Note: A prologue from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)
There Was This One Time…
We crushed ourselves lower in the grass of the open field as the searchlight passed over us again. Desperation filled our hearts; we were consumed with the desire to escape, to be free, but a terror stalked us in the night. We feared capture; we feared the horrendous fate that awaited us if the enemy took us captive.
My buddy Dave tapped my shoulder. “Now!” he hissed. “Move out! Watch the cover!” We low-crawled frantically, dragging our prone forms through the grass, faces pressed into the ground, legs and arms pistoning. In the pitch-dark night, the tree line seemed a thousand miles away.
The light swept over the field again; in the distance we could hear the muttering of the idling truck engine. Our pursuers were not far behind; we had to pick up the pace, or face capture!
“Dave!” I rasped, a hoarse stage whisper. “Next time the light passes, run for it!” Dave considered the distance to the barely visible trees ahead. “OK, be ready to hit the dirt when the light comes back,” he whispered in reply. We gathered our strength, leg muscles bunching, deep breaths to fuel the muscles; the light passed overhead; we leaped to our feet, sprinting, feet pounding, fleeing into the night until we thought our very hearts would leap from our chests.
The searchlight! We slammed into the rock-hard ground, gasping for every fiery breath. The light played over our heads for a moment as we tried out best to become part of the landscape. Finally, the light moved on; I slapped Dave on the back. “Move!” I hissed, and we moved. We ran as though our lives depended on it, as well it might; we ran as though the very hounds of Hell snapped at our heels. Our heels flew in the night. The trees were just ahead. In my peripheral vision I noticed the searchlight sweeping back our way. I looked ahead at the trees; a quick mental calculation; “RUN!” I urged Dave, and we dove for the cover of a giant oak just as the light fell into the moment of space we’d occupied a nanosecond before.
We lay in the leaf litter beneath the great tree, gasping for breath; our hearts were pounding hard enough to leave traces on seismographs miles away. The light continued to play across the field behind us, and the faint shouts of our pursuers revealed their frustration.
It was just beyond these actual by-gosh trees.
“Man,” Dave gasped, “Next time we sneak into Camp Olhagiwon, we aren’t leaving across this open field!” I wheezed my agreement. Our escape had been a near thing indeed.
The Objective.
Camp Olhagiwon a private summer camp for girls ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen and was the pride of area. The Camp covered hundreds of acres, including walking trails, craft areas, and cabins. The cabins were divided into two groups; a cluster of small cabins near the main road, for the younger girls; and a group of cabins raised on platforms in the trees, up the hill from the main compound, for the use of girls aged seventeen and eighteen.
Camp Olhagiwon also bordered my parent’s land on the north. Such was a recipe for trouble.
Sneaking into Camp Olhagiwon became something of a repeated challenge for my friends and me. The presence of a large group of seventeen and eighteen-year-old girls, just a ridgeline or two away, guaranteed our enthusiasm. Only one thing stood in our way, Camp Olhagiwon’s full-time caretaker, Orlie Simyan.
The Antagonist.
Not really Orlie, but much the same.
Orlie was a giant of a man, six foot four inches and three hundred and twenty pounds, not an ounce of it fat. He had shoulders like a Black Angus bull, bristly red hair covering almost all his body (all that was generally visible, at any rate) and arms that hung down well past his knees. His arms were thicker than most men’s legs, his hands like huge, hairy grapples. Rumor had it that Orlie regularly assisted local farmers in changing tractor tires by simply hoisting the relevant end of the tractor off the ground with his bare hands. Despite his mass, Orlie was fast; I often wondered how well he’d stack up against an Olympic sprinter. Of course, he’d likely have been disqualified for his habit of bounding on all fours, using his long arms and calloused knuckles to boost his speed.
In short, Camp Olhagiwon had chosen the perfect man to guard their enclave.
Still, we thought ourselves up to the task. Dave and I weren’t put off by our recent close call; we knew that our goal was achievable. We just needed a plan. And not just any plan, a Plan. A cunning, daring, masterful Plan, that would give the feared Orlie Simyan the slip and land us in the company of large numbers of young women, with no other young males around to distract them from our wit and charm. No, all we needed was a plan, and we couldn’t fail.
My parent’s Upper Meadow was on the north border of their land, bordering the camp. One muggy July evening, Dave and I pitched a tent there to serve as a base of operations for a quiet scout and planning session.
The Plan
“What we need,” Dave opined while slowly incinerating a beef hot dog over our tiny fire, “is some kind of diversion, you know? Something noisy that will have Orlie off on the wrong end of things while we sneak right into the huts. Once we get through the meadow and inside, we only have to duck the camp counselors. Piece of cake. We can come up with something.”
“Yeah, but what?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Dave replied, plopping back I the grass and examining his smoking hot dog carefully. “But I tell you what, my girlfriend is stuck in there for two weeks, and I’m not going two weeks with no Stacy.” Dave frequently went two weeks with no Stacy after one of their Herculean arguments, but I figured that was beside the point; Stacy no doubt had friends in there, and with the odds of me in the midst of twenty or so teenage girls was too good to argue with.
“You know, we still have all those fireworks from our trip to Missouri last spring,” I offered. “You suppose we could work up something with those?”
