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Saturday, November 23, 2019

Guest Article: The View From Olympus: A 4GW Impeachment? - Martin van Creveld

By
William S. Lind*
As I have said many times, Fourth Generation war is at root a contest for legitimacy.  On one side is the state. On the other is a vast array of alternate primary loyalties: religion, race, tribe, gang, and locality, among others.  Around the world, the contest is going poorly for the state as a growing number of people shift their primary loyalty to one of the many alternatives, for which they are willing to fight.
Washington does not perceive it, absorbed as it is in its own struggles for power and money, but the same contest is going on in this country.  So far, to our great benefit, it has remained on the peripheries. Urban police know they are confronting it in the form of ethnically-based gangs, which are illegal business enterprises that fight.  But the mass of the American people appear still loyal to the state.
The appearance is, I think, deceptive.  On both the Left and the Right, doubts about the legitimacy of the federal government are growing.  Mostly, the doubts are about the legitimacy of the current President, although polls show public perception of Congress is also strongly negative.  There is no question many on the Left regard President Trump as illegitimate. Should a hard-Left figure such as Warren win in 2020, the Right will doubt her legitimacy.  But considering the current President illegitimate is different from thinking the state itself has lost its legitimacy.
Impeachment could change that.  President Trump’s supporters regard his election as proof their voices can be heard, that their interests will be considered in Washington.  They know that to virtually all Democrats and some Republicans, they are “unpersons”. Why? Because they are White, male, or non-feminist female, straight, and mostly Christian.  They are also struggling economically, which means they are not contributors to politicians’ campaigns. The coastal elites dismiss them as rubes and hicks inhabiting “flyover land”.  The Democratic Party, which has embraced the ideology of cultural Marxism, considers them all inherently evil “oppressors” fit only to kiss the feet of blacks, immigrants, gays, feminists, etc., PC’s sainted “victims” groups.
Again, should a Warren win in 2020, President Trump’s supporters will not consider her (or him) a legitimate President.  But if the unholy alliance between Democrats and the Deep State succeeds in driving President Trump from office through impeachment or some other means, that will be a very different story.  At that point, the message to President Trump’s supporters will be, “Your votes don’t matter, because even if you elect a President, we will drive him from office and reduce you to a silent serfdom.  You and your views are entitled to no representation. You are and will remain ‘unpersons.’”
At that point, in the vast electoral sea that is red America, the legitimacy of the system itself, i.e., the state, will be brought into serious question.  And when that happens, the chance of Fourth Generation war here on a large scale will rise dramatically. When you tell people they cannot achieve representation through ballots, they start to think about doing it with bullets.
That electoral map, the one that shows the results of the 2016 election by county, has significant military meaning.  The blue votes are concentrated in cities, which cannot feed themselves. As Chairman Mao said, “Take the countryside and the cities will fall.”  Nor can they be supplied from the sea, because most of the people in the military are Trump supporters, which means the red side will get most of the ships and planes.  The military problem is really quite simple, and need involve virtually no shooting or destruction. You just put the cities under siege and wait for the starving people to come out.  It won’t take long.
The message to Washington is clear and direct: if President Trump is driven from office by anything other than a loss in the 2020 election (if he runs), the legitimacy of the state will be brought into question.  That is a dangerous business that politicians of both parties would be wise to avoid. After all, they will be the first people hanged from the nearest lamppost if widespread 4GW comes here. An impeachment that leads to the checkpoints going up all over rural America is a very bad idea.
* William S. (”Bill”) Lind is the author of the Maneuver War Handbook (1985) and the 4thGeneration Warfare Handbook (2011) as several other volumes that deal with war. This article was originally published on traditionalRight on 4.11.2019.

http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/guest-article-the-view-from-olympus-a-4gw-impeachment/