On removing government.

[Robert_S]

Fucking christ in the ass, why do we even give these gun nuts and their 'armed citizens aren't sheeples' stupidity anything except a good beating around the kidneys until they piss blood?

Because they're armed?

I prefer to point out how much they can be just as much sheeple as anyone else. The vast majority of the old white gun owners around here also support the war on drugs. They rolled over when it came to policing agencies deciding they had the power to confiscate property without due process in the name of the war on drugs. When the Black Panthers took up arms against corrupt and racist police and courts in major cities, where was the support from the NRA? Where was the outcry when the leaders were assassinated? Where do they have a right to expect any support?

They piss and moan about rampant crime but and then piss and moan when some liberal tries to spend a single taxpayer dime providing equality in education and opportunities in the law abiding world. If they wanted to keep guns legal in the US, they could maybe try to have an effective outreach program, especially one that promotes gun safety, to those black neighborhoods where crime is high. Just repeat "You can't count on the lazy-assed racist police to help you here. We keep guns because we don't count on them either and they tend to like white people!"

If so many gun nuts weren't so damn racist, that shit would have happened 20 years ago. But they were and still are. That's why the pansy ass Democrats are such a threat now.

[Seth]

There is absolutely nothing more doomed to failure than civilians thinking they can overthrow the military via armed conflict.

You go right on thinking that way, it makes your chains easier to bear.

Absolutely guaranteed way of being completely slaughtered by a professional army.

Interestingly, it was a "professional army" that was driven from our shores by armed farmers and merchants in a war that began at Lexington. It's rather amusing how often the British Army has been driven from someone's shores by "armed rabble" really.

Now unarmed protest may also be costly and fail but there is at least there is a chance it might cause the army to join you.

It's also remarkable how often the "professional armies" of the world have turned on the tyrants who created them to support the people, of whom the army is comprised. I believe it just happened in Egypt if I'm not mistaken.

If you are shooting at your military they arent going to care about the wrongs and rights of the regime they are just going to kill everyone.

They're going to try perhaps, or perhaps not. It depends on who's in charge and how the members of the military feel about shooting at their neighbors and families. Many times they refuse to do so, like in Egypt.

You only have to look at the recent revolutions in Egypt (army support), Tunisia (army support), Libya (partial army support + NATO airforce) compared to Syria (little army support and a complete slaughter).

That's because in every case you mention, the citizenry was not armed, and is not armed. Things are different when the citizenry can put up a fight, as in Libya, where the military was itself fractured into factions and many soldiers abandoned the government to fight with the citizens, who took their arms from the military.

Your 3 main options in an oppresive regime are

a) adapt and try to survive (most common solution)

The coward's way.

b) emmigrate

The coward's way.

c) stand in front of a tank and hope the driver doesnt run over you

Better to slap a sticky bomb to the tracks and pour gasoline down the hatch an toss a match.

[MrJonno]

The Egyptian revolution was generally non-violent which is why it succeed, if Mubarak had had any sense he would have given the protestors a few AK47's , got a few of his soldiers killed and watched the massacre

Well if I ever find someone offers me a handgun to fight an army oppresive or not I will take it, after them how the safety catch works then shoot the person in the back of the head who gave it to me knowing I might have actually save a lot of peoples lives and removed one moron/terrorist from the gene pool

[Seth]

That's all very well and good Seth, but of what import is a government ban on arms of any sort to a revolutionary? Or is it your contention that such bans are actually effective in preventing the import and distribution of arms on a large scale?

Of course they can be effective, particularly when combined with close border controls. East Germany is a prime example of how disarming the populace leaves them subject to predation by the government.

East Germany is also one of several examples of the populace ridding itself of a government without the use of a militia, or even the threat of one.

I must say, you are quite entertaining when you hop on one of your hobby horses, Seth. There's always a lot of colour and movement when you do. Pity there's nothing else much of the time.

Wrong again. East Germany was freed by the direct military intervention and protection by the United States and NATO forces, which kept the Soviet Union at bay [Snip]

Read again. Slowly: "East Germany is also one of several examples of the populace ridding itself of a government without the use of a militia, or even the threat of one." So: No armed insurrection. No militia.

Nope. Vast amounts of militia and military provided the cover that destroyed the regime from the inside through economic collapse. You'll note that the wall didn't come down until East Germany was utterly bankrupted by the use of arms.

As for US and NATO forces keeping the Soviet Union at bay for all those years, you've got to be joking. The Eastern Block was controlled by the Soviets for decades. It's peoples rid itself of their control country by country through popular and peaceful insurrections. No militias played a role.

No, they rid themselves of the Soviets because the US and NATO blocked their expansionist plans and kept them in check while driving them to utter economic ruin through the arms race. Only after the economic power of the Soviet Union had been destroyed and the Soviet military had collapsed and abandoned their satellite states because the central government couldn't afford to pay the soldiers or even feed them, much less keep all the infrastructure going did the satellite states take back their freedom. And there was plenty of insurrection going on in those states during the period, you just didn't hear about it. Or perhaps you did and it didn't occur to you that's what was going on.