“Not a bad idea,” Dave perked up suddenly. “My Dad still has a big roll of dynamite fuse from last time he blew stumps. I wonder…”
The planning session lasted most of the night and included a pre-dawn scout around the periphery of the big meadow just south of the objective. The meadow we had to cross, in the open, to reach our goal. Orlie’s truck crossed the meadow once, just as the eastern sky was growing bright; his searchlight played out across the field once, twice, before his pickup disappeared into the trees. Dave and I grinned at each other.
“You know,” Dave gloated, his eyes bright in the pre-dawn gloom, “this just might work.”
“Won’t be from lack of fireworks, eh?” I chuckled.
We chose the night of the new moon for our assault.
The Execution
The woods were pitch black; you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face. But Dave and I knew these woods well, and we already knew what our hands looked like anyway.
We crossed the border into enemy territory at 11PM precisely, when our reconnaissance patrols had established that Orlie would be down at his house, watching the Late Show. We had thirty minutes before his next patrol. Thirty minutes in which to deploy our equipment and cross a half-mile of open meadow. Fortunately, Dave was a master at scrambling into trees; even in the coal-black night, he ascended with dizzying speed into shagbark hickories, walnuts and oaks; at least ten trees were loaded and ready. This, though, took a good twenty-two minutes.
Dave dropped from the last tree, panting. “What’s the time?”
I had a cheap watch that lit faintly when a stud was pressed. “We’ve got eight minutes.”
Dave took care of one last detail, quickly. Then: “Run!” We sprinted for the meadow.
Running in pitch-blackness isn’t much fun, but we had our bearings. Feet flying, hearts pounding, we ran through the knee-high grass and charged into the treeline just as pickup headlights appeared on the road that passed through the clearing. We crashed to the ground, gasping. The first perimeter was breached.
The headlights of Orlie’s pickup played gently along the tall grass as the pickup cruised, slowly, across the meadow. A searchlight beam played along the far treeline, but away from us; we were already inside the first belt. Remaining inside was now our primary concern. Suddenly, in the faint, first probing beam of the headlights, a sight that made my blood run cold; the tall grasses along the edge of the road parted, broken down ever so slightly, where Dave and I had darted across the meadow.
It wouldn’t have been obvious to most people, but Orlie was an experienced tracker, as were Dave and I; the breach stood out like a drunk at a parson’s convention. As though from a great distance I heard Dave’s sotto voce exclamation, “Oh, crap!”
“How long is that first fuse?” I growled as I tried to work my way a few inches further into the dirt.
“Should be any time now,” Dave hissed back in reply. “Oh, man, he’s gonna see that any minute…”
Somewhere, in the trees on the far side of the great meadow, there was a faint pop. Orlie’s truck slammed to an immediate halt. The driver’s side door popped open, and Orlie’s massive, primate form unfolded from the truck’s interior. Propping his impossibly long arms on the truck’s hood, he played his searchlight on the opposing treeline.
We held our breath. Then, from farther off into the trees came another faint pop.
Orlie stood up straight – not an easy task for one with his physique – and squinted at the trees.
“Right about now…” Dave whispered.
Pop.
Shaking his head, Orlie ducked back into his pickup and, with a crunch of gears, set off across the meadow. I saw Dave’s teeth flash in the faint starlight. “Ok, let’s go!”
Stacy and a friend were waiting, alerted by some mysterious intuition, at the edge of the collection of huts. Far off, across the now-still meadow, I heard another distant pop; the string of firecrackers we had strung on dynamite fuse in the trees was timed to keep popping, seemingly at random, for an hour or more. Calculated to drive Orlie to distraction, our cunning scheme only missed in one slight detail. That detail, of course, was Orlie’s own uncanny intuition, gained in his years of being guardian of a camp full of teenage girls on a forested hill frequented by teenaged boys in the throes of testosterone overload.
In other words, Orlie knew all the tricks.
I was kind of hoping for something like this to happen.
As it happened, Stacy had brought along an extremely pretty young friend from the camp. Judy was a little, wasp-waisted blonde girl, the archetypical farmer’s daughter, and she seemed to respond to my wit and charm; things were going remarkably well. I’d found a seat on a downed log, and Judy had settled beside me; with every witticism, she leaned a little closer. Dave and Stacy were nowhere to be seen. The mundane matters of the world seemed farther and farther away by the moment.
Somewhere, far off in the woods, there was another faint pop.
“What was that?” Judy asked, perking up in a devastatingly attractive manner.
“Oh, that was just Dave’s mind shifting gears without a clutch.” I grinned. Judy giggled, scootching closer to lean on my arm. Even in the pitch-dark, I couldn’t help but notice the devastating shortness of Judy’s cut-off jeans; some inner instinct focused my attention in that area. I gave her my piece de resistance, the joke about the three dairy farmers and the pregnant heifer. Young Judy collapsed against my arm, giggling uncontrollably; when she caught her breath at last, I found her face turned up towards mine. Oh, man, I thought, it’s finally gonna happen!
Then, it happened. Not, however, what I was anticipating.
And Then This Happened.
First, there was a wild, animal screech. Judy and I both leaped at least six feet straight up; I landed with my lips still in an expectant pucker. The last I saw of Judy was a pair of long, pale legs flashing in the darkness, running at top speed for her cabin and safety. Dave’s head poked up from a patch of ferns a few yards away; odd that I could see him, it had been pitch-dark a moment before. “What the hell?” Dave wondered aloud. A faint glow seemed to fill the very air, growing slowly brighter, brighter… I looked at Dave, he looked back at me. Past Dave, I saw the back end of Stacy’s jeans, bobbing up and down as she crawled for cover with sure instincts, better in fact than ours.
