The "Confidence Targets" Edition
Thoughts about recent power grid and drag show attacks—and how that helps us think about having a More Stable 2023
Happy New Year!
I hope you’ve had as relaxing and peaceful a holiday season as the More Stable Family has, and I wish all of you the best going into 2023. I’m committed to starting this year’s first More Stable Union in a positive way, because I should! I’m feeling honestly good about 2023. There always are things that can go wrong, but I think basic trendlines for a stable, democratic United States are as good as I’ve seen them in a while.
First, and most important, the year is starting off surprisingly well for Joe Biden and the global pro-democracy coalition. The midterm elections went far better than anyone could have anticipated, both in Congress and in vital statehouses. The economy is surprisingly good. Best of all, Ukraine stands, “alive and kicking” as its hero-president put it to Congress. If you haven’t watched his speech, I urge you to, while imagining the fate of your country rested on your ability to give a moving, Churchillian address in the language you studied in high school at 3am your time. No pressure! We owe Ukraine a lot—as David Frum put it, they helped us find ourselves. In less than a year they turned Vladimir Putin’s Russia from manly-avatar-of-Christian-manly-manliness into the world’s leading producer of sunflower fertilizer, discomfiting autocrats and would-be autocrats around the globe.
Of course it’s a real bummer that the GOP has taken over the House, but we’ve seen what a shit-show they’ve made of it already. Cheer up! As exasperating as they are, and as much as their actions will make you want to scream, it’s all “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” as Shakespeare would have put it. They could blow up the debt ceiling and shut down the government in September, and that could cause a global economic crisis—or they might not. Each time the GOP has done that kind of economic terrorism in the past, it’s blown back on them politically. So relax—for now.
In China, mass protests have cut Xi Jinping down a notch, in the same year he had just declared himself ruler-for-life. We have to be a bit more ambivalent about this, because the end of “Zero COVID” is going to do immense damage to many innocent Chinese. Then again, that was likely to happen eventually considering the Chinese government appears to have no real plan for post-Zero COVID, as if they could continue it forever. It’s a stunning own-goal for a government that claims its top-down expertise is a superior governing model to democracy.
The blow-up in Brasilia was unpleasant to see, especially as it’s likely we’ll find out parts of that riot were organized in the U.S. But unlike 1/6/21 here, 1/8/23 in Brazil was a pointless attack on an empty building—they weren’t actually disrupting anything. I just wish President Biden and AG Garland took a hint from how aggressively the Brazilian government is responding. Finally, attempts at a coup to reestablish “Imperial Germany” just came off as laughable. Imagine people who don’t pine for the days of Hitler, but for Kaiser Wilhelm!
Finally, we’ve got Donald Trump. If he isn’t indicted this year, we may conclude the rule of law is dead. But it’s almost unimaginable he won’t be; if Merrick Garland really thought it best to let him walk, he could have made that choice without picking a special prosecutor. And that’s just the federal counts, not factoring what might happen in Georgia and New York. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis and others are sniffing the winds to choose whether to run for the GOP nomination, but it’s clear Trump still has at least a plurality of the party with him. This is great: Trump’s popularity clearly has peaked, but no other Republican can replace him if his diehard supporters stick by him. That makes 2024 Democrats’ election to lose. Not that they can’t, but it’s still the position you would want to start from, and we should be glad for that.
So, we’re good? Yes, but not great. Let’s talk about the confidence targets.
The Big Idea
You’ve probably seen a lot in the news lately about apparent shooting attacks targeting power grids, some with long-lasting effect, as in Moore County, NC back in December. First, do not panic that these are the first moves of a broader insurgency; people shooting at power stations isn’t at all new.
What made the Moore County shooting in particular stand out was its timing and location. Timing-wise, it happened on the night a local club was sponsoring a drag show—and a disgraced former Army Psychological Operations officer protesting the event even said she “knew why the power went out” that night. Now, she later said she meant that in an “act of God” sense, and she’s been interviewed by local police who say she had no role—though here she is at a “stop the steal” rally with the local sheriff, so take that for what you will.
