| Today's scheduled programming includes not just a glimpse at the sordid sensual depravity of the wild side, but a closer look at these ball peen-bearing savages of the American outlaw frontier - and the terror they strike into the hearts of good and decent citizens across the land! We'll take a look at what drives these crazy chopper hooligans of the highways, and hear directly from a good girl gone bad, right from the the back of a throbbing high speed motorcycle! Join us today as our correspondent hosts a no-holds-barred flame war between the forces of good - and the mesmerizing bad boys of chrome! |
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Let's take a look at a few things here. Levity aside, there are a lot of conflicting ideas about bikers, about motorcycle clubs, about the reactions different people have to different archetypes, and about their place in the American milieu. Bikers are a subculture in the American scene, and in many ways they serve as a reservoir for the broader ideological underpinning of the nation. (More on that a little further down.)
Those who have been on these Waco threads generally come for the articles; some stay for the flame wars; some return because they take delight in trolling. Personally, (in addition to the pure amusement of engaging in debate) I find that there's a real importance in identifying disparate elements, disparate reservoirs, of this deep and violent American spirit, tying it together in the confluence of intelligence and vision under recognition of parallel passion for a common purpose.
That's a fancy way of saying that in this really scary time of crumbling country, there's a couple places we can find some fearsome tools and rough men ready to wield them. Because the nation's worth saving, and America's worth keeping, and by God I think we all know the rest of the human race is pretty well damned if we blow this Great Experiment and leave them without a shining city on a hill to look to.
So I am going to post a rather worthless and time consuming $.02 for consideration here. Your mileage may not only vary, but ideologically I may not even manage to leave your driveway. But this is my take.
Facts and feelings about national collapse
Let's talk about collapse for a moment. What is it? "Ah, that's when everything falls down." Yes, quite true. But what is collapse, when we look at it? How do we recognize it? Is there something we can point to in order to say, "Yes, this is a clear indisputable fact, we're collapsing?" Because things take time, until they no longer need time. A useful way to understand something is to inhabit the perspective of not a theoretical expert, but that of a seasoned practitioner.
For example, I believe I will find more real world utility in the forex predictions of George Soros than I will in Paul Krugman. Why? Because George Soros has spent a lifetime actually engaged in the market, rather than a lifetime analyzing it. And his net worth demonstrates the accuracy of his strategy. We will leave aside, for the purposes of this post, concerns with the moral freight or personal rectitude of our example practitioners. Their goodness or badness isn't the point, just the demonstrated success of their strategies.
Back to collapse. What is it? Who knows collapse? Personally I think that Shinmen Musashi communicated the highest, and most grounded, perspective on collapse:
Everything can collapse. Houses, bodies, and enemies collapse when their rhythm becomes deranged.
The rhythm of America has indeed become deranged. Disordered, as you will. We can go back and forth all day long about whether the Davidian seige or Ruby Ridge or the Twin Peaks tragedy or our ludicrous, appalling national debt or the Bonus Army or a Muslim president or gay facism or Hillary or Ms. Jenner or any particular item is the tipping or turning or motivational point.
It doesn't matter.
We can all feel the derangement of rhythm, the disorder, the accelerating speed with which we are now approaching impact. It's a very challenging thing to articulate, the collapse of nations. When it comes to actual sword work, the facing off of one man against another with a three foot razor blade, this perception of rhythm is not an intellectual one. It's not a mind exercise, a process of thought - it's an organism response, a blending of the full triparte of body, spirit, and mind. There is no thought; there is no analysis; there is simply response, true and seamless, and life goes on. Or doesn't.
Much like riding a motorcycle.
In this case what I'm speaking of is the survival of not the corporate United States, but the American dream of freedom and the right to pursuit of life, liberty and happiness despite the machinations, injuries and warfare of enemies both foreign and domestic.
I am verbose. It's a failing of mine. Here is perhaps a more concise summary of the point I'm trying to make about collapse:
America's past the point of risk, and into the process of crash. There's that moment, in a motor vehicle accident, when you realize what is going to happen you know and there's not time for fear but you know it's unpreventable and oh God it's not stoppable and there's no time to brace and you love your family and God please is this it please let me still be here on the other side -
And maybe you throw a useless arm in front of your child in the seat next to you. And maybe you make it, and maybe you don't. If you're reading this, you're still here, despite whatever moment of impact you had.
The nation feels to me like that moment. I stand by that. We're no longer in the might we crash stage; we're hydroplaning at top speed and it doesn't matter why. Who was driving? Obama, Bush, Honey Boo Boo - irrelevant.
What's next?
Well, impact of course.
Are we going to make it?
Shrug. What do you think? I do know that the enemies of the land, those that hate and gloat and plot and chitter over the carcasses of the vulnerable, now crouch with malevolent delight and impatient rapture at the prospect of lunging, eviscerating, gulping the entrails of liberty and sucking down with mad laughter the immolation of humanity's best hope. God, they're so excited. All of them, rampant and proud and so confident of success whether they are chain-exploding the heads of kneeling kufrs in the hot deserts of Syria or leading paroxysmal, grandiose armies of public scorn and literal bankruptcy against people by whom imaginary pizzas that weren't made.
Are you ready to fight back in the aftermath of the wreck? To defend love, having survived the initial crash, and literally fire shots in anger and kill human beings? To organize revolutionary cells in the shadow of the police state, to learn the tradecraft of resistance and the bitter needs of State toppling and embody the coldness needed to make hard decisions?
I don't think so. That's not condemnation or criticism. I am not ready to start issuing kill orders and garroting aldermen and giving speeches under a black banner, having spit on my hands and readied a Mencken knife.
But I suspect something. As a matter of fact, I know something. And I believe all of us know it too, and suspect we aren't alone.
We're thinking about it.
Ultimately, thinking and theorizing and posting and speaking and haranguing and pontificating either gives way to action, or it doesn't. Things take time, until they don't. Going from the 1967 to #romaniantermlimits was a long process, until it was sudden. Those of you who remember the Soviet Union will remember how fast the behemoth fell apart. Unimaginable two years before, suddenly the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics... just wasn't there any more.
It was just... over.
What's the point I made earlier about reservoirs? Well, reservoirs of will and culture either become fuller, and spill out from the banks, or they become pockets and eradicated. So as I mentioned earlier, it's appropriate for those who want to pick up the pieces after the crash - to figure out now where those reservoirs are.
I'm so sorry about the country. I don't think it's dead, nor the dream of human freedom. That dream won't ever die, as it's tied to the very nature of our existence.
But we're in the fast-crumpling-hood-against-the-wall stage, not the Wolfian awkward stage. The time to shoot the bastards isn't during the impact. It's in the post-impact melee of first responders.
I'd simply say, find your friends now. Pick your reservoirs. Doesn't have to be those which supply combatants; we'll need all sorts.
But even if you are not interested in war, war is interested in you.
Don't go into it with a whistle and a hope.
The America in the passenger seat next to you needs more than a pointless, last minute forearm to keep her safe. With apologies to Ethan Clide, Darwin really did get one thing right. The lines that survive are those that most readily adapt.
BR> Adapt readiness.
Be ready.
Have allies.
#GetTalking. Maybe Pajama Boy had that part right. Respect to all.