To them, this is war. What will it be for us?

 "War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." - Carl von Clausewitz in "Vom Krieg" AKA "On War" as translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. 

"Force" is defined as "Power, violence, compulsion, or constraint exerted upon or against a person or thing. Power dynamically considered, that is, in motion or in action; constraining power, compulsion; strength directed to an end." per West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2.

A shorter version of the term is offered by the free legal dictionary provided by US Legal inc: "Force means power, violence, or pressure directed against a person or thing. Force is a compulsion by physical means or by legal requirement."

Force includes legal compulsion. I want you to understand that before I continue. Force includes using the law to require you to do something you would otherwise prefer not to, or to not do something you would otherwise prefer to do. 

For the last couple decades, a large number of legislators and talking heads have made anyone seeking justice from discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexuality, gender, or any number of other statuses into their enemy. They have said they "hate America" and are "trying to destroy America." That is not an opponent, or a colleague, that is an enemy. 

Those legislators and their party members have a lot of power right now, most of it at the state level. They are using legal force to compel their enemies to do their will. Their will includes: emplacing theocratic restrictions on personal actions, forced indoctrination of children with religious and nationalistic ideals, and forced denial of non-conforming ideologies, identities, and forms of expression.

Yesterday, we saw one of the most common occurrences in war: collateral damage. That's a nice, clean term that we use to talk about people who shouldn't have died dying. 

The thing is, to those who support those restrictions on freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and just freedom to be yourself, but insist on the corporate freedom to sell firearms to whomever they want (because that's really it. I hate to break it to you, but it's not about your right to own a gun, that's why they only put up a token resistance against ghost-gun bans, it's about selling you firearms), they're at war. They don't care about the LGBTQ+ youth that will be pushed to dying by suicide because of their draconian laws. They don't care about the women, many of them already mothers, who will die because they can't access safe abortions. They don't care about those who starve to death or die from exposure due to their lack of comprehensive social programs. They don't care about those who die because they legitimately can't face a life choosing between crippling debt and another day of unending pain because their health insurance company doesn't cover them. They don't care about those who die because law enforcement standards are so low that they're not actually capable of handling stressful situations half as well as a gas station employee. And frankly, they don't care about the children who died yesterday, not enough to change the heading they're on. 

They've treated this like a war for a long time, and it's time we begin to acknowledge that. We don't have to stoop to their level. We don't have to return force for force. There may yet be another way to save those they are willing to sacrifice. But we need to be honest with ourselves. They see this as a war, and they will accept nothing less than victory. 

How I identify a war in this case: presence of casualties, presence of collateral damage, use of tactics common to other socioeconomic wars, vilification of dissent, absolutist views on issues to the point that any budging is views as traitorous (see: Ted Cruz vs Tucker Carlson on the terrorists who stormed the capitol), and the proposal to increase the number of troops on the ground. 

You may be wondering what I mean by that last part. They want to arm teachers. They want to arm other school staff. They want to increase the number of armed individuals inside schools in general. They have expanded access to firearms to the general public over and over. They love the phrase "An armed society is a polite society." 

When your policy is to make any conflict as deadly and bloody as possible, rather than trying to preclude violence in the first place, you're on a war footing. 

I don't honestly know what to do, but I know what war is, I was trained to fight war, I have studied war much more than the average American, and this, at least to them, is war. We need a sanity check, and fast, or else we'll lose too much to be able to recover afterwards. 

May God have mercy on us, for our leaders apparently will not. 

When national leadership is worse than Benny from Fallout: New Vegas...

I've noticed a common thread among how the GOP seems to be treating all of their culture war issues. Short version: they're cowards that welcome the death of others. To use a term from the character Benny from Fallout: New Vegas, they're finks.

Allow me to explain: every major culture war issue they've been pushing for the last couple decades has had to do with things that reduce deaths due to exposure, starvation, overdose, and suicide. In all of those cases, the GOP tries to legislate the things that help reduce those deaths out of existence, but claims the likely resulting deaths are a completely unrelated phenomenon. 

