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.
