The Glade 4.0

Am I the only one that can't bring themselves to watch videos that show this stuff? I can kill stuff in video games all day. I can watch action-porno on TV. I've cut off someone's leg in surgery. I've watched someone die on the bed.

For some reason I just don't think I can handle watching the moment someone dies violently. Really hope I never have to.

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The Dude abides.

I don't particularly like watching stuff like this. I have been about this far : - : the width of those symbols, from blowing someone's head off before and thankfully was spared the need to actually do so, because I'm 100% sure I would have squeezed the trigger the rest of the way had he done what I thought he was about to do. I still see his face clearly if I think about it. I've been part of the "kill chain" on a few occasions for an airstrike or artillery fire mission, so I'm fairly sure I have "killed someone" in that sense, but I never saw them. I have a very good friend who fought - and I mean FOUGHT - in the wilds of Afghanistan about 15 years ago, when he was a Lieutenant. He shot over a dozen people face to face; he says he doesn't have any idea how many people he killed calling mortar, air, and artillery strikes (and I don't mean being part of the kill chain, I mean he was the front end of it.) He still sleeps very poorly and regularly dreams about these things at night.*

It is important that violence affects us this way; it is also important that we not shrink from doing it. When it is time to take care of business, then it is time to take care of business. It is something to avoid at almost any price - up until the moment it is not to be avoided, and then one must never hesitate.

But when we see it happen to someone else, for real, I think it is not the death that horrifies us. It is the killer. When someone does in surgery it is sad, but not horrifying. We know that the doctor or nurse has tried everything they could, or at least everything they could in what time they had available.

The killer is what fills us with horror. Partly, we are afraid of the killer. We fear being the victim ourselves, of the killer or someone like them. But we can defend ourselves too, and that brings us to the next point: We fear BEING the killer. Even in animals, when there's fights for dominance or territory, they don't usually end in death. We have an internal "safety" (most of us, at least) similar to that, and we fear crossing that line because once cross you cannot go back. I stood with my toes on the line, and some of my best friends have crossed it and try as I might I can never fully pull them back across, and neither can anyone else.

*My friend is rather unusual in that he talks very openly about his experiences and also about his struggles and anger afterwards. I am hopeful that this is a sign he's received better mental health care than others in the past, but I am far from certain of this.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm all for DE's idea about calling in citizens. Not a militia but a posse. I actually have suggested that we disarm the police entirely and they serve as information gathering detectives and initial de-escalation points but if something requires armed response the police have to get citizens to do it so that the community itself has to both put itself at risk and approve of at the time any action requiring potential lethal response.

This would of course require a much larger percentage of the public being armed while going about their business.

Nice to see some people getting red pilled about the nature of media.

I hope all of this can end peacefully but there are only two ways that occurs - the liberals (not the kooks in antifa) and conservatives accept actual Federalism - or the Left beholden states seceed and they are allowed to.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

If you did that, you may as well defund the police anyhow, because no one sane would work under those conditions.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I agree this captures some of it, but I think it's also the fear of the horror of having to experience that level of intentional violence on you and being powerless to prevent it. I mostly avoid watching MMA fights for the same reason.

There was a guy on Jocko's podcast who was talking about fighting an Afghani. He mentioned the fight resulting in a hand-to-hand struggle where our guy eventually got a hold of rock and clocked him a couple times. He talked about seeing the realization in the Afghani's eyes that he was about to die and how that still haunted the guest. I had to turn off the show at that point. Couldn't even listen to it any further.

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The Dude abides.

Last time I went through active shooter training, they showed us a video recreating the Columbine shooting. Only they didn't tell us it was just a training film. That was hard to watch.

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Raell Kromwell

That seems strange, because clearly no one goes into an MMA fight unless they CAN prevent it and dish it out themselves, unless you mean that YOU couldn't prevent it (because you're not an MMA fighter) in which case I guess that makes a certain amount of sense.

One thing I have learned from jiu jitsu - or rather, had reinforced to me, because I already knew it - is that you really don't know who out there can kick your ***. It's a good idea to avoid fights for that reason.



That's Dakota Meyer if I'm not mistaken; I know the podcast and conversation you're talking about. He's a Medal of Honor winner.

