Where they will be unable to respond swiftly or effectively to the outbreaks of street riots by MUY flash mobs, the police and federal agents will respond vigorously to the deadly but smaller vigilante attacks. These sniper ambushes and other SAV attacks will be called acts of domestic terrorism and mass murder by government officials and the mainstream media.Sure, this is standard operating procedure on the part of the mainstream media...and some government officials. But the others, in large part out of fear, will see the SAVs as either potential allies or reproaches.
By "reproaches," I mean their actions will cause those other government officials to ask: "If those vigilantes can fend off the mobs, then why can't our trained soldiers do the same? Wouldn't it be better to have the job done by troops under civilian control?"
It would probably feel odd to see a CWII scenario erupt only to see yourself on the side of the government, but that's a fairly likely scenario. Remember: there are still two parties. Moreover, the government officials in one of those parties may well be stupid, but not to the point of suicidal.
Let me tell you a story, featuring one Pierre Trudeau. He was the Prime Minister of Canada first elected in 1968, and he was a classic limousine liberal: his businessman dad died when he was a teenager, leaving him with a multimillion dollar inheritance. Because he came from Quebec and was a Francophone, he had the same effect on certain Anglos that Obama has had on certain whites. Except for the fact that he hailed from the [real] upper crust of Quebec society, he was Canada's answer to Obama.
Sure enough, once he got elected, he began musing in a unicorns-and-rainbows way. His pidgin was something called "participatory democracy:" all I'll say about it was that it was very '60s. He was also accused, by some, as being better than the job at that time.
But, in 1970, a funny thing happened on the way to Rainbow Land. A left-wing terrorist group, the Front for Quebec Liberation, kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross on October 5th.
Then, five days later, the left-wing terrorists also kidnapped a Quebec Liberal Cabinet Minister, Pierre Laporte.
And guess what Mr. Skittles did? Six days after Laporte was kidnapped, he invoked the War Measures Act: he declared martial law. Rather than use any false equivalencies, he aimed the martial law initiative right at the left-wing terrorists and their sympathizers. During the crisis, when talking about public safety, limousine Liberal Pierre Trudeau sounded almost exactly like William F. Buckley. It was as if Buckley had become his speechwriter.
And Mr. Trudeau's ratings shot right up!
Now, I know Canada isn't the United States - but Canada isn't Ireland, either. The Quebec Liberation Front was crushed. True, there emerged a separatist party in Quebec, but the violence vanished.
[If you're interested in this episode of Canadian history, Wikipedia has a good intro.]
Very interesting post, thanks. Yes, I agree, there are two parties, and the president of either party, when faced with a dozen cities burning, could well send in federal troops with shoot to kill orders. While I don’t think that will happen in a time frame likely to prove effective (early), it could happen. But the intent of my essay was just to launch a thought experiment based on the unexpected and rapid end of the EBT / food stamp system. The likely sequence of cascading events can be guessed at in the early stages, but chaos and randomness soon throws us into the unknown. What is known is that our cities are tinderboxes waiting for a match.