The glow suddenly resolved into a flashlight beam. Behind it was the bounding form of Orlie Simyan, howling his rage at our trickery. The distracting image of Judy’s offered lips finally faded from my mind, and I screamed, “Dave! RUN!”
We were in a tight spot indeed. If an enraged male orangutan has never charged you, it will probably be difficult to imagine exactly what we faced that night. An irrelevant thought flashed in my mind, something to do with distracting Orlie by tossing him a banana; I fought back the notion and concentrated on fleeing for my life. With speed borne of terror, Dave and I leaped for the cover of the nearest blackberry thicket.
Blackberry thickets aren’t bad places to hide, but they are bad places to set up residence for any length of time. Blackberry bushes have whip like, resilient stems coated liberally with thorns. Orlie was sniffing around the perimeter of the thicket; he’d noted the direction of our plunge. His apelike form appeared, here and there, silhouetted against the stars. In the far treeline, a faint pop sounded; he ignored it.
A faint rustling told me Dave had crawled close enough for a strategy session. “What are we gonna do now?” he wanted to know. “I don’t know!” I whispered back. “Doesn’t look like he’s coming in here after us.”
Just then, Orlie decided to come in after us.
“Oh, crap!”
I grabbed one end of a blackberry bramble, and yanked; the stringy bramble came out at the roots. “Grab one end of this!” I hissed at Dave. For once, he caught on quick.
Orlie must have caught a bit of our whispered conversation. He confidently crashed right towards our hiding place. One hand clutching an end of the blackberry bramble, Dave rolled half a turn one way, myself a half turn the other; as we’d hoped, Orlie’s boot caught the tightened bramble. He crashed to earth with a howl of outrage, even as Dave and I leaped to our feet.
We’d underestimated the length of Orlie’s orangutan-like arms. One hairy hand shot out even as Orlie thrashed around in the bushes, grabbing Dave’s ankle. Dave crashed back down with a yelp.
I slammed down a sneakered foot with all my weight on the wrist belonging to the hand that clutched Dave’s ankle. Orlie let out a roar that would have made a silverback gorilla cower in fear, but he let go. Dave rolled away and bounced to his feet. I jumped over Orlie, somehow dodging his flailing, hairy grasp in midair, and followed Dave’s dimly seen form in the rush for better cover.
Somehow, in the brief time it took for our simian pursuer to extricate himself from the blackberry bushes, we made it safely to a nearby clump of sumacs. We froze, listening; somewhere, nearby, we knew that Orlie would be doing likewise. The race would not now go to the swift, but to the stealthy; we knew we couldn’t outrun Orlie in straight flight. We’d have to sneak out.
“We’ll stick to the treeline,” Dave offered, “And work our way south. Once we get in the big oaks over by the border, we’ll cut straight in for the fence line; he won’t chase us into your folk’s place.”
In the far treeline, another faint pop drifted our way.
“I might have a better idea, you know…”
In the pitch blackness, I could somehow sense Dave’s face screwing up in confusion. “Listen,” I told him. “What do you hear over in the clearing?”
Dave’s grin gleamed faintly in the darkness. “Why, I hear Orlie’s pickup idling!”
“Yep. Think we can get over there?”
“Yeah. Follow me; stay in the tall grass.”
The Escape
Not really Orlie’s truck, but much the same.
As we figured, Orlie expected us to go the other way. Ten minutes of crawling and listening got us to the old pickup where it sat, idling, at the side of the drive through the meadow.
“Driver’s side door is open,” Dave whispered to me, as we lay hidden in the grass under the tailgate. “Let’s crawl around to that side, you hop in and dive over, I’ll jump in after you and drive us outta here.”
“Deal,” I agreed, and we sprang into action. I leaped for the open door, throwing my body across the seat; behind me, I heard a grunt of exertion and felt the thump of Dave’s posterior hitting the seat. A grind of gears, and the old truck sprang into movement. Dave slammed a foot down on the gas, power-shifted into second, and sent a rooster-tail of dirt and grass flying skywards behind us as we shot south for safety, straight across the meadow.
“Hit the lights!” I sang out, elated at our audacious escape; Dave yanked the switch and bathed the grasses in yellow light. A movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention to our rear, where I beheld a sight that made my blood run cold as ice. Orlie Simyan was bounding full tilt after his rapidly departing pickup, using his long arms to good effect. Like the great ape he so resembled, Orlie bounded on all fours, each bound eating up ground by the yard. He was gaining on us!
“Hit the gas, Dave!”
“What? What’s up?” Dave yelled back, squinting through the windshield at the grass ahead.
One hairy, long-fingered hand shot forward, and grabbed the tailgate. Orlie’s low-browed face, twisted with rage, popped up over the edge. Dave risked a glance in the rear-view. A squeak of terror popped out; Dave stomped on the clutch, slammed the old truck into third gear, and stomped once more on the gas.
The pickup bounced, slamming in and out of ancient ruts in the meadow. My foot hit something on the floor; in desperation, I grabbed at it. An old red hooded sweatshirt. Of course! Nights got chilly out here, even in summer. I glanced back; Orlie had both hands on the tailgate now and was pulling his upper body over.
