Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a riot? Even if you’ve only seen riots on television, you can probably imagine how it feels to be inside one.
Imagine yourself surrounded on all sides by angry faces dressed in shabby clothes, some faces covered with bandanas or ski masks. People are chanting something you can’t quite understand, like a private joke you’re not allowed to get. Or maybe they’re chanting at you. Maybe you’re what they’re so mad about.
You can smell acrid smoke and burning rubber from the fires set a block away. The cracked asphalt street is spotted with trash and debris. You’re jolted by shattering glass and turn to see the window of a coffee shop spider-webbing and collapsing onto the sidewalk with a crash. Angry, violent shouts. A woman shrieks in pain or fury, you can’t tell which.
Soon you realize you’re in grave danger. You might tell yourself the mob could turn on you any moment. Those rocks they hold in their hands could come flying at your head. From behind where you cannot see. So you turn around and see a police car smoldering then burst into flames as the mob roars in an angry, hate-filled celebration of their destruction and violence.
You really should get away, but you find yourself wondering, “will they follow me? Should I just blend in? Will they turn on me? Will they discover that I’m not one of them?”
The more you see and hear and smell, the more confused and terrified you become. You might even think about loved ones and whether you’ll ever see them again. And what will they think of you being in the midst of this riot? How will they explain it to themselves?
You might find yourself starting to cry, but you know your tears will give you away. They’ll know.
And how will you get away? How will you deal with the police when they show up. They might arrest you. If they ever show up. Maybe the police abandoned you? Maybe the police will just let the mob tire itself out.
The Left Has Declared War On You #
There’s no need to worry about finding yourself in the center of a riot until a faction of society decides it’s okay to intimidate or kill people they don’t agree with you. So maybe it’s time to start worrying.
- You probably saw the news of the riots in Berkeley, California. Social Justice Warriors shut down a conservative speaker’s presentation, set fires, looted, destroyed buildings, maced some conservatives and beat others mercilessly. The police stood by and watched. The mayor blamed the victims.
- In Austin, Texas, a gay conservative was beaten unconscious for lighting his cigarette with a Donald Trump lighter. His assailant is at large. Don’t expect the Austin police to put in any overtime hunting him down.
- Magazines openly call for Donald Trump’s assassination.
- Feminists assault anyone who disagrees with them, even shoving bloody maxi-pads into pro-lifers' mouths.
- The Secret Service is investigating over 12,000 direct threats to assassinate the President.
- And these are just a few of one day’s examples of leftist violence against anyone who disagrees with their worldview.
Meanwhile, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Time Magazine, and everything else you would consider “responsible” journalism openly condones violence against Trump supporters. Academics and Democrat leaders justify violence and encourage leftists to attack their political opponents.
Having lost at the ballot box, having lost in the court of public opinion, the left has decided to intimidate or kill its adversaries. Just like the Nazis. Just like the Leninists. Just like the Maoists.
Fighting Is Under Way #
And leftist blood-lust is not limited to a fringe. A very intelligent and gentle acquaintance of mine, someone with whom I once enjoyed a cordial and friendly long-running debate, believes that Trump sent federal troops into Berkeley the other night to conduct mass arrests of protesters, trigging the riots. It’s completely untrue and she had no idea where she heard it, but she believes it as much as she believes in gravity. And her false belief, what psychologists would call a hallucination (h/t Scott Adams), allows her to justify anything the rioters did, up to and including murder.
Here’s the thing. You’ve probably heard the word “privilege” so much you could puke when you hear it. The idea of white privilege is central to the leftist hallucination. And the idea of a privileged race led Germany to the Final Solution.
Adolf Hitler wrote in 1919:
But an anti-Semitism based on reason must lead to a systematic legal elimination of the privileges of the Jews. The ultimate objective of such legislation must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews from civil and cultural influence.
In fact, the Nazi propagandists worked overtime to defame Jews for their privilege. Hitler claimed Jews avoided physical labor of any kind, preferring work in finance, mercantile, and the arts. He lamented that Jews wrote and produced 90 percent of German movies despite being only one percent of the population. His propaganda depicted Jewish women as fat and lazy, yet wealthy, feeding off the labor of the German people.
Substitute “working class whites” for “Jews,” and Nazi propaganda sounds a lot like CNN commentators and UC Berkeley professors. Even so-called conservative Bill Kristol says it’s time to replace America’s white working class with immigrants.
It’s pretty clear that the left uses the same rhetoric and scapegoating against conservatives as the Nazi used against Jews. So we have to ask if these leftists use the propaganda techniques to the same end.
The Nazis wanted to vilify and dehumanize Jews so the German people would be conditioned for the Final Solution: extermination.
When you hear the speeches of campus protesters, you have to conclude that the left has a final solution in mind for people like you and me. You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are the words of a school teacher in Seattle protesting against Trump and his supporters:
And we need to start killing people. First off, we need to start killing the White House. The White House must die. The White House, your fucking White House, your fucking Presidents, they must go! Fuck the White House.
Pay the fuck up, pay the fuck up. It ain’t just your fucking time, it’s your fucking money, and now your fucking life is devoted to social change.