[Seth]

Well if I ever find someone offers me a handgun to fight an army oppresive or not I will take it, after them how the safety catch works then shoot the person in the back of the head who gave it to me knowing I might have actually save a lot of peoples lives and removed one moron/terrorist from the gene pool

Evidently you like tyrants and are fine being a slave. No problem, you won't last long, come the revolution. You haven't the skill to survive.

[MrJonno]

The only person who brought down the USSR was Gorbachev, he gave the people some freedom to try and improve communism and they used it. If it hadnt been for him the USSR would have gone one indefinitely

[MrJonno]

Well if I ever find someone offers me a handgun to fight an army oppresive or not I will take it, after them how the safety catch works then shoot the person in the back of the head who gave it to me knowing I might have actually save a lot of peoples lives and removed one moron/terrorist from the gene pool

Evidently you like tyrants and are fine being a slave. No problem, you won't last long, come the revolution. You haven't the skill to survive.

Nah just prefer being alive and taking actions to maximise the chance of remaining that way. Through not being a tyrant and generally trying my best to avoid power I will just do my best to survive whatever the regime is.

Revolutions in general are just about replacing one tyranny with another, decent societies are built slowly not through revolutions

[Hermit]

Read again. Slowly: "East Germany is also one of several examples of the populace ridding itself of a government without the use of a militia, or even the threat of one." So: No armed insurrection. No militia.

Nope. Vast amounts of militia and military provided the cover that destroyed the regime from the inside through economic collapse. You'll note that the wall didn't come down until East Germany was utterly bankrupted by the use of arms.

As for US and NATO forces keeping the Soviet Union at bay for all those years, you've got to be joking. The Eastern Block was controlled by the Soviets for decades. It's peoples rid itself of their control country by country through popular and peaceful insurrections. No militias played a role.

No, they rid themselves of the Soviets because the US and NATO blocked their expansionist plans and kept them in check while driving them to utter economic ruin through the arms race. Only after the economic power of the Soviet Union had been destroyed and the Soviet military had collapsed and abandoned their satellite states because the central government couldn't afford to pay the soldiers or even feed them, much less keep all the infrastructure going did the satellite states take back their freedom. And there was plenty of insurrection going on in those states during the period, you just didn't hear about it. Or perhaps you did and it didn't occur to you that's what was going on.

Keep digging, Seth.

[Audley Strange]

It is interesting is it not that the Gun seems to be some kind of magic totem to some people. It is as if they think "I have a gun, I am therefore free." I can see where this comes from. The whole spirit of independence that underpinned the revolutionary war and the idea of America as being a state of Liberty from Tyranny, free to marry their dogs or pray to Jesus in the form of a rectal catcus or whatever away from the prying eyes of the quite frankly repugnant European system. It's a nice little myth they tell themselves, that somehow they carry on that spirit of freedom because one day the people will rise up and wipe away tyrannical government.

But they don't, they haven't and they put up with just the same kind of shit from their regimé as everyone else, they just rub their shoot nozzles and pretend that will make it go away.

[MrJonno]

We all have varying degrees of freedom but none of us as free , in the end of the day we are all cogs in the machine some of us just have more choice in which cog

[Audley Strange]

Tyranny of the self is possibly the most dangerous tyranny of all.

[Hermit]

Tyranny of the self is possibly the most dangerous tyranny of all.

And where does that come from? Just speaking for myself, my superego, to borrow a term from Freud, is an internalisation of social mores of the environment I grew up in. Decades after I have intellectually rejected many of them, they persist there, and nag, nag, nag me incessantly. They are ballast I just cannot get rid of.

[Audley Strange]

That comes from my brain Hermit. Consider the nagging not as part of the self but as one would a broken bone that throbs in damp weather, an accident of childhood, though I get your point.

Anyway I was talking more about how the self is easily manipulated, a ramification of Freud's research, public relations has shown successfully over the last century that the self pandered to is the self sedated. The self cannot always be trusted because in amongst the desires and ritualised behaviour we picked up accidently as children as well as the delsuory perception we have of ourselves, we are being being bombarded by information both rational and emotional, often contradictory, erroneous and nonsensical.

Even the most alert and rational of us is not Commander Data, we if we are lucky fully alert about 10% of the time. To have ultimate faith in oneself to always do the right thing, never fuck up and ones actions to be without negative consequence seems to me deeply narcissistic and eminently manipulable because of it's rigidity.

[MrJonno]

To have ultimate faith in oneself to always do the right thing, never fuck up and ones actions to be without negative consequence seems to me deeply narcissistic and eminently manipulable because of it's rigidity.

I rarely have faith in myself to do the right thing, I always have faith that everyone else will do the wrong thing until proven otherwise