Let's go through examples. 

First, and a very old one, the war on drugs. The GOP loves to legislate drug users into criminality, claiming it's for their own good and the good of society, but they generally refuse to hold major drug dealers in the USA, like pharmaceutical companies, remotely responsible for the deaths they've caused, and they ignore both the causes and effects of drug use. The GOP has raised barriers to access mental health services, most notably by increasing the barriers between veterans and the mental health services they need, all while claiming that it's about "fiscal responsibility."

In recent years, the GOP has taken to attacking programs and policies proven to reduce deaths due to overdose and other drug abuse related conditions, like clean injection sites, increased funding for psychological treatment of addiction disorder, etc. They don't want to help those people, but they'll claim that the people who die as a result of the lack of access to these programs are the only ones at fault. 

Second, let's look at LGBTQ+ rights. Every success to secure LGBTQ+ rights has resulted in a (sometimes temporary) drop in LGBTQ+ suicides. Gay marriage bans killed people, bans on gender affirming care will kill people, anti-sodomy laws killed people. The GOP doesn't care, because they want the control, they think that they have the right to become the arbiter of morality and those that don't align with their preconceived notions can die for all they care. 

Third, let's look at the most recently reborn controversy: abortion. Now, if you know me, you know I don't like abortions. Aside from a few exceptions, I generally consider them most likely immoral. That being said, I do view the issue as an ethical/moral one, not a legal one. God gets to decide what's moral, not our government. You can hate me all you want, but let's explain why. 

A ban on abortion alone will not reduce abortions significantly, we've seen that in the past, and we've seen it recently with the latest attempts to ban abortion in the USA. It leads to a temporary drop in abortions followed by an increase in early-term abortions. A complete ban would just result in a higher fatality rate for abortions as they won't be done safely. These are all scientifically and historically verifiable facts. 

A truly pro-life solution would require any ban on abortion to be tied to an increase in access to contraceptives, an increase in education spending, and increase in medical care funding for potential parents and children, an increase in social safety nets, and a social campaign to increase adoption after the age of two. None of these are part of the GOP platform, and in fact, most are specifically denied by GOP legislators. Their excuse? "That's a completely different argument."

So since they're not willing to look at these things realistically, to acknowledge that their morality-based legislation is likely to kill people, they're just "letting them" die. And who is most likely to be affected by these bans? The poor, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, etc. People that, according to GOP officials, vote for their opposition. 

This isn't a new concept, they're just trying to select their voters so the don't have to face the possibilities of voters not selecting them. They do this by making things related to Democrat policies felonies, like sleeping in a public park (homelessness), providing gender-affirming care to your offspring, being a longer-term victim of human trafficking (they can legally be treated as prostitutes, drug users, and sometimes drug dealers), and in most GOP-run states, you can't vote as a felon, even after you finish your sentence, at least not without jumping through some crazy hoops. 

They also like to select their voters through gerrymandering, selecting the requirements for voting to make it easier for those likely to vote GOP to vote (For instance, in Texas you can vote with a handgun license but not with a student ID), and increasing barriers to vote in areas that generally vote against them (reducing polling locations, hours, etc.) 

This is just another branch on that same tree; they're trying to select their voters by making it more likely that those who would vote against them don't survive until the next election. They're doing this not only to adults, but to minors, with their policies increasing the suicide rate for LGBTQ+ youth significantly. They won't take the time to actually look them in the face before they kill them, and they'll claim it was all the victim's fault, because they're cowards, but make no mistake, at the very least they consider excess deaths to be a reasonable cost for their policies to be put in place. 

Even Benny knew better than to do this. To paraphrase "Maybe the GOP-types kill people without looking them in the eye, but I ain't a fink... dig?" Even Benny, who is far from a good person, would have the honor to admit to someone who killed them. When you're worse than Benny, are you really doing the right thing? 

That's all for now. God Bless you if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise nice day. 

- Draknus