Democrats, establishment Republicans, and the supposedly “responsible” media ignored this story. They ignored it because they are afraid of attracting the mob’s attention. Like Germans in the 1930s, some people value their own survival too much to stop bloodshed and brutality.
You Are Not Alone #
Since the election in November, I thought I was alone in seeing the life-threatening hatred in America’s leftists. But I’m learning I’m not alone. For example, Kurt Schlichter wrote recently on TownHall.com:
They hate you.
Leftists don’t merely disagree with you. They don’t merely feel you are misguided. They don’t think you are merely wrong. They hate you. They want you enslaved and obedient, if not dead. Once you get that, everything that is happening now will make sense. And you will understand what you need to be ready to do.
. . .
You wonder why the left is now justifying violence? Because they think that helps them right now. Today it’s suddenly OK to punch a “Nazi.” But the punchline is that anyone who opposes them is a “Nazi.”
Schlichter is absolutely right, of course. They hate you. You can feel it when you hear them speak and when you see them assaulting young women as the police stand around watching, encouraging the mayhem by their passivity. Yes, the Berkeley, California police are complicit in this woman’s serious injuries. They let it happen.
Look, the police will not protect you from leftist mobs. They’re too afraid. They have families and pensions to think about. And the left will not simply get jobs and go away. They want you dead. They want us all dead or enslaved.
And we’ve been warned.
The Prophesy #
In The Fourth Turning1, Howe and Strauss warned us that these Crisis eras end in a climax. That means the worst is yet to come.
The Crisis climax is human history’s equivalent to nature’s raging typhoon, the kind that sucks all surrounding matter into a single swirl of ferocious energy. Anything not lashed down goes flying; anything standing in the way gets flattened. Normally occurring late in the Fourth Turning, the climax gathers energy from an accumulation of unmet needs, unpaid bills, and unresolved problems. It then spends that energy on an upheaval whose direction and dimension were beyond comprehension during the prior Unraveling era. The climax shakes a society to its roots, transforms its institutions, redirects its purposes, and marks its people (and its generations) for life. The climax can end in triumph, or tragedy, or some combination of both. Whatever the event and whatever the outcome, a society passes through a great gate of history, fundamentally altering the course of civilization.
Yet one generation—Generation X2, aka, “13ers”—holds the key to surviving the climax:
The 13ers' gravest Fourth Turning duty will be their society’s most important preseasonal task: to ensure that there can indeed be a new High, a new golden age of hope and prosperity. For the Crisis to end well, 13ers must keep Boomers from wreaking needless destruction and Millennials from marching too mindlessly under their elders' banner. They will not find it easy to restrain an older generation that will consider itself far wiser than they, and a younger one that will consider itself more deserving. For this, 13ers will require a keen eye, a deft touch, and a rejection of the wild risk taking associated with their youth.
Warning us in 1997, Howe and Strauss said:
From now through the end of the Fourth Turning, 13ers will constantly rise in power. From 1998 until around the Crisis climax, they will be America’s largest potential generational voting bloc. As the years pass, their civic contributions will become increasingly essential to their nation’s survival. They will have to vote more and participate more, if they want to contain the Boomers' zealotry. They will have that chance. Their own elected officials will surge into Congress as the Crisis catalyzes, eclipse Boomers around its climax, and totally dominate them by the time it resolves.
As they go one-on-one with history, 13ers should remember that history is counting on them to do whatever hard jobs may be necessary. If 13ers play their script weakly, old Boomers could wreak a horrible apocalypse, and 13er demagogues could impose a mind-numbing authoritarianism— or both. If 13ers play their script cleverly but safely, however, a new golden age will be their hard-won reward. As they age, 13ers should remember Hemingway’s words: “Old men do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
“Slackers” to the Rescue #
Luckily, we Gen Xers have a role model in Missouri’s new governor, Eric Greitens. Greitens is the epitome of doing whatever hard jobs may be necessary, from Rwanda and Bosnia to Iraq as a Navy SEAL to charity and now to politics.
Even luckier, Generation X is already hardened. We grew up with hard rock and hard drugs and hard breakups and hard attitudes. We were eager fans who made Nirvana and Pearl Jam possible. And it’s an honor. History has handed us the keys to survival.
Those haters in Berkeley are largely Millennials. They’re following the bad examples of destructive, reckless Boomers. If America is to survive the coming climax, history will note that the Slackers, the McFlys, the generation nobody watched overcame our recklessness to rescue civilization itself.
But Generation X cannot win the battle for America’s survival alone. We need to attract soldiers from the Millennial generation. And we need to follow the lead of the Gray Champion, about whom more in future posts.
It’s Going to Be Okay #
In the meantime, cut out carbs, eat more healthy fat, practice dry fire drills, stock up on ammo, and be ready for the inevitable climax. You, my friends, are the first and last line of defense in our battle for self-government. We won’t go down without the fight of the millennium.
And we will be #winning.
Strauss, William; Howe, Neil (2009-01-16). The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny, Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition. ↩
In generational history, 13ers are the 13th generation since the American Revolution who were born between about 1961 and 1982. If you’re too young to remember JFK’s assassination, you’re a GenXer, not a Boomer. ↩