“Hold her straight!” I shouted at Dave. I climbed halfway out the right-side window, and with an uncanny aim borne of desperation I cast the ragged sweatshirt right over Orlie’s face. Finding his vision suddenly blocked, he reflexively clutched at the jacket covering his face, and fell to the ground in a tangle of long arms, short legs and red hair; Dave tried his best to grind the accelerator pedal through the floorboards, and before Orlie could recover and continue his pursuit, we’d reached the safe, southern edge of the great meadow.
We abandoned the pickup, motor still running, and fled headlong into the trees. A moment’s flight took us to the fence line and safety.
Our tiny tent stood as before on the high ground in the Upper Meadow, and we headed that direction. Orlie wouldn’t pursue us off Camp property; we were safe here, only a hundred yards from the property line.
“Well,” Dave puffed, “I guess that was enough Stacy to last me another week.” In the dark I could almost see his satisfied grin; worse, burned into my mind was the image of Judy’s long legs under the cut-off blue jeans. I fought back the urge to give Dave a damn good punch in the nose out of frustration. “That’s it for me,” my tone as sure as the words in my pronouncement. “I’m never, ever sneaking in another place like that, not ever again.” I reached out, poking one finger into Dave’s chest hard enough to leave a bruise. “Never! Got that?”
Dave could only nod his wide-eyed agreement. My resolve was obviously unshakable.
And Then…
“So, you think we can get in along this creek bottom?” Dave asked me, one dark moonless night a month later.
“Yeah, if we want to sneak into this keg party without paying at the gate, I guess that’s the best way to do it.” I agreed.
With practiced skill, we low-crawled into the woods.
I screamed, “Dave! RUN!”
Poor opsec. Never use a real name.
Another great story, Animal. You have a gift.
Code names aren’t just to make you sound cool.
Easy for you to say you’re not ‘Mr Pink’
lol
True; in our defense, we were seventeen.
And scared shitless.
Also yes.
Fun story.
Great story.
I was kind of hoping for something like this to happen.
It was a glorious time, wasn’t it?
Great story, Animal!
I laughed as I was running with you guys but I couldn’t keep up. ‘Course I had a spear in my hand that I was afraid of losing and a 1/2 dozen suckers in a wet gunny sack on my back.
Really enjoyed the story and lived the spotlight part but it was the game warden looking for the activity. Thanks Animal, a great way to to start the week.
Great stuff, Animal!
The amount of stupid shit that passed as “good, clean fun” back in the day is amazing.
I feel bad for kids today; I really do. We did insane stuff; stuff that would ruin a kid’s life today… and we did it with shocking frequency.
We also were smart enough to know not to record ourselves acting like morons… ‘cuz EVIDENCE.
…and we did it with
shockingwonderful frequency.You were close 😉
I totally agree. Part of growing up back then was doing stupid shit and facing the consequences of your choices. Sometimes good, sometimes bad – always interesting.
It’s the ruining lives that I can’t abide. Fucking kangaroo courts hurting dudes who did nothing more than Animal’s buddy Dave did. Something, something lamp posts.
So much this.
OTH, my son is a good kid by his own choice. We’ve never really had to take out the stick and he’s only been mildly rewarded with praise for doing the right thing. I feel really blessed in this regard.
Must be from his mother, however.
I had girls and consider myself fairly lucky in that regard, though I don’t delude myself because I know they can be at least as bad as boys in their own way. Nevertheless, no matter what we caught them doing, it was always pretty easy for me to recall my own hijinx at their age, whatever it was at the time, and think: “Meh, this isn’t that bad. No need to go four-alarm chili over this.”
I’ve had to point that out to my sister a couple of times when she’s been complaining about her kids. It’s very entertaining to me… of course I’ve also had to explain to the eldest child (mid-20’s) why her mom and dad came down on her so hard at times.
But that’s exactly it. You need to teach the little assholes how to do ‘bad’ things safely. ANd not be afraid to make harsh course corrections.
To this point my kids have been perfect angels compare to me. I have never shied away from my past, but I also lay out the consequences and the things I never considered at the time.
Kids aren’t universally stupid, particularly if you respect them enough to tell the truth.
To this point my kids have been perfect angels compare to me.
Well, as far as you know.
As far as I want to know.
If they’re good enough to hide it, that’s good enough.
Yep, if you’re going to misbehave, learn how to cover your tracks.
My daughter would call me, all distraught about her daughter(s)(any of the 3, all were teenagers at the same time). I would listen patiently, remembering what she (my daughter) had done that was far more serious and could have resulted in permanent problems. Explain that it wasn’t serious, only temporary and tomorrow would bring a new crisis with one of the girls. The kids grew up and are like most normal adults these days.
My daughter’s serious mistakes were made later, when she got married…
I finally did the math on the story where that california winery lost 90,000 gallons of wine into the Russian River.
The river annually drains 1.6 million acre-feet of water from a large catchment area.
That is 434,128,000,000 gallons a year, or 1,189,391,781 gallons a day. 1.2 billion gallons a day of water into which 90,000 gallons of mostly water spilled.
Unless the winery was at the very tip of the river, ratio is not going to be all that much different where the spill happened.
Were any of the fish drunk?
Tom Elliott
@tomselliott
Biden: “Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ — a great line, well, guess what: The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you.”
Channeling Swallowswell. It’s an interesting strategy, Cotton. Let’s see how it plays out.
It’s like these people didn’t pay any attention to The Troubles. I mean, the Brits had nuclear weapons and fighter jets, how could they not just win against these guys with small arms and homemade bombs?
And if small arms are not a problem, why does Joe want to ban them?
I just figure he wants disputes resolved with pool chains.