What really made this attack interesting on top of the psycho PSYOP officer is where it happened. Moore County is adjacent to Fort Bragg, NC, home of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. It is part of “Pineland,” a training environment created over 50 years ago to train Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and PSYOP troops in supporting or combating insurgencies. Local residents have supported these exercises for decades, “smuggling” commandos and their weapons to sabotage targets in the back of their vans, helping soldiers calculate how many displaced persons the local athletic center can support, offering up cabins and barns as “safe houses,” and a range of other things. I’ve played in Pineland several times myself. It’s just the kind of community to know that power stations are a good “confidence target.”
A “confidence target” is a fancy-pants Green Beret term for something your nascent guerrillas can attack with minimal risk and maximum payoff, a rehearsal of their training before trying riskier attacks. Power grids rarely have any kind of security, even cameras, which is why hardly any attacks on power grids have led to arrests. And there’s no disputing that knocking out part of the power grid can have a significant impact on thousands of people.
So, Green Berets or people trained like Green Berets may be shooting up our power grid. Why is this not destabilizing?
First, this is America—not in a good way. Power grids all over the country—looking at you, Texas!—are crashing because of chronic underinvestment. And who can keep track that the Buffalo shooter was a white supremacist and the Colorado Springs gay bar shooter was a right-wing nut job when the Uvalde killer just seemed deeply disturbed in an apolitical way? The bar for terrorism in America is insanely high because we live in insane levels of violence already.
Second, if these attacks are insurgents (versus yahoos in the woods shooting at shit with guns, which we also have plenty of), they’re not very smart ones. Every insurgency, like every war, has a political objective. The whole point of any political violence, from shooting a transformer to invading Ukraine, is to make someone do what you want rather than face further violence.
So what do they want? We don’t know! That is the dumbest of all insurgent moves! You want to hide your personal role in an attack to avoid capture, of course, but the attack has no purpose if people don’t know why it’s happening. If America screamed out tomorrow, “we’ll do anything, just stop taking out the power grid!” we have no idea who we’re surrendering to, or what we’re being told to surrender. Shoot up a transformer and then post the manifesto of the “Independent Republic of Moore County” movement if you want; otherwise, it’s just vandalism.
So why care about these attacks? Well, there is one trend from Colorado Springs to Moore County: increasingly violent attacks on the LGBTQ population. The other interesting recent fascist “confidence target” has been paramilitary mobs assembling to obstruct drag queen events, sometimes shutting them down, sometimes provoking a laudable public opposition.
Fascism needs someone to hate, and the Right has identified LGBTQ people as the target. It starts with attacks on drag queens, but branches quickly into everything non-heterosexual, with the particularly foul charge that any non-hetero is a “groomer.” Even state governments are getting in on the action to basically outlaw LGBTQ existence and make LGBTQ people legitimate targets of violence.
I am not exaggerating when I say the language the right is using about LGBTQ populations is straight-up genocidal: what you could have heard from Nazis about Jews, or Hutus about Tutsis, or Serbs about, well, all their neighbors. The Colorado Springs shooter clearly has mental issues, but the hateful milieu he grew up in is obvious and certainly played a role in his addled thinking. The store-my-tactical-gear-in-mom’s-basement crowd is a laugh until they’re all arrayed in front of you.
What does this mean for us? Using our well-founded 2023 optimism, and learning the lessons of the Green Berets, it’s time to stake out our own “confidence targets:” things we should be confident to do this year.
First, let’s remember to do some prudent prepping. Not so much because of the North Carolina yahoos who put the “Moore” in “moron,” but because power grids can crash to weather as easily as they can to bullets. It’s just a good idea to be able to be self-sufficient for three or five days if and when the power goes out or the government can’t help you, whatever the cause.
Next, we come out and meet the enemy on their chosen battleground: LGBTQ rights. One usually prefers to attack on ground and timing of one’s own choosing, but we’re lucky here in that the Right attacking LGBTQ people is basically Pickett’s Charge at Cemetery Ridge: the vast majority of the American people accepted gay rights a long time ago. As Union cavalry commander John Buford would say, this is “good ground” for us.
Ok, I’m being a bit facetious about all this. Let’s not kid ourselves: this is dangerous shit. Guns are in play here. People already have gotten killed. Mass shooters are awful, but we have had organized rallies where the fascists brought guns, and even antifascists have shown up armed. When crowds of armed people face off long enough, someone is going to shoot someone. It should be clear by now we can’t count on law enforcement to show up—at least not on our side.