My friend I mentioned above never had to use a rock, but he sees the faces at night. That's why I consider myself extremely lucky. I've skated out of about 3 or 4 situations that could have ended similarly over the years (some closer than others) and I have no idea what I've done to deserve such good fortune. Listening to that for me was more along the lines of "Remember how lucky you are" combined with "If it happens again, you might not be and you better take care of business." I'm glad my friend, and Dakota, are alive to see the faces. I'm pretty sure their families are too.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Law enforcement used to work a lot more like that than it does today and people still did the job. The thing is no one would agree to this who wanted to enforce victimless crimes and they would be neutered allowig for far fewer people to get the job done.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

This is a silly assertion, and I'm not going to waste further time on it. We at no point had a system more than superficially similar to what you're describing, and the environments of the past involved completely different challenges and circumstances today. I'm not rehashing this all again; it's tiresome after this many years. It didn't happen and it isn't going to happen.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Some of you really deserve an Olympic Gold Medal for the mental gymnastics you must perform to convince yourselves...

DE goes on about how gangs, militias, posses, of civilians aren't armed mobs because... reasons.

Elmo doesn't want to defund the police, he wants to disband them so he can enforce his own brand of justice. Which is pretty much exactly what I said these groups are looking to do.

Wwen is talking about a kid who crossed state lines from Antioch Illinois to Kenosha with an illegally obtained long-gun and calls it a trip in from the suburbs.

Coro just invoked Godwin's law as a non-sequitar.

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If by "reasons" you mean "because the Constitution says so." Gangs and posses are not militias and The Militia is not "a militia" as you are thinking of it. "the Militia" is established in law, there having been several Militia Acts passed by Congress, as well as the establishment of militias in the Constitutions and Law of various States. Texas, for example, has the Texas State Guard. You'll note it's part of the state military department, along with the TARNG and TANG.

There's no "mental gymnastics" going on, just this weird hang-up you seem to have surrounding the word "militia" for some reason where you think the word has only the single definition that it acquired some time in the 1990s.



Which it is. He crossed state lines before obtaining the rifle, so the only crime he's actually clearly committed pertains to him being a juvenile in possession of a firearm, and is a misdemeanor, a type of crime that is generally regarded as trivial when committed by a juvenile.

I'm not sure if you're just bored or what, but you seem to really want to go down the road we've been down so many times of hollering and carrying on, and I think I'm done entertaining it. The facts are pretty clear, and if you really just want to accept mainstream media narratives, then you do you.

None of this would have happened if people weren't rioting in the first place. The inability or unwillingness of government to confront rioting is what's causing these armed people you're so worried about to appear. It is bizarre that you are more concerned about the symptom than the disease.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Balkanize America. If all your opponents are foolish rubes, do you really want them voting in your system?

You're being uncharitable and also not providing receipts. I mean if you came back with something other than I'm mentally ill, maybe I could take you seriously. Did you ever consider you have any facts wrong? I know I could, my anxiety tells me I'm always wrong, but you didn't present anything at all. So put up or shut up.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

As you have consistently used the phrase throughout this thread, you are referring to putting out a call to "able-bodied citizens" to bring their private firearms. Not trained individuals, not individuals with an understanding of tactics, firearm safety or even the law itself. How is this a militia? What definition are you using?



Fair enough, if you chose to accept "alternate facts" and what I presume is social media then there is truly no middle ground for us to have a productive conversation on this issue. You clearly have access to a source of truth denied to us plebs. In your world it is not only acceptable for the Kyle Rittenhouse's to take up arms against their fellow citizens rather than leaving law enforcement to the police but preferable.



In your book is the disease the riots or the unchecked police brutality that sparked them? You yourself indicated reform is needed upthread but in the four months since Floyd was killed (let alone the six years since Tamir Rice was killed) there has been none. Conversely these riots have only been going on for three months and you are already calling for armed mobs to form up to shoot these people.

Are you going to be standing outside a polling location with a long-gun on Election November?

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I think I've explained my position well enough for you to understand now, without a question like this being necessary. I cited the appropriate public laws on militias and gave an example. Let's move on to other topics.

I'm not teaching a class or publishing a policy paper on exactly how a Sheriff or a state military department takes the able bodied citizens and organizes them into a militia. I'm not getting paid for that work.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I get enough people on Facebook who throw fits when reality doesn't match their imagination. Facts not fitting into a narrative somehow becomes a failing of the fact teller and not the person with delusions in place of those facts.

Hopwin - I don't know what is constantly reinforcing this crafted paradigm you live in but you need to distance yourself from those agents as soon as you can. You cannot well predict future events and thus not risk when you insist on adopting as your bedrock information such things that do not exist.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

You guys have talked about quite a lot since I went silent on this thread. Too much to rehash, but there is much to agree with here, and I'm not sure I've ever seen Coro and DE in as much alignment as on these 3 pages. It reminds me of my own inner struggle between libertarian principles I hold and the belief that rule of law is extremely critical to civil society.


