The shite may hit the rotors, it may not. Predictions are a bar stool cottage industry. Free Republic readers were predicting Romney, if you recall, and Romney himself seemed surprised that it got out from under him. After all his hard work, two years worth with no serious stumbling and a lackluster performance by Obama in the debates, Obama still took the flag. Why? One word...media. If it comes down to tooth and claw, the militias had best take out the nation’s power grid first thing, cuz the 6 o:clock news won’t be friendly. This isn’t going to play like the years before our Civil War when Republicans were being shot down in Southern streets with impunity. It’s going to play like Oklahoma city and Waco. It’s going to suck to be you also, my friend.
Now to my main point, war drives technology, period. The strategic winners have better technology and the mental/organizational infrastructure it’s based on every time, whether raw materiel, long bows, horse mobility or A-bombs. The surplus productive capacity of WWI, and more particularly, WWII and the subsequent Cold War, created the rabbit breeding environment you have such a problem with. Our productive base made Marxism effectively vanish in the S.U and China’s Politbureau is just another board room in effect. That’s called victory.
Your K environment lawfully evolves to an r environment every time. What you will need is a global governance of some sort that can regulate the quantity of war vs. its absence, like the Aztec “War of the Flowers”, a matter of combat theatrics to provide sacrificial victims for the temples. Say good bye to nation state sovereignty and federated republics if you want to achieve any sort of K dominant stasis in the K vs. r. schematic. The smart ones will join the invisible hand priesthood at the center playing one side off against the other.
PS. This thread is the kind of analyses we need to be making. News stories commented upon here need less of the “me too” and other chit chat and more hard analysis of precipitating factors, most importantly the psychological factors, as you’ve demonstrated. But at the same time, don’t think that the lefties can’t put two and two together. As I keep repeating, they are hegemonous because they ain’t stupid. What is described here as “liberal” has its counterpart among conservatives as far as analytic rigor goes. This entire news blog should begin to take on the attributes of an intel analysis bunker or a briefing room, while being mindful of security, if only as an exercise to sharpen our observational and analytic skills.
Three rules of thumb from Evolutionary Ecology, with which to predict the future. Resources will always grow limited without mortality. This will inevitably produce mortality. And nobody wants to die.
“If it comes down to tooth and claw, the militias.....the 6 o:clock news won’t be friendly”
If there was a revolution (I think economic collapse will come first, mostly because revolution is a big step, but who knows) it won’t be with militias. Not that there won’t be yahoos grouping up and dying en masse, but that won’t last long - and those guys were never going to win anyway. What is coming will be much more horrific, and it won’t be a war waged on government. It will be faceless mostly, local, and entirely directed at the softest targets on both sides, though I suspect the r’s will have it worse.
The media undoubtedly played a large role in Obama’s victory. But the deciding factor, as far as I can tell (and it is with limited information, but...) was the mobilization of voters. Whether we like it or not, there are a lot of lazy sacks of shit to whom liberty means nothing, and which will graze freely provided resources, and then vote Democrat - but who normally don’t.
Obama got them to vote, with help from the local community organizer infrastructure. This is why I think we are seeing the AW bans now. Things are getting shaky, and they have calculated that the risk of angering the NRA is ameliorated somewhat by their new voters, and it is all perhaps more necessary now, due to financial things we are not privy to at our level.
“This isn’t going to play like the years before our Civil War when Republicans were being shot down in Southern streets with impunity. It’s going to play like Oklahoma city and Waco.”
I don’t think so. I have a blog post coming up on this. I think these things evolve, with bad strategies culled, and good strategies retained. Wacos will happen, just because the feds will want them to, but they will be theater. OKC may happen, once or twice, but it will be yahoos, and not a normal part of the strategy which will evolve organically. The real war will be personal, and I suspect it will be waged with government on the sidelines, unable to be where the action is when it goes down, no matter how badly it will want to. None of us will be walking by our windows freely anymore, on either side.
I suspect K’s will win, since they will deal with the constant threat of death better than r’s, and be more tolerant of it, but I could be wrong. It is a long way out, and revolution probably will not even happen, to begin with. But if it does, I would not think we will have enough productivity to support welfarites, and the government will be mostly tied up dealing with what will be an epic mess there. Lotsa r-mouths crowded together, and no free food will be fun. Especially when they are crunched up against the moderately and very rich r’s, who were designed to be preyed upon.
“The strategic winners have better technology and the mental/organizational infrastructure it’s based on every time, whether raw materiel, long bows, horse mobility or A-bombs.”