Everyone is in unique circumstances, and I’d be a fool to make blanket recommendations (as you’d be for listening to them), but if I were a LGBTQ person in any community I didn’t feel 100% safe in, I would be purchasing and training with firearms as part of an escape plan if I felt I had to leave. Think carefully about guns—they add a whole different set of risks and dangers to your situation. Just you and your loved ones having guns won’t “defend” you from any real attack. But they may be the key to a “fighting retreat” to somewhere safe.
Likewise, if I ran any kind of LGBTQ-aligned organization or establishment, I’d be pulling out all the stops on security, and that absolutely would include arming myself and hiring or welcoming armed guards if available. I am enraged by the idea of innocent people and innocent families being frightened away from innocent activities by armed gangs, and I would do whatever it takes to make decent people feel safe and to show fascists they can Fuck Around and Find Out. This isn’t a political calculation, it’s simply a responsibility to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These are defensive measures, and we don’t need to settle for that, because right and public support are on our side, but when going on offense for our rights, keep guns out of political activism. Like Master Yoda, we use lightsabers in defense, never in attack. Protecting oneself at home isn’t political. Protecting one’s self/business/organization/friends/public gathering shouldn’t be political. But if, say, you’re inspired to host a Drag Queen Story Hour which you’ve never done before in solidarity with those that have been threatened, I commend you, but that’s political activism, not a defense of something preexisting. If you’re going to take the risk of holding such an event, I urge you to keep it unarmed.
Confident that non-violence isn’t just morally right but also most efficacious for advancing our cause, we need to advance armed with decency and the rule of law—or at least our faith in them. An even more important corollary to this is: don’t show up armed to anything the organizers didn’t ask you to come armed to. Non-violence should be the rule, arms the exception. Respect the choices of the organizers, or don’t go. You don’t have the right to arrogate to yourself the responsibility for defending others, nor do you have the right to endanger others around you by making them potential collateral damage.
As I wind this up, we learn about the shootings at houses of Democratic politicians in the Albuquerque, NM area, which appear to have been orchestrated by a failed Republican candidate named Solomon Pena. Pena stands with George Santos as a model of the modern GOP: a convicted felon who mouthed the right MAGA slogans to get his party’s nomination, than got wiped out in the election, then turned to violence when he couldn’t accept losing. Robert Evans of It Could Happen Here shows some real oddities about this case that also merit pondering when looking at the GOP writ large: two of Pena’s colleagues in these attacks also appear to have been two of his biggest campaign contributors, even though one is employed as a bouncer and the other as a cook—call me a snob, but that’s not your typical five-figure donor! But one of his other biggest contributors was a local oil company. I’m sure there’s nothing strange in that fact pattern!
We also are learning of the outrageous behavior of the Memphis Police in murdering Tyre Nichols. We’ll see what’s worth saying about that next month.
Resolve to have confidence and act on it in 2023. This will be a year of battles, but from Ukraine to Albuquerque, we are on the high ground.
I think a lot of Fascists realize that Donald Trump was their best (hopefully last) hope of getting the America they wanted through the existing electoral/legal system. Now that they see they really can’t command a majority, they’ve just stopped trying. I may need to tweak a section of MSU just to discuss how they’re really putting the weird out in the open now, as this great New Republic article by Graham Gallagher shows. If there’s one thing that unifies all these oddballs, it’s a deeply insecure grasp of masculinity.
Speaking of weird, the Southern Poverty Law Center managed to infiltrate the New York Young Republicans’ annual gala. Two important lessons about this: the craziest fascists live in the blue cities, not the red rural lands; and the youngest Republicans are the craziest, because they’re such an extreme minority of their own generation.
Is there any evidence beyond my sunny optimism that the MAGA wave has crested, despite the clusterfuck in the House of Representatives? Well, as I’ve cited before, Ohio has one of the least democratic GOP’s in the nation, yet a significant bloc of their GOP legislature went into coalition with Democrats rather than put a complete MAGA loyalist into power.
Molly Jong-Fast looks at the House fiasco and distills the key point: the main idea for many Republican politicians now is to become a right-wing celebrity, not a politician. Gaetz, Boebert, Greene, and maybe most of all George Santos, are what many others aspire to be. You can get rich without ever actually accomplishing anything, policy-wise. Indeed, if you won everything, the money would stop!
