What political instability, I am asked?
Impeachment. But that's just a symptom. The current political mess has a lot in common with cancer, and those of us with technical expertise in politics may talk about the details of the melanoma and the immune system response, but that's not the conversation I'm having today.
What civil disorder?
That depends on who you talk to. A lot of liberals are worried about being the targets of political violence from right wing people, but also from government violence (which to be fair, has been a concern for minority groups basically forever). A lot of conservatives are worried about 'incivility' from liberals, but are ironically enough also afraid of governmental violence, mostly in the form of "we're coming to take your guns."
The irony here, of course, is that the threat doesn't have to be real for people to feel afraid and conduct themselves accordingly.
Flash mobs, fifth generation warfare, a generation of Americans trained in insurgency skills, militarized police, a political scene as polarized as anything we've seen in our history ... there's a lot to worry about.
Now I have to get dirty. I had genuinely hoped that I would never have to talk such foul language. But I think it's only fair to my readers (and those of an acronymic persuasion) to lay out the problem, trying my best not to add to it.
That's the problem with memetic warfare. If I talk about nuking cities, and I talk about the specifics of how to build a backpack nuke, and where to place it, I make it fractionally more likely that it could actually happen. If 100,000 people get it in the shorts because Spider Robinson talked at length about nuclear peace terrorists in one of his books, and Spider's thoughts are only 1% to blame, that's still a thousand dead to his name. (And if some ahole finds that book because I wrote about it here, and does the thing, and I am just 1% of that to blame, that's still ten dead to my personal karmic account. No. Thank. You.)
So some subjects are best not talked about.
But when so many people are already talking about it, and it's starting to crest into the popular consciousness, and the concepts are being actively PUSHED by people who either should know better, or to quote one influencer, "Just want to watch the world burn," I have to say something.
There is a meme which to their credit, the social media folks have been trying to suppress. It's been hybridizing for a while in various forms. It can be recognized by the terms boo-gal-oo (without dashes) or Big Igloo (to avoid keyword recognition). It is hideously dangerous, and falls into the 'lemming effect' and 'moral panic' categories of social memetics.
(Note: Disney did not film lemmings going over the cliff on their own. They drove them over the cliff. Lemmings sometimes do this themselves, but the timing wasn't good for filming, so the filmmakers did it themselves. HINT.)
The approximate concept is that there will be at some point an Armageddon like social breakdown, that will pit the prepared (booghadeen) versus the forces of social order versus everyone else. The tame, censored version is zombies.
If you're still reading, and you know what I'm talking about, you can go away. You are not my audience today. (Keep reading, you know you will, but I'm keeping it simple.)
For everyone else, there are two parallel questions, one philosophical, one survival oriented.
The philosophy: what one thing will you grab from your burning house? What will you do if you stick your head out the door and the trucks stop rolling, the store shelves are empty, the ATMs no longer work, and people wearing Pikachu suits carrying flamethrowers are playing at kebab?
That's an interesting philosophical question, because it lets you know what you value.
The survival oriented question: you die. If you're lucky, you die quick. If you're less lucky, you die horribly over a course of hours. If you're really, really unlucky, you take years at it ... and what remains of your fading years to nurture a fragile hope of the resurgence of civilization, squashed by some future bandit's boot.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's look at the _actual_, not fantastical, effects of the bo0g@loo meme.
It makes civil war and civil disorder more likely. It does not cause general society breakdown. But it makes people prepare for general breakdown, and this diverts effort and resources from resilience to preparedness. To the extent that this is dual use, this is good. But that silver lining of good is overshadowed by the odds of making it all worse.
The recent flap over the Virginia National Guard is a great example. Politician says, send the cops to go get guns. Cops say, nope, not doing that. Politicians say, then we'll send THE NATIONAL GUARD (dum dum DUM!) to go get your guns.
Remember what I said about the right wing being afraid of the government? Playing on your opponent's fears is not a good strategy.
First of all, there's considerable overlap between the National Guard and local law enforcement, and between both and law abiding gun owners. You're going to send someone to arrest himself? Not smart.
The proud and brave folks of the National Guard signed up to defend their community and their nation. They did not sign up for door to door stuff. So some people will not be enlisting, and will not be re-enlisting when their terms come up -- MARKEDLY WEAKENING THE GUARD.
Then comes the police wondering what they will do if a Guard unit comes knocking. And the Guard doing what they will do if they get door knocking orders. And cops who are not guardsmen looking oddly at cops who are guardsmen. And guardsmen who are not cops getting twitchy when pulled over for speeding. And the would-be self styled boogalunatics posting memes about L shaped ambushes, Pikachu carrying flamethrowers, and (for some reason) wearing $20,000 worth of fourth generation night vision equipment while firing a cannon out of a shed.
Now I need to add some things. This is VIRGINIA. (Not Sparta, which only had wells ... Virginia has mine shafts.) Mountain folk, of whom I flatter myself I know a little about. A Southern state in temperament.
Where is the CIA headquarters? What is the Army of Northern Virginia? If you are a soldier or a player, and you work with or against the US government, and you need to be in commute range of DC, where do you live?
This is exactly the wrong group to set a memetic fuse burning within.
Or the right group. If you're an enemy of America. If you can play both sides against the middle, have access to memetic warfare experts, and really badly want to weaken America.
Talking about certain things makes them worse. But the motto of the University of California is "fiat lux" or "let there be light" for a reason.
Sometimes you light stuff up and in the bright lights, people see it for what it is.
Paraphrasing Bujold, every life lost and every round fired in civil conflict is pure loss, and a victory for your foreign enemies.
There is no Big Igloo. There will be no general mass society breakdown.
But there can be horrific events. There can be people killed needlessly out of confusion. There can be stupid lunatics who do stupid and hope that they light a fuse with their worthless fizzles of a life. There can be another dead cop because two tangos lit him up thinking he was a threat to them. https://police.mit.edu/memory-sean-collier
Don't fall for it. Don't believe in it.
Take reasonable and prudent measures to protect yourself, your famiy and your community from all hazards. But don't fall for people selling fear to sell you an idea, a belief system, or night vision equipment.
Trust your eyes. Build relationships with your neighbors. Trust your friends.
Now think about a certain politician, notable in the impeachment, who said (no kidding, and shades of the first Civilization game to boot), "You may have guns, but the government has NUCLEAR WEAPONS."
I'm not naming him here. But there was a time when he'd have been forced to resign in disgrace, for the hint that he'd be willing to murder millions of his fellow Americans.
How do you think the Army of Northern Virginia took his words? People who know what a Bent Spear is, who have spent their lives getting into and out of facilities, and exactly what it takes to marry a warhead to a platform, activate a Permissive Action Link, and [CENSORED].
We live in a time when silly words can kill cities, one way or another. And however you feel about Mad King Orange, the same fingers with which he Tweets ... never mind. I hope you get the point.
We need a lot less silly and a lot more prudent, quick. We have bigger problems than booger-a-loos.
If not you, then who?
If not now, then when?
If not here, then where?
"We are this season's people. There are no other people this season. If we blow it, it's blown." - Stephen Gaskin
