I have been wondering this myself.
I am half way through EMERGENCY by Neil Strauss. So far he has spent a fair amount of time explaining why the Jews and others didn’t leave their country when things got bad. Basically, he surmises they didn’t think things would get THAT bad.
How does one know when it’s time to get out or start shooting?
That is a tough one. You have to make your own decision, my time may be different than your time. Too many of us wait until it is too late.
Yes, but I think his question was more towards organizing an actual resistance. Not simply one person here or there shooting the guy coming to get the guns.
That is the very hard part and ties back into the tripwire question. For the most part I think socially people are like cold blooded animals. If you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water he’ll get out as quick as he can. If you put him in the pot though and bring it to a boil, he sees no reason to leave his new found pond.
My new problem is this though, flee to where? Freedom has always been found on the frontier and we’ve settle just about anyplace humans can survive without a lifeline to the outside world. About the only option left is to build a floating civilization in international waters somewhere. Eventually someone will try to annex you though so that you pay your taxes, everyone has to pay taxes.
I don’t know the exact moment when people will start fighting back, I do know though there have been many moments where people have started to contemplate how to achieve that which needs to be done. Come to Boomershoot at some point. Given Joe’s reason for Boomershoot, you will find it very interesting, as well as calming and reassuring.
It’s not even that our government is really broken. The constitution if respected would be a respectable form of government. The problem is we have politicians that don’t respect it and “interpret” it so it will fit their goals even though it says quite blatantly the opposite. Ultimately even if you do as my dad would say and start shooting the bastards, you need an plan to get to where you need to be.
Jennifer posted an idea for an amendment recently I thought it went a bit too far because I draw a distinction between welfare/handouts and providing goods and services that are required by our government. But I digress. One of my big complaints though does fit with her idea. People who vote who don’t actually have “skin in the game”. I pay taxes, others however get paid by the government come tax time. Those who don’t pay taxes, honestly shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Our country has collapsed into a pseudo democracy where people elect other people to use the force of government to steal money. The people in office take a nice cut of it and then dribble some down to their voters so they get hooked on it like crack.
Again I digress. But as you can tell this topic is enormous and can be discussed for hours with the different methods to attempt to stop the ship from sinking. I have no doubt it’s sinking, no previous country in history has gone this far down the path and turned around the other way.
No one wants to admit what’s going to happen if things continue because no one has learned from history. Well those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.
Lots to think about. Thanks Barron.
That seems to be the question lately on many blogs. I believe we are one trigger event away. What that trigger event might be I don’t know but iz do get the impression that there are many people cocked and locked just waiting.
Yeah. Seems like.
Can’t say it better than Barron did…
He does have a way of stating things, doesn’t he?
I have explored this many times on my blog, Even during the Revolutionary War only about 2 % actually fought today it would be far less and over 50% don’t even care enough to be informed.
BTW, I think 0bama voters are the enemy as well, just as much as he is.
Yes and your posts always get me thinking.
The concept that you are reading about is denial, at this point the European Jews had endured genocidal pogroms’ in Russia and forced evictions. Those in Germany, Poland, and France etc. had established businesses or trades. A large proportion of the German Jew and Austrian Jew’s had served with distinction during the First World War. Initially Hitler had no intentions of going after those Jew’s who had been awarded Iron Cross Medals during the First World War. All of this changed and by that point it was far too late to be leaving. Not to mention the fact that no other country was willing to take in or assist the Jews who at this point were desperate to escape. Historically this should be remembered as a disgraceful act by our own country. In the final analysis most people will do nothing or simply panic during the course of a genocide, disaster or civil outbreak and in the end become part of the body count. Some few, by happenstance or pure luck will survive; this also includes the folks who have a contingency plan in place.
There are fairly big differences between today’s environment and that of WWII. What was known of the concentration camps by the Allies was not well distributed among the population and was also somewhat unfathomable. Germany didn’t exactly put up billboards about their final solution. Most American soldiers did not know of it until they saw it with their own eyes.
Many Jews in Europe did not even know the extent to what was going on until it was too late.
How many people here don’t know what is going on? I don’t think are really paying attention to what we are losing.
Thanks for posing, what Mr. Barnett called above, the ‘tripwire’ question.
It could be posed, as we have, for the state of the Nation, and more micro-like in the state of any emergency, e.g. the Aurora shooting.
