21.11.18

Vigilantism is like calling liberals "the real racists"

While folks shouldn't have to, disavowing violence is commonplace for commentators on "the right", because of how frequently sting and honey pot operations have been, and still are, run by domestic government agencies to nudge people on the lower end of the intelligence spectrum into taking action without considering the consequences or context.

The agency sweeps in, claims credit for having stopped something that probably wouldn't have started without their involvement anyway, awards are handed out and people make empty speeches about "duty" and "diligence", and someone decides that the paychecks will continue being signed for at least a little while longer.

Don't get me wrong, I'll say it as well: I do not condone the use of violence beyond what is legally permitted by your local Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws, should they even exist, and it is your responsibility alone to understand your local legal limitations relating to the use of lethal force.

You have no legal standing to circumvent the existing "justice system", regardless of your opinion on how corrupt or broken it is, regardless of what you think someone else is "getting away with", because unless you're willing to throw away everything and start over from scratch, nothing you do will change anything anyway.

If you want to get familiar with the laws in your state or area, there are many websites which will help summarize the laws in your state, provide references to the relevant laws, and so forth. If someone is attacking you with lethal force, obviously the nature of what laws apply will change, but frankly most people ruminating about vigilantism are not actively being attacked, and are instead planning an act of aggression as a means of retaliation. There are no laws which permit that type of activity.

Now, the reason I say that nothing you do will change anything anyway is that the mythos of the Sheriff from the Wild West is one that resonates with a lot of patriots. The ideal that one man with a gun can make a difference is alluring, but almost entirely unrealistic at the same time. We enjoy imagining the moral struggle of the lawman, having to walk a fine line between upholding order and being willing to embrace chaos and questionable actions in order to do so.

The problem is that the dynamics of dysfunction that we are experiencing today don't show up in any of those mythos. The reason the Sheriff held so much power is because there was nobody else that he had to compete with for jurisdiction. There was nobody else who had the ability to bring circumstances to a conclusion. In a frontier town, or even just on a town on the way to the frontier, there was no overreaching power that reported to Washington D.C., unless they sent someone out, and then they were still limited by what they could carry or get brought along with them.

In the modern world, the centralized federal government has so many more resources on tap to achieve whatever means they desire that the local "lawman" can very quickly be outpaced, outgunned, and outmaneuvered by a centralized government that has amassed power unto itself. This extends beyond just literal law enforcement at the criminal level as well. People can be tried in the court of law and executed without a single bullet fired through the use of manipulation and selective media reporting. Government organizations superficially meant to "help" citizens have the authority to interfere with aspects of your personal life, and they can do unconstitutional things and nobody appears to care because, thanks in large part to the 19th Amendment, safety is now a priority over freedom and sovereignty.

Acts of violence at the local level no longer change the course of local politics, because local politics are no longer driven as a response to local actions in the first place, but instead are a drip-feed of things happening at the national level. This disconnect is part of the inertia of past decisions and consequences which cannot be changed overnight. We can't change who was allowed to vote, who was allowed to enter or stay in the country, what laws were passed or amendments ratified, we can't change the past and the consequences that come from the choices that led us to the circumstances we now experience.

Vigilantism then is not a solution to the real problem of this disconnect. Taking actions locally won't change the local politics, but instead feeds into a feedback loop at the national level where every solution that works in one portion of the country is copy/pasted to the others as a means of creating national unity in word and deed. If you perform a violent act of aggression at the local level, the first reactions will come from the national level, an then feed down. Violence doesn't change the direction that political priorities flow, so anyone tempted to partake in it is largely deceiving themselves in the same way that liberals do when they pontificate about socialism.

The only way that violence returns to being a viable solution is if the national level of politics is completely cut off from the local. Examples of this would include Civil War, natural disasters, invasion of a foreign military, or you being attacked by someone with violence. In each case, the dynamic of politics doesn't matter anymore, not because the dynamic has been eliminated, but because the "problem" is quite literally local.

Only local problems can be resolved by local action, and the decay of the United States is not occurring because of local problems. Attempting to overthrow the existing political dynamic, regardless of your intent or desires, is treason. It doesn't matter if you're a religious ancap or atheistic commie, no matter how you believe yourself to be morally justified, you're seeking to overthrow the government.

You may not believe this is what you're doing with vigilantism, but what you believe doesn't matter. The only way to "fix" the system without breaking it or undermining it must then come from the source of the problem, at the national level, and none of those issues can be fixed with vigilantism.

Immigration diluting the former cultural cohesion in the United States cannot be addressed with vigilantism.

Legislation consolidating power at the federal instead of local level cannot be addressed with vigilantism.

Lobbying having a greater influence on legislative priorities than the opinions and concerns of local populations cannot be addressed with vigilantism.

In short, for the same criticisms that are levied at gun control advocates who want a "feel good" response that doesn't actually do anything meaningful, so likewise would any call for vigilantism be a "feel good" response that doesn't actually do anything meaningful. Playing whack-a-mole on your local crazies and criminals only invites the entire weight of a political system, which has no qualms about crushing individuals or people groups or even entire cultures in its bid to continuously consolidate power, to bear down upon you. It is not bravery or patriotism that inspires such audacity, but suicidal stupidity and inexcusable ignorance.

All of that said, this does not mean you should not be capable of defending your family and your neighborhood when local problems do arise that require a local solution. It simply means you can't proactively resolve national problems through local actions of violence, and that's been true for more than a century.

Certainly, if someone is trying to kill you, there is no legal requirement that you let them get away with it, but even there you have to be smart enough to know how to respond in a way that doesn't end up still hurting you more than those who are trying to do you harm.

Until the current dynamic changes, trying to take the law "into your own hands" will simply result in those hands being chained up.

Unfortunately, while there are ways that the system could be fixed internally, intentionally, this would require a level of resolve and clarity and boldness which has been entirely lacking for many generations. Humans are efficient creatures, and rarely waste energy on developing skills and capacity which aren't required of them, so it's not a surprise that we've "gone soft". What that means then is that, for the majority of people, it won't be till an external circumstance demands more of them that they'll ever rise to meet such a challenge, and many only discover far too late that they can't.

Politically, this means that things will have to become dire and critical before anything is done. Like a fat person who can't seem to start dieting until the doctor gives them so many years to live unless they radically change their habits, so the mortality of our nation will be in full view before folks stop pretending that someone or something will come along to cleanly and easily resolve all of our issues so that we can fall back into a hedonistic malaise.

Strive to rise above the minimal demands of today to meet the higher demands that will come, but do not "jump the gun" and pretend that those demands are already here, or that acting as if those demands are already here will hasten them along or somehow speed up their resolution. Don't fall for the trap of the "easy fix", the "get-civilizational stability quick" schemes, but instead put in the hard work and make the necessary sacrifices in your current pleasure and enjoyment to ensure that you will be better prepared to survive what is coming.

Be the person who decides to eat right and exercise before liposuction and bypass surgery are required, let alone a possibility, and don't ever choose to put yourself in a place where desperation is the only thing that can drive you towards improvement.

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