Woodsman with Felled Tree, Edvard Munch
You see this [bullet]? This is this. This ain’t something else. This. Is this.
The Deer Hunter
Will Kyle Rittenhouse be this century’s Gavrilo Princip? Rittenberg is the 17-year-old American who killed two BLM activists who were attacking him, and almost blew the arm off a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Princip was the Bosnian Serb who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914, and set off a chain of events which triggered World War I.
This weblog has been muttering darkly for some time about the possible imminence of the American Civil War 2.0, and just as George Floyd’s death was a tipping point in one direction, so Rittenhouse’s shoot ‘em up may be the same in the other.
Black Lives Matter have made it clear that they plan to extend their activities outward from the cities to the suburbs and beyond. This in turn is leading to the formation of citizen militias, which will, following its own weary cycle, lead to open warfare on streets which the police have made it absolutely clear they will not protect or serve. For the peaceful and innocent homesteaders who have set up their families in what they believed to be peaceful and prosperous communities, something wicked this way comes.
However, America has something of a shadow army. The hills are alive with the sound of preppers locking and loading, and it is not hard to imagine that there are some fairly grizzled men out there whose talents include making deadly bows and arrows from yew trees and field-stripping a deer and who have been praying to a vengeful God for this moment for years. In that box of family mementoes, keepsakes, and sentimental trinkets under the bed, there is a faded video copy of Rambo: First Blood. The film didn’t end well; neither will this.
I have written before that America is best viewed not as psychotic but as a psychosis, a condition to be viewed as a psychological condition which is both extremely violent and, despite Barack Obama’s attempts to disarm the citizens, still packing heat. We note in passing that when the American Constitution was drawn up in its beautiful calligraphic hand, the famous Second Amendment had in mind flintlock long-barrelled rifles and ball-and-hammer pistols, not the fearsome military assault weapons which fill the streets of the USA today. The streets, and elsewhere.
The backwoods man has a long tradition in American history, the man who can kill a dozen coneys before breakfasting on grits and eggs in the log cabin he built himself. And self-sufficiency in the form of ‘prepping’ has gone from being the preserve of crazies and Iron Johns to Plan B for a lot of families. Sales of generators, tinned food and flashlights have rocketed in America along with, as you might expect, guns. In the cities they are buying bullet-proof vests.
The ‘authorities’ - how quickly that word was drained of meaning – don’t like this. Autonomy and self-defence are en route to becoming criminalised, and we can expect a few more Wacos and Ruby Ridges at the very least. But it would not be wise for the swarming monkey hordes of Black Lives Matter and Antifa to treat these heavily armed confederacies as just a bunch of dumb, cracker, trailer-trash tornado bait. Military training gives men an edge over other men, and you can bet that there are plenty of disillusioned vets out there to give it.
People are beginning to note that, six weeks or so before what will be the most violent election in American history, the Dems may well suddenly yell ‘cut!’. It would be a very smart move. If a frightening number of the American voting public – and you would imagine the turnout would be higher than usual in this particularly political year – appear to be impressionable and stupid, that’s because they are, the college-educated ones just as much as the mouth-breathers. They will believe the last thing the magic woman behind the plasma screen told them to believe.
Trump holds the key to this election, and it has to do with how he controls the violence. This pugnacious Prospero can either let it happen or hit the protagonists so hard they won’t get up. This would cause Liberal heads to explode like pumpkins, but it might swing enough votes out of a respect for authority which the Left still has, whether it likes it or not. The guy in Kenosha with half his arm hanging off reportedly starting yelling for someone to call the police.
In the meantime, citizens are fleeing the new urban war zones in record numbers. One of the videos that spoke loudest of the current state of America this last week was the one showing queues of white folk outside a UHAUL office in New York, UHAUL being a house-moving service. And these are not rats leaving the sinking ship. No, the rats are moving in. That’s the problem. New York is turning into Detroit.
America brought this on itself. It allowed neo-Communist ideas to fester and dominate its public sector for too long, and now the levels have reached toxicity. This is the bit in the old submarine war movies where the needle on the gauge starts bouncing around in the red zone while jets of steam spurt from places from which they should not. If Trump wins the election – not that this is an election which will ever end, just as Hillary Clinton didn’t allow closure on the last one – the country will go up in flames. If Biden wins – and you can expect Trump to bow out with dignity, contrary to what Don Lemon and his pathetic crew predict – the country will go down in flames. Not so much of a choice.
Don’t expect the media to give you the story. Like the trapper in the woods, you’ll have to hunt it down yourself. But Kyle Rittenhouse’s might have been the latest shot heard around the world.