Obviously, in a smaller venue, the decision becomes more concise – yellow to orange to red.
As to government/country…
Everyone has their own color code, or perhaps should.
gfa
Good pont!
THE PROBLEM IS: People always assume it won’t happen to THEM and they hunker down, hoping to become invisible. When they are no longer invisible, OTHERS hunker down and hope it won’t be THEM. By the time the number has dwindled, there’s no one left to ban together.
THE OTHER PROBLEM IS: It’s nearly impossible to get humans to ban together.
That seems to be the problem. One by one doesn’t seem very effect, but getting an organized kind of thing doesn’t seem very likely.
When you start seriously wondering whether you should get out or start shooting it’s time to do A or B. The example of Syria is kind of interesting, with what started as a non-violent resistance wanting change has a year later turned into very serious armed threat to the existence of the government.
Right. That is what I figured and yet…
As with many past societies… I think that so many Americans have been conditioned to an illusion of stability and security in so many areas of their lives… that often… the time to move to arms or resistance… let alone organized resistance is so far past… that they will hopelessly play catchup by the time they act upon their circumstances…
Just people watch in a grocery store two hours after a power outage…
Organized resistance needs logistical support… and too often by the time it is organized it’s too late for the logistics to be put into place… and you’ve got no secondary position to retreat to…
Dann in Ohio
That appears to be the running theme.
I’m currently reading Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts”. 1933 Germany. Hitler had been chancelor for 6 months and brutality was going on in the background, but the face Germany presented was of a lovely, hospitable place. Tourists went home raving about it. Yet Dachau was already open as a prison camp. I don’t think people thought that it could possibly last long – voices of reason would prevail.
That is similar to what Strauss says.
You are all invited to my kingdom in northern Ohio when the ZA arrives.
I plan to carve out a little peice and slowly put the country back together!
BYOG/A, but cookies will be provided hopefully homemade by Brigid!
Great. I’m there!!
Get out? Where do you go? If, as in Nazi Germany, some members of the population are branded undesirables visas for travel are restricted and other countries don’t want them. The story of the MS St. Louis is a case study of what happens when some get to the point that they think it’s time to leave.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
Leave? My ass. As an American Jew who has studied and learned the lessons of the Shoa well, I will start shooting before anyone drives me from the land of my birth.
NEVER AGAIN.
I have not finished the book, so I am not sure, but as I am reading he feels like he is setting the stage for that idea…that he won’t leave, but a lot of people do escape to other countries. Many Jews did leave and many more tried.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005470
I am not advocating leaving or that people start shooting tomorrow, but I read on a lot of blog, if this happens then I am out of here or from my cold dead hands and I as a person who never thought about any of it until about a year ago, I wonder about these things.
I don’t advocate a hot war but I DO advocate increased gun ownership in order to keep the message current to our government that WE, all of us united as AMERICANS, comprise the United States and that our government officials need to remember that we fought a war for independence from tyranny. I think that message is more relevant now than any other time since the Revolutionary War was won.
I could not agree with you more.
And Hitler’s demise came a scant 14 years before I was born. It is FAR from ancient history, so those who think something like that couldn’t happen again or here in the US are delusional. We need to always remain vigilant and protect our rights.
One last thought – I didn’t check your hyperlink until just now so I did not see Kerodin’s post.
As far as his question, I answered that question in a similar post he did a while back.
Over the past five or more years I have contacted various like-minded individuals about the potential for preparing for a hot war if the need arises. My thoughts have been that what is needed is a cohesive network of patriots as well as funding. Every time I raise the issue of the need for funding all I hear back is crickets. My opinion is that most bloggers are blowing smoke on the issue. Not one person I have met yet that bloviates on the issue knows how easy it is to do without our creature comforts, or is willing to sacrifice that way of life. I do and am. What’s holding me back? Other people willing to march and others willing to fund it. As Napoleon said, an army marches on its stomach. Just my two cents.
Yeah, it’s hard to get people to come together for sure. Probably one of the biggest assets to those who wish to do us harm.
Well said!
It is often forgotten that a great many Jews DID get out — hundreds of thousands of German Jews made it to Palestine (soon to be Israel) in the 1930s, for example. (Google “fifth aliyah” for more details.) My mother-in-law was born to a Jewish family in Poland in February 1939; I get the shivers thinking about how narrow her escape was.