That fucking left a mark, yo…
Remember Biden’s role in the Obama presidency and his schtick as an elder statesman. This is a guy who believes that armed conflict is an end unto itself where the goal is just to kill more people than the other guy. He doesn’t understand, or is being deliberately obtuse about, the fact that armed conflict is a method by which one side accomplishes a political goal. That’s why guerilla warfare or armed civilian resistance works. Of course you could just annihilate a section of land, kill anything that moves, and raze the place until there isn’t so much as a pair of bricks stacked together. But that’s the equivalent of opening a safe by throwing it into a volcano. The point is to get the stuff, the space, the people, or some combination of the three; that doesn’t happen if you don’t limit the amount and kind of force you use. And that’s setting aside the opinion of the international community, which, fuzzy internationalism aside, really does become an issue when your rivals start thinking you’re a dangerous, evil lunatic with a propensity to destroy things at a whim.
“Of course you could just annihilate a section of land, kill anything that moves, and raze the place until there isn’t so much as a pair of bricks stacked together. ”
Didn’t the US try that in Viet Nam?
“Oh, this is different. That was the jungle, this is the desert where we can see the bad guys”
No, they didn’t. Vietnam is what happens when you let leftist intellectuals direct the war from DC.
I’ll admit ignorance, but the little i do know, doesn’t convince me that the war wasn’t mismanaged by ground commanders themselves, from Battalion to the Pentagon.
The US government chose to fight the war the Communists could win, rather than the war the US could win. The US Army of the Cold War was not a counter insurgency tool. It lacked the training, the doctrine, and the temperament for it. It was designed to fight large scale ground wars.
That was a political decision, not a military one.
^^^THIS^^^
Politicians fraught the war in a away that victory simply was not an option. Kind of the same shit we are doing in Afghanistan. Unless we are willing to real break everything and kill everyone to break the enemy’s will to fight, we should stay the fuck away from fighting wars. Sending good people to die in meaningless waste of time police actions is bullshit.
“Kind of the same shit we are doing in Afghanistan”
I’d say the logistics realities of Afghanistan make that a doomed war, period.
There’s, broadly speaking, enough of a logistical pipeline to support a counterinsurgency force OR to control the Pakistani border, but not both. So you can either let the Taliban control the country and seal off the border or you can control the country and let them flow in from the safe havens in Pakistan, and either way it’s impossible to win.
The US had the capability to mass enough supplies in South Vietnam to roll all the way up to the Chinese border, conquering the political center of the Communists, and ending the war. They chose not to, for political reasons. The North Vietnamese had no such issue with that when they conquered the South. They massed the supplies, fought a conventional campaign, and won because the South ran out of beans, bullets, and bandages.
Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.
I’ve been dying to write an article about this in light of my experiences in Afghanistan; that place taught me so much about my own country’s follies. Specifically, the notion that because you have “hellfire missiles” that somehow renders small arms useless (and, as an aside, SMFH that he thinks F15s are carrying those things or that they matter in the conflict he’s getting a boner for; it’s a fucking anti-tank missile, moron. I’ve fired them. They were our principle weapon against armor.)
At any rate, what Swalwell and Creepy Joe don’t seem to understand (a giant list, I know) is how armed resistance works. Yes, the military has nukes and F15s and tanks, and yes, they could even use them on the populace. But it isn’t about using small arms against tanks – it’s about where those people who drive the tanks are going to sleep at night. Where will their families live?
For all of time, conquering armies have had to learn that the requirement for sleep is The Great Equalizer. That’s why we have FOBs in Afghanistan – with walls. And some people have to stand guard while others sleep. That’s where small arms can make a difference.
This is to say nothing of the families of the F15 pilots, or tank drivers, or whoever else Hair Sniffer think is going to shoot their neighbors. These people are just so mind-bogglingly fucking stupid and no one calls them on it, at least not for the right reasons. I hate all the faux outrage over it, without anyone taking the time to understand why General Gage told the British Parliament he was in deep shit early on, why Hitler didn’t invade Switzerland, and why the Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam succeeded while the “body count” and firebase mentality didn’t. It was because of the same reasons I outlined above. An occupying Army that has to pacify a populace has to either learn how not to sleep, or has to live behind walls and try to break the populace’s will from behind those walls.
Easy solution: only allow Democrats to become helicopter/drone plots.
Are drone plots shitty to look at?
This nonsense also ignores the fact that the 2nd Amendment is at least in part about preventing us from getting to the stage where the Feds are launching airstrikes against the rebel forces. If you shoot them when they start conducting house to house confiscations maybe you don’t have to live in caves and snipe at pilots.
People forget that the Revolutionary War started when Americans “objected” to a gun confiscation raid by the Brits.
It also glosses over the question: if the FedGov nukes Phoenix (or wherever), what exactly have they won? What would be left of the country the preceded it?
If we get to the point that the government is nuking its own citizens, the country has been dead for a long, long time. It also wouldn’t curtail Civil War, it would greatly intensify it.
Nuking Phoenix doesn’t do any good, going out in a flame attack means it’ll just respawn.
if the FedGov nukes Phoenix (or wherever), what exactly have they won?
Dominance. Control.
What would be left of the country the preceded it?
I don’t think the FedGov would care if the country that rebelled was no longer a problem. As long as their dominance and control is unchallenged, I think the FedGov would be just fine with it.
something something burn it all down and rule the rubble something
what exactly have they won?
