All right, I’ve yammered more than that game theory guy. Let’s recap and wind up:
The Left wants to disrupt the Right’s power, organizations, celebrations.
The Right is sick of Leftist disruption and wants to punish it with force.
The hard Left has an effective infrastructure. The hard Right is looking to build one.
The hard Left will use the tactics it’s already using.
The hard Right will use Leftist tactics, at which point the Press will become very interested in denormalizing those tactics.
I’m guessing the Trump administration will try to eviscerate Lefty Institutions with budget cuts and the hard Left infrastructure with RICO.
Look for
lots of property destruction, by everyone. I would not be surprised to see innovative tactics used to destroy property.
The press is a Lefty weapon and a Righty target.
Everyone will have enemies’ lists. All of us are already on somebody’s.
Effective Righty violence will be, by necessity, by loners or by
really close conspiracies (think family members).
Effective Lefty violence will be by capable, fully operating cells.
If we get political violence between civilians, it’s mostly going to be low-level until it abruptly isn’t.
Some suicidal mass murder types may copycat political violence and choose political targets.
You do not want white people to riot. You Do Not. Want. White People. To Riot.
Nobody wants Civil War II. That doesn’t mean we won’t get it anyway.
I feel a little sick writing about this stuff. And a little stupid for talking about it. It sounds crazy in daylight. But every place I’ve been that had this happen thought it sounded crazy, too. And I have a bad feeling that right now what Americans want is to chop each other down like trees.
You want to know what I’m really terrified of? Imagine a few dozen iterations of this story:
There’s a famous case where a shadowy group was after a high-value, high-status target who used his considerable resources to retreat. The group couldn’t get to him. So they targeted everybody associated with him: Friends. Family. Staff. Lawyers. Sympathetic journalists. Eventually, that utter devastation of infrastructure led to the death of the high-value, high-status target, whose name was Pablo Escobar.
That’s what I’m really scared of. Killing like that, on repeat. It’s my nightmare scenario. I know it’s unlikely. But — and this is the stupidest part of this whole thing — after 2016, I’m a little superstitious, and I’m wary of omens.
The shadowy group that unleashed carnage on Pablo Escobar’s Institutions had a name.
They were known as Los Pepes.