for quite an intense and uncertain future, because Trump (who apparently is now claiming he has 'absolute authority', after declaring "I don't take responsibility at all", and at other times claiming that the federal goverment was just a stopgap to states) is probably not going to take that too well.

Weird, that you can't have it both ways, isn't it? You can't neglect to do your job and then get upset when other people step in to fill the gaps.

But this is Trump, and every time he's been faced with a challenge he doubles down. He's petty and vindictive, and I have no idea what sort of crazy response he'll come up with, but I'm sure it'll be a doozy.

Right now... this has the potential to be a nothingburger, or to be a Very. Big. Deal. Indeed.

I'm not sure which way it'll go, though.

So anyways, here's the thing. The conversation I want to have has more to do with which sorts of things we would want, at what level. Like... public goods vs privatization, county vs. state. vs. federal. That sort of thing. My overall principle is to 'support the lowest level possible' and enable them to come up with their own solutions, but there's a heckuva lot of room to play around in that... and there are reasonable arguments to be made for placing certain things at a national level. (For example - as mobile as Americans can be, it makes sense to have some consistent education standards so that a kid transferring from Arizona to Connecticut - or vice versa - won't be on a completely different academic level.)

But I've got plenty of time to dig into that. Before doing so, I wanted to talk a little bit more about something else.

It's a mishmash of things I've come across over the years, and I'm not going to try and look up every little reference, so please excuse any mistakes.

Almost a decade ago, we were asked "what is the difference between terrorism and an insurgency."

It's a complicated question, hinging on how you define terrorists and insurgents, and I will leave aside that terrorism is a strategy or a tactic that may or may not be used by an insurgency, so it's not exactly a fair comparison. Here goes.

When you have a society, there are many decisions made... about who gets what. How resources are allocated, what laws are passed, and so on and so forth.

And there are always people who don't get what they want.

In a free marketplace of ideas, and a democracy, they can try to work within the system to make the changes they want. They can create a platform, run candidates, try to drum up support (and funding)...

But some ideas don't really catch on. (And - in systems that have ossified too much, or are too autocratic, the system may not be capable of changing, either.)

If this represents a genuine grievance, more and more people may join in... and an insurgency can grow. (In a democracy, it would show in candidates running on certain platforms, winning primaries and political positions at the expense of the establishment candidates. In the absence of a legitimate way of doing this within the system, if the issue is severe enough you may see an insurgency... a competing force for the resources of a government. They won't just be trying to fund military forces, they'll also be taking taxes from areas they control, and trying to take care of the people under their jurisdiction. Just like a government would.)

Terrorism... terrorism starts because their ideas weren't popular enough to catch on. They don't have the numbers. Don't have the support.

So they are trying to build support beyond what they otherwise would have. By doing attention-grabbing attacks, to draw in supporters who may otherwise not know they exist.

And by doing horrific attacks, so that when the government overreacts (and rounds up innocent people in a dragnet operation to capture the guilty), people who were perfectly content to go about their business realize that they can't afford to... and get radicalized, and (they hope) turn to the terrorists.

If they do build that level of support, they can become an insurgency... so there's a lot of crossover. The line between the two isn't always clear (and, well... you can have an insurgency without terrorist tactics, so it's not like this is 'the one and only path' a movement can take. Heck, there are also options for non-violent tactics, or insurgency targeting 'legimate' targets like government offices and military personnel, rather than civilians.)

What I wanted to talk about, though, was about the mindset leading towards terrorism. Because that is also a choice, and it's almost always tied to arrogance.

That is, in a free marketplace some ideas are just not going to catch on. Certain Christians believe that dancing is bad - had a whole movie on that - and yet dancing is still pretty popular, and it's unlikely that there would ever be enough popular support to ban it. Not on a large scale, at least.

But the people who believe this are not going to say "the vast majority of people don't agree with us, so maybe we're wrong."

Nope. They truly believe, in their heart of hearts, that they're in the right. And so they are faced with a choice - privately live their beliefs, and accept that the rest of society will never share them...

Or try to change society. Mayhap even try to force society to do 'the right thing', where 'the right thing' is 'that which I'm absolutely certain I know is best for you.'

Arrogance.

Compulsion. I do think that the Koran had that right, btw - that "there is no compulsion in religion."

If there is a God, I'm fairly sure He (or She) is more offended by attempts to compel people into doing what you think is best, then He is by people doing whatever it is in the first place.

But I digress.

The point is, there's a choice. A point where people either accept that they'll always be some weird minority (of which we have plenty. Amish that drive horses and buggies. Hasidic Jews with their particular styles of dress. Christians who decide to ban dance in their local city or county. Each able to live how they think is best, in their private life... but not trying to impose those choices on the rest of society), or decide that they're right and everyone else is wrong.