Also one of the stupid things about the most recent Disney Star Wars fan fiction. Not-the-Emperor has a bunch of planet-killing space ships for what exactly? I though the idea was to rule everything, not destroy it.
Nuking Phoenix doesn’t do any good
But nuking San Francisco might.
Why am I even acting like any of these amoebae have given one moment’s thought to this?
They haven’t thought about it. They have felt about it. And they vote.
It also wouldn’t curtail Civil War, it would greatly intensify it.
But how are they supposed to know that? That would require picking up a history book (such as, I don’t know, one about the actual US Civil War, where the mere call to arms resulted in an additional four states seceding).
Powerful, Giant Area weapons are only good against… giant areas. I don’t think any of these idiots are seriously proposing nuking or fire-bombing their own constituents in order to get at the “bad apples,” so they seem to think somehow… actually, fuck it, they don’t think. Why am I even acting like any of these amoebae have given one moment’s thought to this?
They haven’t: this is how retards console themselves that they’re right about gun confiscation and disarming the populace. Period.
“this is how retards console themselves that they’re right about gun confiscation and disarming the populace”
Yep. Might as well just Godwin the thread: they resolve their cognitive dissonance by dehumanizing their opponents. Any deplorable clinging to guns is a cockroach that needs to be exterminated. How do you exterminate cockroaches? With extreme prejudice. The cleansing fire of retribution will burn away the impurities and leave only the righteous behind.
I don’t think any of these idiots are seriously proposing nuking or fire-bombing their own constituents in order to get at the “bad apples,”
Well, not today, because there’s no need.
But if it came to it, do you think they would hesitate for a second? I don’t. Well, probably not nukes, but fire/area bombing? Artillery? Of course they would. There isn’t a government on the planet that wouldn’t, definitely including ours. Hell, several of them are doing it right now, and we’ve done it before.
+a whole bunch of Assad mustard bombs
If you say that you’re “just a lying dog faced pony solider”…
(Creepy Joe is seriously mentally incapacitated. If he actually gets the nomination I’ve no idea how the MSM will be able to run cover for him 24/7.)
Easy. Didn’t you see how they covered for Hillary’s issues? Plus this time they can claim anything contradicting the narrative is a Russian Deepfake from 4Chan.
here’s an example of big area weapons…
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/09/us/largest-firework-steamboat-springs-world-record-trnd/
I always crack up when I hear people say that no citizen resistance movement would ever succeed in America due to the strength of the military.
First off, a huge part of the military would defect if they were ordered to attack their own people. Sure, many would stay behind, but it would be a huge loss. The ones who defected would probably be glad to bring some non-civilian weaponry with them.
Second, just think about the hard time that the US military had in Iraq and Vietnam. Ragtag underground militias with improvised explosives and small arms can really give them hell. That would be ten times worse if the people have whizbang rifles that they practice with every single weekend just for fun.
Akira, in Afghanistan and Iraq, at least, the US military operated under extraordinarily stringent ROEs.
In the even of an actual armed rebellion in this country, I am quite confident it would be much more along the lines of “Better safe than sorry. Let God sort them out.” etc.
I mean, its one thing for foreigners to give a foreign government a hard time. But giving the US government a hard time?
Kill. Them. All.
It would be interesting to see the wargame simulations that have been run on this. Civil unrest due to gun confiscation, FedGov 10x’s it and starts firebombing US cities, country collapses.
What next? My guess is China takes some kind of opportunistic action.
By that point, china will have already collapsed into warlordism and be in no position to act.
“The ones who defected would probably be glad to bring some non-civilian weaponry with them.”
The most dangerous thing they could bring is passwords, keycards, and guard rotas.
Look at what “the city of brotherly love” did to their own citizens.
How much fallout from that? $1.5 million to the sole survivor, who had spent 7 years in prison,
And some asshat “apologized.”
worse if the people have whizbang rifles that they practice with every single weekend just for fun.
That idot Va rep Mark Levine doesn’t understand that an average deer rifle is far more powerful than an AR-15 in .223/5.56. Larger calibers with manual actions is a way bigger punch.
we’ve done it before.
1861-1865.
Okay, Ive only lived in Charleston 3 months, but I think it is getting to me.
Umm…its a bit over 4 months, but you get the idea.
“I am quite confident it would be much more along the lines of “Better safe than sorry. Let God sort them out.” etc. ”
Depends. The Civil War lasted as long as it did in part because Lincoln didn’t want to go to that extreme. I really can’t guess what candidates in the last 20 years would go to that extreme, but Cheney, Bernie Sanders, and Liawatha seem the most likely to me for reasons I can’t put into words.
“The Civil War lasted as long as it did in part because Lincoln didn’t want to go to that extreme”
It wasn’t a lack of will, it was a lack of ability. Lincoln had no issue whatsoever burning crops at harvest time, or burning cities to the ground.
If Lincoln had access to a wing of B-52s he’d have used the absolute shit out of them.
People forget that the Civil War had its opponents in the North, as well.
The ones who defected would probably be glad to bring some non-civilian weaponry with them.
Also, if there was widespread unrest/revolt in the US, you can be guaranteed that some people (probably unsavory characters with suspected ties to foreign nations) would be more than willing to sell high end military equipment to the rebels.
opponents in the North
Hence the suspension of habeas corpus, closing of opposition newspapers, voter intimidation, conscription, jailing justices, arresting the legislature of Maryland, etc.
in part because Lincoln didn’t want to go to that extreme
The people of the Shenandoah valley and Georgia would like to have a word with you.