It’s also frequently forgotten, when the question is asked “why didn’t the Jews fight back?”, that the Jews were basically the only ones who did! Yes, it took a lot to get to that point… but read up on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising sometime. They knew they were as good as dead, but they were determined to make as good a Last Stand as possible… and they did indeed take quite a few Nazis with them.
Concerning this post, and this blog: Hitler knew what he was doing when he disarmed the population FIRST. Please keep it in mind.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” — Frederick Douglass
Thank you for your response. I really appreciate the different perspectives and resources.
You are on target – if I recall, Reagan said something to the effect that America was the last best hope, and it if was lost, there would no nowhere else to go.
Pingback: Fight or Flight? | California Yankee
I believe it is much worse than we think, and closer.. I only know how it will end for me.. When will it start? When the “net” is down and the phones go dead.
I’ve been trying to compose a response, if not an answer, for a couple of days. I’m not sure I have it all, but I think I have the important points.
Back then the government was not “us” but some fairly nebulous entity back on the other side of the Atlantic. The military here was not “us” but folks from over on the other side of the Atlantic. We were not so much PO’d at the local government, which was for the most part merely carrying out the dictates and decrees of “those people” on the other side of the Atlantic, as were were mightily PO’d at those folks on the other side of the Atlantic.
Today (well, since 1789) everything that has happened has been done to us by those who truely are our neighbors if not also our friends. Over the years the divide between the elected and the electorate has widened and we now have “professional” politicians – in that being a politician is what they do, as opposed to being a farmer or a shoemaker or a teacher who has taken some time off to serve their neighbors and country. That is what the current “Them” is in the Us vs. Them relationship.
Back when the colonies were deciding to revolt and break away from the Empire there was something to break away from. (Well, duh!) Now there is nothing to break away from – only people to stop supporting and believing in any more. Add to that the fact that we arre extremely divided over who, let alone what, we want to follow. Quite frankly the situation today is much more complicated and much less clear-cut than it was back then.
Bringing up the question of why the Jews of Europe did not do anything is interesting because it raises several of the same issues as I’ve touched on. Besides being a minority that could never rely on gettting popular support for anything except being picked on (yes, simplified but let me get away with it for now) they had little if any experience in using violence. The options open to them were either to move or to hope that being assimilated would separate them from their less assimilated coreligionists. Those most vulnerable had the least ability to move. Where will the majority of us move to? How are we all going to be able to survive when we get to Montana or Wyoming or Idaho?
On a personal note, which is very important to me – who is going to keep me supplied with the prescriptions and medical care I need to stay alive?
Which brings me to my personal answer to The Question: Whatever it is that I do, I want it to have some contribution to the greater effort. Right now I do not see an individual sacrifice as being sufficient to set off a popular movement, and any personal sacrifice at this time will not be significant enough to bring the rest of those who are also asking The Question to action. I’m not afraid to do something. I’m just not willing to waste the effort or see it used as another excuse to further tamper with our liberties and freedom.
If you ask your question about The Question again in February 2013 you might get a different response from me.
stay safe.
Yes, that is really it. Any one person trying to stand up with certaintly be a sacrificial lamb.
Thanks Skidmark. I always gain a lot from your insight.
I’ve been pondering this a lot lately.
This is always a struggle, because it’s easy to look back with the lens of hindsight and say, “they should have fought back” or “they should have left”. It’s easy to look back over the past 10 years and say “I should have sold my house in 2004 when it was worth $X, instead of hanging onto a property that’s now worth 35% of $X”. It’s a lot harder to recognize the tell-tales ahead of time, and guessing when the housing market is at its peak or when our society is right on the edge of the precipice is just that: Guessing. Sometimes we call it right, other times we don’t.
So, when’s the right time to move to Condition Red on a societal level? The other commenters have some good points, but my answer is still “heck if I know.”
I will say this, though: If we as Americans expect we will need to make such a stand, the time is clearly NOW to find ways to organize ourselves that don’t depend on government-controlled infrastructure. How hard would it be to cut off any wide-scale would-be revolutionaries from one another and frustrate their ability to communicate? A few dozen court orders to the backbone (“tier 1”) Internet providers and cell phone companies would do it quite effectively.
Thanks for the book recommendation, by the way – EMERGENCY just downloaded to my iPad, and I’m looking forward to reading it!