Signs of the Times

In a recent read from my March 2021 Wired magazine, I ran across two sequentially placed articles that covered diverse topics, but which had parallels with the polarization of America in current times. One article involved a 25-year-old wager between two writers with opposing views of technology and its possible impact on society. The second article covered the recent rise in domestic tactical training in the use of firearms in urban settings.

In the first article, one writer opposed the advancements in technology giving deference to a return to a more subsistence-based society. He admired the Luddite movement of the early 1800s where handloom weavers burned mills and factory machinery in protest of the harsh working conditions and the threat that such automation had on skilled workers’ livelihoods. He thought that technology would lead us to ruin.

Luddites of the 19th Century

The second writer in this first article wrote for the then-new magazine Wired and was a believer in the benefits to society that technological advancements offered. The wager took place in 1995 and was to be decided at the end of 2020. In 1995, the Internet was in its infancy with the first Windows based browser, Netscape, going on sale in February of that year, and Windows 95 was released in August.

The Luddite supporter predicted anarchy and chaos and a collapse of the dollar in the next quarter century, whereas the Wired writer thought technology would be our savior and we would be in great shape in 2020. While the dollar hadn’t collapsed and society hadn’t self-immolated, 2020 would hardly be declared a banner year for the world at large. Technology helped us through this past year, but it was also a protagonist in some of the political chaos and fallout.

The second article covered the burgeoning tactical domestic training industry that used to be mostly attended by law enforcement professionals who were required to be armed in their jobs, but now includes housewives, mechanics, doctors, and others who feel threatened by violence, crime and/or political upheaval.

The perceived threats of our time are the prime motivators of this movement. The article was written by a woman who went through such training at a couple of top tactical training facilities. The article was even-handed in its coverage, but it still found time to mention an undercurrent of political anarchy. One attending student joked that, to get in the proper mindset, just imagine the shooting target was Nancy Pelosi.

 

 

 

The founder of one of the most elite of these tactical training facilities, Jeff Cooper, had been a WWII and Korean War vet responsible for training many police and other government personnel over the years. He was a racist whose racial views were scrubbed from their website after his death in 2006. His facility in Arizona is called Gunsite Academy and is billed as “Disneyland for gun owners.” Military and law enforcement organizations have all trained there. The CIA and the California Highway Patrol have been customers. Now they are joined by civilians from all walks of life.

“As we head into an era that seems destined to be marked by escalating vigilantism and political violence—or, if we’re very lucky, just the fear of them—it’s time to reckon with the whole of American tactical culture.” Wired March 2021.

After reading both articles, my take-away was that we are living in a time of social upheaval with great income disparity at the core. The 19th century Luddites have evolved over time and now Trumpites have taken up the mantle of outrage over perceived injustices. The participants in the January 6th attempted Capitol coup were largely far-right militants, white supremacists, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals. Many of the leaders of this group have had training like the curriculum of the tactical schools of the second article.

 

Technology has helped and hurt us in getting to this dangerous place. We are more connected than ever before, and information of all sorts is readily available. Therein lies part of the problem, with ease of access to information also comes an intentional distortion of facts for gain. Filtering fact from fiction and identifying half-truths becomes a full-time job. Many are unwilling to make the effort to discern the truth when it is much easier to reinforce your racist beliefs, buy guns and ammo, and go play Rambo at a tactical training facility.

If you exclude California and New York with their restrictive laws on gun ownership, the rest of the nation is represented by 10% of that population having current concealed weapons permits. There are more guns in America than there are people. This situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. Gun ownership may be a self-fulfilling prophesy for the anarchists. I also know that it’s not just the radical right that has joined this expanded gun ownership trend. I have two liberal friends who have recently purchased assault rifles thinking they might need them for self-defense.

What do you get with a plethora of individuals who believe what they hear on the “news” and read on the Internet, who are now armed and fearful of their own government? We saw at least one result on January 6, 2021. They used technology to organize and tactical training to pursue their own radical agendas. I don’t know when the next “January 6” moment will be, I just know that this nation has become a powder keg and it won’t take much to make things go boom.