One thing I've tossed around that I'd like your thoughts on DE is this: what if our police were more akin to the UK police? i.e., not so disarmed as Elmo's stance, but that the regular individual/patrol cop weren't equipped with a firearm, but that we had capable QRT teams that WERE armed. The idea being that when they showed up, people would know it was time to STOP **** AROUND.

I'm guessing there would a) be a painful transition period. b) that most patrol units would have to be 2-officer vehicles. and c) we'd have to get used to the idea, culturally, that cops would give chase and let people go more often and we'd have to rely more heavily on the surveillance state to track people down. (the last point under the idea that even 2 unarmed cops aren't likely to give chase as often as current police do).


Could it work?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Strange times, indeed.



I really do not think so. I'd like to explain why but it comes down to the fact that we're an armed society, and criminals here are quite willing to use guns. (Look at Chicago) I don't think QRT teams could work; you'd end up paying a ton of cops to sit around and do nothing, and I don't think you'd get the response time you'd actually need, or be able to respond to enough places to make it work. The U.K. is very unique, and there are some ugly realities that get glossed over when discussing their policing scheme; they're generally much more free with the ass-beatings is basically what it comes down to.

There is also the fact that this country is **** huge and in large swathes of it there is just no way to make QRT response practical; they just cannot get there in useful amounts of time, and they can only be in one place at a time - and again, they have to sit around getting paid to do nothing (or train, but that adds more expense) in order to be available when needed.

We could really dig into this idea on a conference again if you want, at some point, but those are some of the immediate problems that come to mind. I can dive into them farther, but I just discover more and more problems; so my answer would be "It works if your goal is to disarm the police, regardless of consequences." I don't think it works in service of creating fundamentally better law enforcement.

I think much more important than reform of the front-line police is reform of the command structure, political and financial incentives to certain types of enforcement, and improved training on existing skillsets we expect cops to have, rather than trying to change the fundamental system. More importantly, though, I still hold one thing above everything else:

Police reform is 100% pointless if it will not be taken in good faith. This is the same wider problem we have on ALL civil rights issues - they become permanent causes that never expire no matter what is done. When no progress on any issue is ever acknowledged, why even bother? It's the same thing with this Critical Race Theory nonsense; if racism is a permanent problem that cannot even be meaningfully mitigated, then why even try?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why bother indeed.


Appreciate your thoughts on the proposal - I actually think the tolerance for *** beatings may be a feature not a flaw, in line with Coro's point about actions having consequences. But the other intangibles that make it a challenge are probably very apt.

Not that it would have gotten it done anyway, but just wondered.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It's a reasonable question, since at least one country makes it work. Now, some of the ideas that we've heard here do have some underlying merit, such as having specialists (who are not armed, and may have limited or no arrest power) come to scenes where there is a mentally disturbed person, rather than relying on patrol officers. Unfortunately, most implementations we've seen to this point have been wildly impractical (possibly even suicidal for the specialists in question).

This is unfortunate, because part of the problem we have is that we ask the police to do entirely too much. Coro is 100% correct on that.

Along with the bad-faith demands for police reform, this is a second major issue. The same people that have no intention of accepting that progress has happened are clearly proposing a lot of ideas that have underlying merit, but terrible implementations as proposed are clearly doing it from a place of "I just have massive issues with authority and law enforcement and want them taken down a peg, so here's my proposal to hobble them in some way dressed up as 'reform'". You can tell because when the bad effects are pointed out they retreat to the fairly typical defensive position of "well, you're a racist." A perfect example was that lady from Minneapolis (the mayor?) who, when asked who to call if one's home was being burglarized if the police were abolished responded that wanting to be able to call the police was "privilege."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Indeed. We're now going to hear about the "right-wing" loonbags in Michigan who wanted to kidnap the governor from the same people that have been allowing BLM and ANTIFA to run wild for months.

The thing is that the Left constantly makes excuses for it's loonbags, and tries to excuse their misbehavior, while the Right has no patience with its loonbags - no one knows who these people are, and no one is making excuses for wanting to kidnap the governor (I'm stipulating that these people are right wing, but I suspect that upon examination their real beliefs would probably be so incoherent as to have no identifiable affiliation.) or any other such behavior.

The gross part is that the Lefties aren't really outraged by this - they're overjoyed because now they get to pretend everyone who owns a rifle is some kind of whacko again. The news media can barely contain its glee. The thing is that we just had 6 straight months of various governments picking and choosing when to maintain public order, and pretending it was some sort of invastion when the Federal government did it for them. None of that excuses plotting kidnapping and assassinations, but emboldening this nonsense is absolutely a result of the political and governmental malpractice of numerous Democrats failing to carry out basic governing responsibilities.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."