By CoyotePrime (Reporter)
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“There are many who have expressed the opinion over the years that the United States should go down some sort of “revolutionary” road. The topic has come up repeatedly in various areas of what was Tickerforum and I have repeatedly slapped it down, noting that only a fool who pays no attention to history pines for such a thing irrespective of how bad you may think the situation is.

Those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it. Unfortunately the sort of “repeat” you get in this kind of situation is the sort you definitely do not want, as it is almost never one that leads to a good outcome. I don’t know how many times we have to see this in the modern era before we stop pining for stupid things, but we’ve got at least two examples now in the “immediate” sense. The first was Egypt, of course, which has been disastrous. The second is Ukraine.

The book on Ukraine is of course still open, but this morning brings disturbing news: “Armed forces were blocking the two main airports in the strategic peninsula of Crimea on Friday in what Ukraine’s new government described as a takeover by Russian forces, as the country asked the U.N. Security Council to intervene in the escalating conflict.”

Yeah, that’s not good. Oh, there’s no insignia on their uniforms either- so the open question is “who are these guys?” No concrete answer is yet available. And then there’s this: “On Thursday, masked gunmen with rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles seized the parliament and government offices in Simferopol and raised the Russian flag over the parliament building.”

That’s not good either. And then there’s Yanukovych, who was granted “shelter” by Russia as well after he “disappeared.” Do note while you’re contemplating all of this that it certainly appears Yanukovych looted the nation if the pictures are to be believed of what could only be termed a palace. The Parliament, for its part, elected a new government with pro “western” (read: European) leanings.

So you want to pine for dumb things eh? No, no, no and no. Folks, the simple fact is that odds are 100:1 you’re going to get a bad result when you go down the road of violence. There are far too many people who think that when you take such a path you get a Thomas Jefferson moment. The fact is that most of the time what you actually get is a Pinochet moment.

There are many means of non-violent action, including but not limited to withdrawing your consent by working less and reducing your footprint- and thus the ability of government to sustain its own size. That’s lawful, by the way.

What raises my eyebrows are those who argue that this sort of perfectly-lawful choice will never work because the people won’t do it, yet at the same time they want to make noise about committing violence. Well, not only will most people not go along with that, but in addition the odds of a good outcome from getting involved in violence are much smaller than the odds from taking lawful and peaceful action instead!

This leads me to conclude that those arguing for the violent path are either insane or maybe they’re Fibbies that appear to be continually “searching” for people who claim they want to join the Taliban (Really folks?  In this country?)  I note that despite the chain of convictions for “attempted terrorism” that this “search” has produced there is a gross over-representation of severely-deluded individuals with serious mental illness and a lack of both training and skills required to carry out the acts for which they’re convicted.

While there’s no argument that someone who mashes a button that he believes will trigger a bomb has committed a serious crime there is a valid debate to be had over whether there’s any chance said person would have had either the motivation or opportunity to attempt such an act absent the suggestions of said agents.

One of the problems that seems to be perpetual with government is that programs expand to their boundaries of spending and then go searching for ways to expand the boundary. When that program is law enforcement this is a serious problem because when you can’t find enough bad guys you then have to go make some new ones out of whole cloth. Leaving aside the ethics and morals of such actions there is the economic impact of removing productive people from the economy either via acts like prosecuting a kid because his dad’s car has a fillet knife in it or talking someone with severe mental illness into trying to blow something up. Note that the delta on this is likely at least $100,000 per year, per person when one considers both their lost earnings potential and the cost of “catching” them, prosecution and ultimately incarceration. How much economic activity would you like to flush down the toilet by being stupid?

I don’t believe any of these folks involved in this nonsense are thinking this through- indeed, I’m reasonably convinced that they’re incapable of thinking it through. As the government has expanded in size it has run up against the wall of ability to pay for it, and rather than confront reality and have that political debate there begins the search for a means to justify what’s already been done. The result are things like “red light” cameras that in fact increase the number of rear-end collisions while producing their “revenue” (two “bads” in terms of the economic health of the citizens.) Even worse are “gifts” of paramilitary gear to local cop shops that come with a maintenance and training bill, resulting in the local gendarme looking for “good reasons” to deploy and use same. That inevitably leads to violence-laced entries into the wrong house instead of the old-fashioned way of apprehending a suspect- staking out his residence and waiting until he goes out for a six-pack of beer.

These foolish acts also extend to buying Nintendo Wii game consoles and wireless “step pads” for P/E in a middle school, along with big-screen displays for the gym wall instead of a gaggle of dodgeballs at 1/100th the price. At the same time the same school district didn’t impound the funds to make necessary roofing and refrigerator repairs in the buildings, leading them to try to seek a tax increase for a perfectly-predictable expense that should have been reserved against. They lost, in no small part because citizens like myself said “Nope!” to that idiocy, but there’s no evidence that the acts themselves have been deterred nor have the people responsible for budgeting that took these actions been identified and removed from their offices.

At the end of the day accumulation of power becomes a means to its own end, and when the reasonable exercise of same in the promotion of actual public good is exhausted those in power seem to inevitably resort to less-reputable means of both justifying and expanding their own salaries and budgets. The effort to stop and reverse this trend should be focused on the economic angle, which is both more-likely to succeed and is lawful, while those who wish to pine for stupid things, or even worse, advocate for them, need to be shunned and, if necessary, shouted down.

I suspect we’re in the middle of witnessing the outcome of choosing otherwise once again in Ukraine.  I hope the people of Ukraine will find a way to choose a peaceful resolution, whether it lies in a split of the nation or a reconciliation, but if not then hopefully what is to come will sufficiently-underline the bad outcomes that usually result from those choices- and give pause to those who pine for same.”

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