You can’t talk about right-wing weirdness without getting to know Curtis Yarvin, the “intellectual” who influences, and is influenced by, guys like Peter Thiel and his acolytes, J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. These guys basically took Ayn Rand seriously, perfectly validating my idea of “Critical Asshole Theory.” Their entire project is grounded in the notion that wealthy people are mentally and morally superior and have a right to rule over the rest of us.
We often call them the “George Floyd protests,” but the murder of Breona Taylor in many ways was worse: a first responder murdered by fellow first responders doing a mistaken raid based on false information and shooting her instead of the actual (also innocent) person shooting at them. But for some reason, the Kentucky GOP decided to have one of those murderers, who’s still a cop, speak at the Republican Women’s Club of South Kentucky. Can it get worse? Yes! They can show video footage of her killing! Can it still get worse? Yes! They can cheer boisterously the whole time they’re watching! I honestly don’t see how this is different from attending a lynching.
Security Sector Reform
The January 6 Committee did excellent work, but I agree with Quinta Jurecic that it’s very disappointing how little they appeared to look into law enforcement intelligence, planning, and response. I actually think Jurecic missed the bigger point: it’s quite clear that not a few people in multiple law enforcement agencies were supportive of, and perhaps participated in, the 1/6 attack. I’m disturbed we’ve never heard anything about the claims by some progressive congresspersons that their offices’ panic buttons were disabled, for example.
This paper by two Harvard professors saying America needs 500,000 more cops has gotten some mainstream media attention. I share my skepticism with Alec Karakatsanis. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches us you need a certain number of security forces per population to quell insurgents, but the fine print is, they have to be good. The surest predictors of anti-government violence are perceptions of corruption and state brutality. So if you’re going to add 500,000 cops, they’d better be a lot better than our current cops, or they’ll certainly make things worse.
It looks as though Joe Biden shares my concerns. And yet he’s made no reforms at the Secret Service?
Hopefully a bipartisan coalition can form in the 118th Congress to support the 117th’s excellent “Inspire to Serve” Act, which would expand federal support for service programs like the ones I regularly advocate for. Call your legislators!
Police forces have so much contempt for the people they supposedly protect, they don’t even tell us how many of us they kill. But if you think the cop-killing data is bad, take a look at the data on hate crimes.
The first time I heard, “crime is a social construct,” I thought, “that’s some real touchy-feely bullshit. Crime is crime.” But Hertz committed crimes that got innocent people locked in jail, and no one is going to pay for it. As the old saying goes, the real crime is often what’s perfectly legal.
Kudos to Arizona’s ABC-15 for a brilliant investigative story finding that the Phoenix Police and Maricopa County prosecutor just made up a fake criminal gang to justify cracking down on racial justice protesters. More cops like these won’t stabilize anything.
Good Reads
I know I tend to go on about Star Wars, but I’m begging you to listen to me: Andor was simply one of the best shows on TV in 2022. It’s not Star Wars; it’s better than Star Wars. It’s a Masterpiece Theater spy thriller set in space. Diego Luna, Genevieve O’Reilly, Andy Serkis, and especially Stellan Skarsgard are astonishingly good. And as Daniel Silverman notes, it’s a brilliant primer on why and how insurgencies start.
The Alliance for Peacebuilding ran a survey to assess American views on the state of democracy, rule of law, and social cohesion. The good news: we all still share many of the civic ideals of “America.” The bad: we are deeply divided on just what those ideals mean, and have very little trust in each other to get them right.
Most hate starts in misogyny. After sexual minorities, MAGA turns most of its hatred towards librarians, teachers, and nurses. What do these professions have in common? They’re all traditionally “women’s work.” What’s the good news? Only an idiot would make enemies of well-educated women.
I continue to be frustrated by how Democratic leaders won’t call a spade a spade when discussing the GOP’s conversion to a violent fascist party. Fortunately, the Secretary of State of Arizona doesn’t have this problem.
What Ron DeSantis is doing to Florida education is straight out of Viktor Orban’s playbook in Hungary. In this case, going after a premier liberal arts college looks just like when Orban forced the shutdown of the George Soros-funded Central European University.
Just another reminder from Pennsylvania that “voter integrity” laws are designed to disenfranchise Democrats, while in Iowa and in Texas we see yet again that Republicans are more likely to commit voter fraud .
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