I’m not doubting the extremes, I’m doubting the will to do it quickly. It took Lincoln over 3 years to go to that extreme. You can argue that Lincoln wanted to be that extreme early on and got resistance from within, but it’s still on him that he waited.
“Powerful, Giant Area weapons are only good against… giant areas. I don’t think any of these idiots are seriously proposing nuking or fire-bombing their own constituents in order to get at the “bad apples,”
That’s where we disagree Ozy. I firmly believe these fuckers really think using WMDs on people they dislike/hate, no matter what the collateral damage is these carpet bombing tactics cause, is a good move to be made. That’s because their ideology requires a populous in constant fear to allow them to be controlled properly. And in case you have not realized this yet with their mask coming off and all, they absolutely and really hate people that don’t want to just kow-tow to them. They are the “experts” and we serfs should know our place.
Great comment but I totally got sidetracked by the idea of…
HairHerr SnifferBeautiful
Martin van Creveld looms large.
Wow, Combined Action Platoon…..I haven’t heard that term in a long time. My f-i-l was in a CAP in 1968.
He’s got a point, though; time to repeal the NFA.
Since the whole point of the 2A was to make sure the citizens could match the violence of the government.
Imagine if Trump said something like this.
FACT CHECK: Did Trump threaten to attack patriotic Americans with jets and guided missiles? Rating: MOSTLY TRUE
I didn’t think F-15’s (even the Strike Eagle variant) ever carried Hellfires.
Plus they aren’t really a loiter craft. Guess he’s been talking to the Air Force too much and wants to forget the A-10 / Apaches / whatnot…
The Hellfire is a subsonic AT missile that they put on slow craft like Apache, drones, and A-10’s.
My old aircraft was specifically re-tooled to carry TOW and Hellfire against the Russian tank columns coming through the Fulda Gap. They are an awesome weapon, for sure, but entirely anti-tank weapons. He is a moh-ron.
I would Not want to be on the receiving end of an A-10,
/Vaporised….
Ah, just put a GAU-8 on the roof of your KIA, and fire first.
Be prepared to move backwards.
That’ll fit on an AA mount, right?
I think one of the Sergeant York prototypes used the GAU-8. Of course that was on an M-48 chassis, which was probably overloaded – the “production” model was, and it only had 40/70s.
I like it…….
Channeling Swallowswell.
Query: Is the “Doing a Swallowswell” (a) threatening to attack Americans with unrestricted military force or (b) ripping one on live TV?
Both.
Simultaneously.
That guy knows how to make noxious commentary?
Slow Joe also dropped this gem:
I’m good, though. None of my guns take clips. 15 round mags for the .45, and 20 round mags for the M1A, but I’m all magazines, no clips.
I’ve never seen a weapon that will take twenty clips at a time.
it would add a lot of weight.
The “sensible” policy is to follow the letter of the state and federal constitutions. But you are actively advocating against that.
Biden: “Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ — a great line, well, guess what: The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you.”
______________________
Hey Joe, the AK isn’t for shooting down a jet fighter moving at 600 knots at 20,000 feet. It’s for smaller, slower targets that walk around on their own two feet. Oh and Joe, the line is “blood of patriots and tyrants”. “And tyrants” is the bit you might want to cogitate on, early in the morning before your brain gets all tired.
Snark aside, I remember when the leftist talking point was “You’re crazy, no one would ever do that, this is America.” and now it’s “You can’t stop the government, resistance is futile.” That’s more than a little scary.
Oh and Joe, the line is “blood of patriots and tyrants”.
Thank you for that.
It really is one of Jeffersons best lines. The Civil War was bloodier than all our other wars combined. If what some are calling “the boogaloo” really does kick off, it will be just as bad as it was then, if not worse.
I mean take Joe’s insane formulation. Let’s say Captain Smith really does roll in his F15 and fire missiles all over some Racist Nazi Terrorist Compound. Then a grief stricken survivor who works for a pizza place rolls into the base, drives to dependent quarters, and kills the wives and children of every F15 pilot he can find. Now the F15 pilots are perfectly willing to keep rolling in hot on whatever Racist Nazi Terrorist Compound the folks over in the -2 shop can find GPS coordinates for.
War is hell, and civil war is a dozen different levels of hell.
and by “Racist Nazi Terrorist Compound.” we mean the Boy Scout camp in June.
Word. If you are going to use a quote about liberty to threaten people you could at least get it right.
Proper response: So why are we still in Afghanistan?
Even the Soviets figured out the had to leave in only 7 years.
They really didn’t figure it out: they just couldn’t afford to be stupid enough to waste more money & lives and keep up their evil empire, so they were forced to leave. Maybe that’s what it will take before we decide it is time to get the fook out.
Mammary Monday: coming late but worth the wait.
http://archive.li/wQhbZ
This is a great selection.
I’ll pass on 28 and 38. Otherwise the rest are welcome in my bed. 8, 19, 21, and 27 can linger.
Shoulda gone with a woodchipper.
Eagerly awaiting the howls of outrage from the Usual Suspects denouncing the use of violent imagery in politics.
Either they’re historically illiterate, mendacious, or both.
The fun part (to me) is that the French Revolution started out as a revolt against a hereditary elite – the exact same thing that the current political establishment and “elites” is trying to build for itself.
Don’t anybody tell her the Nazis built guillotines and put them to enthusiastic use.
