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.

 

 

The American Quilt

We are a colorful patchwork of humans here in America. Our ideologies differ as much as other factors in our physical and psychological makeups. We are a melting pot that occasionally boils over. We are all immigrants to this land. Native Americans were the first to arrive from Asia and Siberia, followed much later by peoples from Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and other nations. In that mix there were about 600,000 slaves brought here from Africa with a bit over half of those arriving before 1776.

 

Across the centuries we have developed a strong cultural identity as Americans while often retaining some acknowledgement of foreign heritage. As of our last census in 2010, about 37 million of us are foreign born, another 34 million have at least one parent foreign born, and 230 million are 3rd generation with foreign born grandparents. That's 301 million people within 3 generations of immigration. Consider that the U.S. population during that census was about 309 million, and you get some sense of the flavor of this rich American Stew. By 2044, the United States is projected to become a plurality nation. That is, while the non-Hispanic "white alone" population will still be the largest, no race or ethnic group is projected to have greater than a 50 percent share of the nation’s total population.

 

 

 

This preamble is merely to establish the United States as a remarkably diverse, multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation where people have been immigrating for centuries. Within our borders we have moved around, and the “stew” has been mixed thoroughly. But, also within that amalgam of cultural ingredients, we have developed new identities by region, religion, biases, race, or other factors where some commonality may exist. We identify ourselves by political party affiliation using labels such as Democrat, Republican, Independent, Liberal, Conservative, etc. We may also be southerners, Bostonians, Christians, Yankees, or almost anything that may be stitched on a ball cap.

 

This brings us to the year 2021, where we have just exited a four-year period of intense national division. This was promoted, in part, by a president who sought gratification of certain authoritarian leanings by using divisive rhetoric and a very loose association with the truth and reality. He exploited that inherent weakness in our nature for his own aggrandizement.

 

This all boiled over after he was voted out of office and decided to make one last attempt to apply an emotional salve on his wounded pride by organizing a group of followers with false claims of a stolen election, election fraud, and a false hope of recovering his position by force. He convinced this group of rabble that he was with them both emotionally and physically, that they would have the support of other unidentified officials and perhaps the military, and that a march on the Capitol to disrupt the final step in the election certification proceedings would bear fruit. Like most of the ramblings of this emotional child, it was all untrue. To put a finer point on it, they were all lies uttered only to bolster his fragile ego.

 

Now, many of his followers feel disillusioned, betrayed, and abandoned. With the “emperor’s clothes” now fully exposed, it remains for the courts to punish these poor disillusioned souls. As with most of the wealthy class, it is doubtful that the instigator will suffer any repercussions for his deeds. Half of the Senate, made up of Republicans, fear the Cult of the former president, and will take no action. Legal jeopardy in the courts remains a sketchy straw that may be grabbed by some enterprising prosecutor, but that remains to be seen.

 

We are now hearing from the right side of the aisle that it is time for us to follow that famous Beatles lyric and “Come together, right now, ...” That would be all well and good and it would be nice if we could mend a few fences and return to a time, if not of total peace, at least to one of civility. For that to happen, I think that those who supported this president in his policy, will need to condemn all acts of violence perpetrated in his name. Included in that disavowal would need to be an outright condemnation of those groups, praised, and encouraged by the former president, who openly attack our democracy, spread malicious conspiracy theories, support white supremacy, and otherwise align themselves with ideologies that are so abhorrent that they need not be listed.

 

 

 

Our American Quilt is tattered and torn and in need of a few stitches, but it can be repaired. I don’t expect to see a monumental Kumbaya moment in our immediate future, but I would like to see a return to civility and respect for one another. That will take movement from both sides. Not a change in base ideologies, but a change in attitude in how we promote our ideas with one another. A repaired American Quilt can provide comfort to us all. I think Linus Van Pelt would agree.

Trump's Defense

One of the several strategies being promoted to defend Trump’s actions on January 6, is that his words didn’t amount to sedition. What that position fails to consider is the target audience. As any marketer or experienced politician understands, you must know your audience. The exact same words spoken to a group of educated professionals will have a different interpretation when they are uttered to a frenzied mass of people, many of whom are dressed in military attire, and who traveled many miles to follow the direction of their Messiah. With a boisterous crowd yelling for blood, Trump merely gave them direction.

The target audience is the critical point here and debunks any after-action wordsmithing analysis of specific content. When the head of a crime family tells a fellow member that someone will be sleeping with the fishes, we all know that a refreshing nap near an aquarium is not being discussed. No, Donald Trump did not specifically tell the crowd to break into the Capitol, destroy property, and attempt to bring harm to his enemies. He didn’t have to. He spoke to a group that was already shouting what they intended to do, and Trump provided his tacit approval.

 

If this is your audience, what you say to them might inspire a response.

 

If this were a typical trial before a judge, that judge would assess the president’s liability by determining the reasonableness of his actions. Were the events that followed the speeches of the president, his hired attorney, his two sons, and other political figures, a reasonably foreseeable risk? The problem with this impeachment trial is that legal decisions will not be made, only political ones. It will not be a rational consideration of the facts, but more a risk assessment of political careers. As a practical matter this upcoming trial will be an airing of our national dirty laundry. It will be an unpleasant task but a necessary one. The outcome is as foreseeable as the riot that followed the president’s Stop the Steal speech.

That Trump’s words, and those of his minions, actually provided the impetus for the riot should not be the question, but it will surely be raised in his defense. This is not a trial for a federal crime. It is an impeachment based on the “high crimes and misdemeanors'” broad umbrella. This should not be a First Amendment issue of free protected speech, but should be seen as a gross misuse of presidential power in a seditious manner.

 

Remember, the image that accompanies this post, was the target audience. Does this look like a group of rational people who will respond reasonably to the admonition that, "If you don't fight like Hell, you won't have a country anymore?" Anyone who has ever dealt with children knows, you have to be very careful what you say around them.