And when they - arrogantly - decide the latter, they have to explain away why they're not succeeding like they 'should'. And they'll argue that it's because their opponents are cheating, or lying, or whatever it takes to show that they're right and would win in any reasonably fair contest.

And so it's easy to start justifying doing whatever it takes to put their beliefs in practice.

Deliberately, knowingly, lying? Justified, if it helps defeat those nasty fill-in-the-blank, who have blocked you and opposed you and prevented you from building that perfect world you dream of.

There was a book, some while back, talking about the Wisdom of Crowds. About how, collectively, we can be wiser than we are individually. I think it's somewhat true, with caveats. Further studies showed how people could mess with that 'wisdom of crowds'. Could deliberately try to feed it false information, or skew things in one way or another.

Some do it just because it's fun to mess with people, ofc. Others do it... well, because they have a pre-determined answer that they're trying to force the crowd to choice.

Again, arrogance.

I went into all that because most of what I want to get into... well, it presupposes that fair and open marketplace of ideas, which I think tends to be allow the best ideas to come forth.

But we do need to be aware of the types of things that undermine it.

Of attempts, whether it's terrorism, disinformation, lying, bribing, blackmailing - anything other than a open and honest debate, that is used to arrogantly push a certain answer on the rest of us.

To use my previous pizza analogy, it's that one person who his absolutely certain their favorite pizza choice is the only possible pizza choice, and is willing to do whatever it takes to force that decision on everyone. 

What Threatens America - Internal Cleavage Points

So how does my previous post tie into the threats facing America today?


The concepts of grievances, how grievances are addressed, and insurgencies apply to much of our current political world.  We just (mostly) have agreed by certain rules that prevent it from turning into actual war.  It's interesting how political commentary will use some of the same terms, except it'll be a "political insurgency" that gets played out in votes and rallies.


So - grievances, ways to have those grievances addressed, and leadership.


You have to remember what Europe was like back when America was colonized...this was at the height of Europe's religious wars.   The Thirty Years War was just one example.  Many people immigrated to the United States to get away from it all, and most accepted a live and let live approach.  Or tried to...that's why we created a Bill of Rights.  It helps set clear limitations on what the government can do, so that people don't get forced to worship in some other religion, or get stomped on for speaking their minds.


Our history is a bit more troubled than that, of course.  The anti-Catholic history of the United States is really a rather interesting example, especially given how much attitudes have changed since then.  Consider Maryland's state history, or anti-immigration attitudes towards the Irish and Italians, or the campaign worries about JFK's Catholicism.


Anyways.  There's been intolerance, prejudice, and widespread support for laws against one group or another.  There's been violence, lynch mobs and riots.  There's been civil unrest.  In short, some sectors of our society have grievances. And yet it's not, generally, been a clear case of one entire group against another. 


The Civil War was not a slave rebellion against white rulers.  There were abolitionists fighting for the end of slavery, Unionists who were still prejudiced against blacks but didn't want the country to disintegrate, and various other motivators.  And so the Civil War was more white vs. white with support from former slaves.  In a sense, you could say that the grievances were being addressed...slowly, painfully, and not always well.  Yet they were addressed well enough that people kept trying to make the system work.


Our tradition of civil liberties and our Bill of Rights means that there are people who will support a group that isn't their own.  And that's good, because our political fights are less about one ethnic or religious group fighting another, and more about what laws are in keeping with our evolving social norms...particularly with regards to civil rights.  The schooling a naturalized citizen has to go through means many are even more familiar with our history and rights than our own native-born citizens...and many accept the beliefs laid out in the Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights as their own.


This, btw, is something people don't always understand.  We have a long and ugly racial history, and it looks like a pretty obvious cleavage point.  (In the right - or wrong - environment, it could be).  And so enemies like al Qaeda try to weaken us by inciting racial conflict.  And just as al Qaeda may have incited violence in Iraq by bombing the al-Askari mosque, we have people in the States who launch attacks hoping to start a race war in the US.


To bring this back to threats facing us today - we are not at the point where we're going to have a race war.  Yet.  Thank God we're not!  There are definitely grievances tied to racial issues, but so far we're addressing them through accepted channels.


There are other grievances, though...grievances tied class issues, the shrinking of the middle class, globalization, economic change, etc.  Since I'm keeping this at a more general level I won't get into the specifics of those grievances, just pointing out that they exist.  And that it's when accepted channels for grievances fail that you really have to worry.  Which brings me to my next topic.


(to be continued)