*puts down the whetstone*
*ponders if these people know how Robespierre died*
I’m not sure these people know who Robespierre was.
It will be different this time!
Oh god, I clicked on the Tweet and waded into the derp end…
Nobody but you associates that with wealth inequality. Pretty much everyone thinks of “revolutionary movement that went kill-crazy on everyone including their own members”.
You could put a swastika on a t-shirt and make the same exact argument since Hitler and the Nazis also talked about an allegedly unfair distribution of wealth.
Maybe not the French. Fun fact: nearly a hundred years after Robespierre got his just desserts, French commies drove the play ‘Thermidor’ off the stage because they thought it was too critical of him. Then the government banned it from all state theatres. Lobster Thermidor was invented to celebrate the play though, so there’s that.
+1 crosshairs
Let them eat cake?
Someone should create a Trump helicopter ride shirt in response.
Actually, somewhere out there someone probably already has.
BECUZ NOT ENUF PENIS IN VAGINA SEKS?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/09/separate-beds-married-couples-can-help-relationship-experts-say/4657215002/
My grandparents on my mom’s side had separate bedrooms. This looks like another one of those “take something people have done forever and pretend like we just invented it” things.
+1,000,000 hipster innovations
“Like, no one’s ever thought of drinking water from a stream before.”
“Genius!”
/hit post too soon.
* raises PBR *
Yeah, at some point, one of you stops sleeping as well, and you discover that you both sleep better.
It’s as if they’ve never seen a ’50s sitcom.
My wife is the lightest sleeper on earth. On nights when I’m going to be up late doing school work, I just sleep in the guest room. No matter how quietly I try to creep into bed, it will wake her up and she’ll be pissed.
Mrs. Dean goes to bed at least an hour before I do.
No matter how quietly I try to creep into bed, it will wake her up and she’ll be pissed.
Yup. And if I wake up before she does, I stay in bed until her wake-up time, because she can hear me get out of bed all the way across the house.
3 bedrooms, his and hers and the sex dungeon.
It’s not so much of a “bed” as a “restraint platform.”
Finally have a start date for the new job! Only one more week of
being unemployedvacation!W00t! Party at CPRM’s!
the best concept to come out of the Obama era: funemployment!
Excellent!
YAY!
Bigger question: why the fuck didn’t he do this three years ago?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/bigger-than-vindman-trump-scrubs-70-obama-holdovers-from-nsc
If he had purged them earlier, he would have been engaged in a coverup. Now, they took their best shot, and it was found wanting.
Yep, his hands were tied with the Mueller investigation – OBSTRUCTION!
That’s my take, also.
Although I wouldn’t be surprised that the scales didn’t fall from his eyes until Ciaramella, Vindmann, and Bolton stabbed him in the back.
Eagerly awaiting the return of Kelly to the NSC, following either the dismissal of charges due to prosecutorial malfeasance or Trump’s pardon of him.
Probably not allowed to by law. Best he could probably do is leave positions unfilled and transfer to other departments.
He’s a fucking sucker for a man in uniform, and for the civilian national security establishment. I call it the Tom Clancy Effect. The military and the spies are all good honest patriots, because politics stops at the waters edge or something.
Once again, Trump is following Machiavelli’s roadmap to ruling a principality where the nobility seeks to dethrone the prince.
If he had fired them at the outset, he’d have to hire new people to man their posts, and most of the new people would be untrustworthy. They would come up with novel conspiracies against him.
By allowing them to stay, and not moving against them, he gave them a false sense of security and allowed them to continue enacting their conspiracy.
He’s actually played this so well that they have yet to nail him with a crime despite the fact that its inevitable, given the vagueness of the laws that apply to his operations, that he is breaking some picayune law daily.
And notice how he’s really quiet about Barr’s investigation? That’s where his offense is playing out, and I have a feeling that when all is said and done, some of those guys he fired will be indicted. Or at least will be exposed – as Hillary Clinton was – of having committed crimes warranting indictment where they were given a pass – as if they were a Klansman in the jim crow south that had raped a black woman.
Tarran bro. Were here for you. Hard drugs is not the only option for escapism.
Not a Trump fan-boy. Just pointing out the obvious.
Trump isn’t the buffoon that people assume him to be. It’s not luck that he keeps coming out on top.
I happened to read Machiavelli’s the Prince about six months after he assumed the presidency, and suddenly all his seemingly idiotic acts started making sense.
I got a postal survey from Judicial Watch, Which of you reprobates got me on a list?
Their Wikipedia summary is quite flattering coming from the site’s bias.
Who has access to your browsing history AND your address?
Amazon.com ofc.
My Prime account automatically signed me up for the IJ for the Smile thingy, how would they know?
I finally read the article on Uncle Joe’s “lying dog-faced pony soldier” comment. Holy cow. In what universe is talking that way to a young democrat voter, whom you’d like to appeal to as a candidate, OK?! If I were an aspiring Dem campaigner, I’d flee to another candidate.
Looking back, I can think of a few moments that doomed a presidential candidate.
1980s: Gary Hart photographed with a mistress on a yacht.
Michael Dukakis wearing a helmet in a tank.
Howard Dean’s awkward “Yee-AARGH!!” yell.
John Kerry on a windboard (wetsuit and all)
Frankly, I thought Obama’s “You didn’t build that!” Would be one of those moments.
Biden’s “lying dog-faced pony soldier” has got to be right up there.