JL (all) You speak with great confidence about a thing of demonstrable ignorance

JL (all)
You speak with great confidence about a thing of demonstrable ignorance.

Population density is a vulnerability, not a strength. Conflicts are decided by a tiny minority of under one percent. Just as behavior in a polity is determined by under ten percent. Just as the most intolerant minority determines social norms. Just as the majority has no influence on the production of policy. Some of us have done a revolution. It’s trivially easy to seize and opportunity and those opportunities are heading for us at escape velocity.

How long did it take the federal government to fold in the 60’s? 3 weeks. We don’t even require a condition of violence today. We need only the threat of internal conflict and the externalities it would cause – in weeks. We are in a period of external vulnerability and internal fragility. And suffering from abuse of the peace dividend both internally and externally.

There are no conditions under which people who are hated in a polity will tolerate governance by those who hate them. Especially when the result is their disenfranchisement, disabuse, economic and political predation, and economic deprivation.

The greatest chance of victory is the certainty of conflict that leads to compromise and resolution before it accelerates. The greatest chance of conflict that causes destruction is the overconfidence that such a conflict is impossible or unwinnable.

I laud your popularization of and attack on the woke. But the tendency of public intellectuals with success in a domain to overreach to the point of harmful incompetence is the same as that of governments who overreach to the point of incompetence.

-fin-