The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Today’s (Feeble) Ray Of Hope

Posted on | May 1, 2021 | Comments Off on Today’s (Feeble) Ray Of Hope

— by Wombat-socho

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Let me start out with what should be obvious: neither I nor anyone in their right mind wants a Second War Between The States to break out. That having been said, only a fool doesn’t plan for contingencies, and preparing for a massive economic/political breakdown seems to on a lot of peoples’ minds lately. So you have a lot of people thinking out loud (and publishing books) about what’s going to happen if the Left and Right stop talking to each other and start shooting. 

A lot of the discussion is dumb, barely above meme level in accordance with Sturgeon’s Law, which tells us that 90% of everything is shit. On the one hand  you have people thinking that since they have all the guns in private hands they ought to be able to whup all the weird hair dildo-wielding gender-queer losers in about 15 minutes, and on the other hand, “LOL you’re going to fight off tanks and nukes with shotguns? Checkmate, fascists!”. Nothing is that simple, and as Clausewitz reminds us, “Everything in war is simple, but the simple things are very difficult.” 

As much as I hate to say it, the political situation here in 2021 is uncomfortably reminiscent of Spain in the run up to the Spanish Civil War, right down to the Anarchists, Communists, and other leftards who have their hands on the wheel, don’t want to compromise with anybody, and are intent on using the full weight of the government to crush their political opponents. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it matches at far too many points for me to be very comfortable rereading either Hugh Thomas’ or Stanley Payne’s accounts. However, since i have read those, Amazon chucked A.H. Lloyd’s Long Live Death into my recommendations, and it promised to focus more on the military than political aspects, I felt compelled to look into it. That was a good decision.

If you’ve read Payne or Thomas (or pretty much any popular history of the war) one gets the impression that Franco’s victory was more a product of Republican infighting than Nationalist skill, and while the political aspect of the war is important, Lloyd asks the question: how did the Republic, which started the war with half the Army, most of the Air Force and Navy, better tanks and aircraft (thanks to the USSR), more international support, and the bulk of the munitions factories*, manage to lose to the Nationalists? At the risk of spoiling Lloyd’s excellent history, it boils down to one thing: organization. Franco and the Nationalists quite simply did a better job of building on the foundations provided by the rebel Army units while expanding the officer & NCO academies to provide better leadership all the way down the chain of command, while the Republic always considered the loyalist Army officers suspect, allowed party militias to suck up a lot of the available weapons (and lose them through lack of training), and had great difficulty in deciding what they wanted to do at the strategic and operational levels. 

So it is here in the United States. If Joe & Kamala and their leftist goons manage to commit some outrage that sends a lot of conservative and libertarians reaching for their rifles, in my opinion while many senior officers may remain loyal to the Administration, most of the junior officers, NCOs, and enlisted men will rebel. There will be enough retired field-grade officers to provide a cadre for the rebel units, and unlike Spain, not many of the weapons and ammunition manufacturers are located in the Blue states. Over time, the red states will have the organizational advantage, and even if the Chicoms are in a position to help their clients, it may not be enough. Here’s hoping we don’t have to find out the hard way.

*You can look it up.

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Category: Books, History, Spain

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