Not always. Vietnam, even back to the Revolutionary War. A well motivated group can find ways to disable a lot of technological advantages, and exploit a lot of weaknesses. And even then, outcomes are dependent on a lot of things, especially motivation to win, and paths of least resistance which open up. Plus, we have never seen a battlefield where information was so freely available to both participants, or where the technology was so freely available to both sides.
I am not certain r’s will not fold once the horrors begin. Stockholm Syndrome is a natural r-phenomenon of competition avoidance. Hell we had Liberals taking Osama’s side after 9/11, asking what we did to make him so angry. I will not be surprised, if the threat is made real to them, they will cave immediately.
Either way, whatever happens, I know one thing for sure. Someday in the future, the most successful society in the world somewhere, will rise out of chaos to view homosexuals as aberrant, shame single moms, discourage promiscuity and sexual exposure of children, demand loyalty to in-group, pedestalize the masculine man, and punish the pansy, punish a whole range of behaviors which are not pro-social but which hurt no-one, encourage women to be homemakers, view masculine women with suspicion, and they will be wildly successful, globally. They may even hold trials at some point, the explicit purpose of which will be to find and punish r-sympathizers. And then the whole thing will gradually turn r and come down all over again.
“Your K environment lawfully evolves to an r environment every time.”
Yes, that is true, I have written about this. And then it turns back. Every time. I don’t view this as strange, because I see it in the context of ecology, where no population can expand freely forever, absent mortality. And once mortality shows up, and the only choice is flee and die, or fight and kill, K will return, because it is designed for that killing environment, which history (and Ecology) indicate is unavoidable.
“What you will need is a global governance of some sort that can regulate the quantity of war vs. its absence, like the Aztec “War of the Flowers”, a matter of combat theatrics to provide sacrificial victims for the temples.”
Yes! I love this part, because what I see everywhere is people who understand the basics of this whole thing, on a very deep level, but don’t realize it. I mean, you coming up with that – it is as if you have been studying Evolutionary Ecology, and its relation to politics for years. Where does that come from? Question, and it is my only one : Would you be more comfortable in a world of random mortality, where a lottery sentenced indiiduals to death at the hands of another or a world where mortality arose organically in equal measure to the first, out of shortage and violence at the hands of others? Assume the deaths would be equally painful.
Back to your insight. There is only one way to sustain an r-environment in nature, and it is with a constant level of mortality. That is why you see it expressed most purely in rabbits, mice, etc. The Predator provides the mortality, which keeps the population constantly below the carrying capacity of the environment, which in turn, keeps resources freely available at all times. Without the mortality, things always turn K. Liberals, without ever studying ecology, know this, and I can’t imagine how.
Liberals seem to want to try to do this other ways, instinctually, even though they don’t consciously know of the r/K relationship. From forced sterilizations to sterilants in drinking water, to Brave New World’s gestation bottles, and government run breeding, to over-population concerns and Malthus. China did it it’s own way with births. Stalin had his methods.
The problem you have is, r’s are are fundamentally less capable at inflicting mortality themselves. Occasionally, r’s can rise up and seize power, ala the Soviet Union, so they can get the K’s of the society to do their killing for them.
But r’s can’t eliminate the competition in our species – it is in the DNA. Gain power, ala Lenin, and K’s will realize the rules have changed, and then dive in, and what you eventually end up with is an even more aggressive and ruthless K than you had when you started – because those K’s which succeed do so in a less rule/honor governed r-model of competition. Try advocating for gays in Russia today. Try telling the government the rich need their wealth seized, and given to the poor. Try taking the side of the Chechens. It is more K than we are, and it wouldn’t be that way if Communism had never taken hold.
r’s are chaos generators. K creates great, efficient systems, r wrecks them, collapses the system through delusional attempts to make it better, then K-selection returns, and r’s then either adapt by becoming K out of necessity (most) or die back, resulting in a more K-environment. As a mechanist, I find this very cool. Jiggle it one way more than it should go, and it will jiggle itself back the other way, more than it would have gone otherwise.
You may not like my work, but it is sound, and will eventually be how politics is universally viewed - it is just too interesting to go away. It will prove predictive, if looking back is any measure. And I have no doubt it will have dramatic effect on the nature of our battles in the future. Knock it all you like, but all you are doing is ignoring what I think will be the greatest advance in the Political Sciences since the American Constitution. And I have a feeling your IQ is high enough that you see that.