“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Some Americans worried about possible violence after the U.S. presidential election are forming community watch groups, others are working on conflict de-escalation and still others are purchasing guns, according to two dozen voters, online groups and data surveyed by Reuters.

Don’t kid yourself. There’s violence after every election. Don’t believe me? Go ask a cop what happens at Thanksgiving every four years when someone has had too many beers and starts talking politics.

But it’s a different kind of violence they are suggesting this time around. I suppose that if you live in a place like California, Chicago, NYC, Atlanta, etc, there may be some localized violence but nothing that “sweeps the nation” as “armed militias storm polling places” or anything like that. Loud and obnoxious groups of people screaming at each other, throwing rocks, carrying baseball bats, setting fires, and the like? Probably. In Kansas? No. In Utah? No. In North Dakota? No. In Maine? No. Contrary to what they’d have you believe, when something happens in California and NYC at the same time that does not equate to ‘nationwide’.

I live in a college town..a bastion of liberal Democrats in a state that is otherwise rather Republican…and my ‘upgraded’ plans for being prepared for election day are the same as for any other Tuesday. I lock my doors to my house, I park where the security cameras can record, I carry a pistol in my pocket, and I keep my eyes open. Same as every other day.

I’m not saying there’s not going to be violence after the election. What I’m saying is there isn’t going to be violence after the election that violently affects me. And this notion that we’re going to have an actual armband-wearing, black-flag waving, up-against-the-wall revolution is, in my opinion, pure fantasy. If we have a ‘revolution’ it’ll be an engineered political one rather than a spontaneous shooting one.

So why am I stockpiling ammo, AR’s, food, and that sort of thing? Because you don’t have to have a civil war to have the wheels fly offa civilization. Angry mobs burning down LA or NYC may not constitute a civil war, but it does constitute a giant inconvenient pain in the ass to the people who live there. I live peacefully in flyover country but, as we know, crap rolls downhill, right? Well, it also radiates outward like ripples in a pond. So…I keep the freezer, gas tank, and magazines topped off.

New tag: election