The Breaking Storm

     “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.” – Vernon Law

     Winston Churchill’s treatment of World War II included a volume on the antecedents to the war titled The Gathering Storm. It was an appropriate title for an account of those years, as the follies of the Versailles Treaty and post-World War I European politics gestated the second great conflagration of the century. Churchill, of course, was writing from a superior vantage point, from which the errors and lunacies of the inter-war period were unambiguously visible. But then, hindsight is usually more accurate than foresight, though that’s not particularly comforting.

     Our “storm” has gathered to Cat 5 intensity. Should it break, the damage will be Biblical, in more senses than the merely metaphorical.

     I could recount specific “skirmishes,” but my Gentle Readers already know about all that crap. I could sketch in the “fronts,” but again, we’ve been over that ground many times. The first shots have been fired. The troops are massed and ready for the first great clash. And unless I’ve gone completely senile, it will come very, very soon.

     I’ve been reading the output of a number of prominent “preppers.” That’s not because I need advice on my own preparations – I’m about as solidly entrenched as someone in my position can be – but to get a sense for their emotional tenor. Do they feel the storm-break to be as imminent as do I? The answer seems to be affirmative.

     Initially, the preparationist community focused on resources with which to endure a siege of economic dislocation: foods, fuels, power sources, tradable goods. That phase was the natural outgrowth of a pessimistic outlook that a fraction of the population will always share, even in economic good times. The outlook of the moment is far darker than that. It emphasizes the ability to defend oneself and one’s “base of operations.” That’s a mentality that anticipates war in the near term.

     It behooves us to pay attention to that shift, and to ponder the reasons for it.

     We in the Right have no desire to go to war. We don’t want conflict. We’d rather not deplete our stocks of ammo, to say nothing of the possibility of getting killed. But the sense that war is imminent arises from the perception that the other side wants it. And of course, when the enemy is determined to fight, you must rise to the occasion regardless of your preferences.

     Just yesterday, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom I admire greatly, posted the following on Gab.com:

To which I replied:

     Then I got this:

     Abortion is the moral battleground of our time. If you can convince yourself that killing unborn babies is okay, you can believe anything. And of course, most people have lots of wishes that they’d like to “believe” into existence, especially as regards the consequences of careless self-indulgence. That makes the Left’s promotion of abortion on demand a key rallying cry for its allegiants. And as we can see, those allegiants are becoming militant. Pro-life speakers are being silenced by mass intimidation. Pro-abortion figures have compared pro-lifers to Nazis. A number of crisis pregnancy centers have been vandalized or torched. Many threats are hanging in the air.

     The Vegetable-in-Chief has this to say:

     “If you give me two more senators in the United States Senate, I promise you, I promise you, we’re going to codify Roe and once again make Roe the law of the land,” Biden barked from his tar pit.

     The specious “right” to abortion on demand, right up to the instant of birth, is the foundation of all the other social infamies of the past half-century. It had literally paved a path to the legalization of post-natal infanticide, which would constitute liberation from all moral duties. The magnitude of the Left’s fury over the Dobbs decision is difficult to overstate…but easy to understand.

     The odds no longer favor a peaceful reinstitution of normality.

     The late, lamented Remus of The Woodpile Report repeatedly counseled his readers to stay away from crowds. This has always been sound policy. A crowd always spells danger, even if opportunity might also lie therein. Today, the opportunities are near to extinct, and the dangers are more threatening than ever.

     Any gathering of a dozen or so persons could easily become the condensation nucleus for the storm-break. Unless the necessity is imperative, keep your distance from all such gatherings. Resist entreaties to “join in,” regardless of the reasons or the inducements offered. Never leave the house unarmed.

     And pray morning, noon, and night that what I foresee shall not come to pass. It’s later than you think. Then again, it always is.