Viral Spring #19: Dreams and Visions

                           And afterward. 

                       I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
               your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
                       your old men shall dream dreams,
                       and your young men shall see visions.  
                                      Joel 2:28

I dreamed that I was fighting for a new America, a better America, in a rebellion that had just been named the "Green Patriotic Uprising" or something like that.  I was in a school gymnasium, waking up at dawn next to a young woman who was my wife or girlfriend.  She told me the name of the uprising; and I said -- OK that's what they call it, now let's go fight it!  I was gung-ho, as they say.   
 

We were to move out at dawn.  My assignment was to run to the front lines pushing my upstairs neighbor, a fellow septuagenarian and a long-time activist, in a wheelbarrow.  She wanted to fight, but had a bad leg and couldn't run.  I grabbed the wheelbarrow with Myra lying down in it and began to run, full tilt along a narrow wooden track, with the rest of the force close behind.  But the wheel got caught in a crack and stuck.  I was holding up the charge, so I worked frantically to free the wheel.  Then  it occurred to me that neither Myra nor I had any kind of weapon.  How did we expect to fight?  

Then I woke up.                    

Before military commanders go out to fight they look at the balance of troop strength in a document called the Order of Battle.  I put on my Pentagonal hat, and tried to envision the Order of Battle (OOB) for the conflict between the Powers-that-Be (PTB) and The Movement (TM).     

And this is what I saw:   

 

ORDER OF BATTLE    6/20/2020 
 

ESTIMATED PTB TROOP STRENGTH 

 

US Police forces: 700,000  (source:  US Bureau of Justice Statistics)   

Armed with rifles, handguns, tasers and stun guns, chemical irritants, clubs, helicopters, armored cars and trucks, attack dogs.   

 
Army National Guard: 343,000  (National Guard Bureau ) 

Armed with tanks, rifles, grenades, artillery, automatic rifles, surveillance and attack aircraft:  helicopters and planes.  

 
23 State militias or State Defense Forces (SDFs):  14,000  (Heritage Foundation)   

 Authorized to carry personal weapons in some states; unarmed in others.   
 

Private militias: 165 known to exist in the US, with 20,000 + members.   Armed with automatic weapons, rifles, handguns, bows and arrows.  (SPLC)  

 

Also available: Up to 1,000 "goons" authorized to carry out arson, looting and assault in the event of disorders.  (Source: Dept. Of Justice)  SECRET
 

Total PTB troop strength  1.4 M  

(Not counted: Active-duty armed forces: 1.3 M plus 800,000 reserves, armed with weapons of mass destruction.  Currently unavailable except in extremest emergency.  (See POTUS OO mtg w MM 6/1/2020).  TOP SECRET

                                                      THE MOVEMENT 

Anti-racism and anti-government demonstrators:  27 million.  Unarmed.  

Antifa: Up to 1,000 violent activists.  Armed with bricks, crowbars, slingshots, metal chains, stink bombs, bottles and bags filled with gasoline, urine and/or feces.  

Total troop strength:   27+ million.   

        ANALYSIS  

While TM holds more than a tenfold advantage in personnel, it has no lethal force at its disposal and would be at the mercy of PTB forces in the event of all-out conflict.   

       

RECOMMENDATIONS 

Recommendation to PTB:  Do not engage. Casualties will only reinforce motivation of TM.    

Recommendation to TM:  Do not engage. Triunfa porque no engana.  

                                                          

                                                      OUTLOOK  (Classified) 

As tear gas dissipates and emotions subside from this, one of the larger uprisings in the history of American civil disorder, a familiar landscape emerges. TM is moving toward acknowledgement that systemic change is non-feasible given the balance of strength, that democracy will continue to evolve incrementally rather than systemically. The PTB are moving on a corresponding track toward the same conclusion. Systemic Racism, White Privilege, and the role of Police in enforcing these norms have meanwhile become part of public consciousness (Pcs), and though not acknowledged by PTB will affect its actions and policies going forward.  

Political change may not keep pace with Pcs due to the rise in anti-democratic electoral practices.  If the gap between these vectors continues to widen, it could give rise to even larger civil disorders, but will not affect the underlying rate of cultural evolution.  

The pressure for cultural change is constant due to an idiographic structural anomaly unique to the US, i.e. "a crack in everything" (L. Cohen, Old Ideas, 2012). This may be represented as a DNA drive fragment corresponding to the rupture in the Liberty Bell – stable, irreparable, dynamic and disruptive.   Cf. W.W. Guthrie, USMM, DOD Wish Division (see #20, to come).         

Respectfully submitted, 

Viral X. Springer, DOD  

(Dept. Of Dreams, Warning Division)  

Summer Solstice 2020  

Please note I will be out of the office for the next three months.  

 

• -Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips