To show you how things sometime work under the radar, last year I helped a couple of fellows launch a website, Great American Zeroes.com, a name they got from me. A visitor to that site, M M Morgan, contacted me recently about a manual he’s writing, entitled “Small Unit Tactics for Fighting the Left.”
Retired Army, with expertise in counter-insurgency, it’s a serious how-to guide, from intel, to communications and security, to planning and executing small operations.
Morgan asked me to review some chapters, which I want to deal with here in the context of the recall election in Wisconsin on June 5.
He cited Wisconsin, along with other leftwing operations, including the Occupy movement, the use of public schools to defy (and defile) American culture, and the attacks on corporate advertisers to the Rush Limbaugh Show, and others, as templates of the ways the Left operates, identifying weak spots and how to acquire targets.
The Wisconsin Paradigm
As you know, in 2010 the voters of Wisconsin (a blue state) elected Gov Scott Walker and a Republican majority to their senate with the specific mandate of cleaning up the financial mess in Madison.
They passed Senate Bill 11, curtailing union collective bargaining, requiring state teachers to pick up 5.5% of their retirement payments (previously zero) and 12.5% of their healthcare plan (previously zero), in the process quickly putting several school districts in the black after many years in the red.
Act One: The teachers unions and fellow travelers occupied the State House, but Walker held firm. The occupation failed, despite constant media spin of public approval.
Act Two: A local Madison judge then declared the new law unconstitutional.
Act Three: The people of Wisconsin, supporting Walker a second time, “surprisingly” (according to the media) elected David Prosser (conservative) to state Supreme Court over JoAnne Kloppenberg (LibDem) thus insuring the new law would be affirmed. It was.
(It has since been appealed to federal court, the main parts affirmed, a couple of issues overturned, so appeals continue.)
Act Four: The unions tried a recall election to remove the GOP members of the senate who made this law happen, but the people of Wisconsin, thrice now, said no….despite dire media warnings of voter approval for the recall. (Reminds me of AP-Reuters Green Line reporting from Baghdad, but that’s another story.)
Act Five: The unions then secured enough signatures to recall Gov Scott Walker himself, which really isn’t hard to do, even though some commissioners were willing to certify the signatures of Adolf Hitler and other dead people. (Better look out, guys, you’ve been noticed.)
Act Six: The recall election is set for June 5th and Walker is already being polled as losing 47-52 by Rasmussen. Same-o, same-o advance spin. (Morgan believes pollsters are complicit with the media at some level so deserves investigation, too.)
Act Seven: TBA
Analysis a la Morgan and VB:
Since the people of Wisconsin have backed Scott Walker’s play on three separate occasions since the 2010 election, it would seem natural to assume he should have no problem winning again in June, especially with a resume of financial turnarounds by now.
But this is the union’s (and the Left’s) last shot. Looking at the forces allied against Walker, and their propensity for crookery, this is not necessarily a slam dunk, in part because of the chilling message unions were able to send the people of Ohio last November, while recalling a similar bill there. There was an undercurrent of physical intimidation in Ohio which we should expect to see repeated in Wisconsin.
What everyone knows, but c-i specialists view a little differently, is that every step of the way the unions and media acted in concert, trying to finesse an outcome that has been just outside their grasp…so far. While minor in the seriousness of their crimes, thousands in Wisconsin have committed crimes in the open with seeming impunity….making this a big deal to Morgan.
The unpunished crime has stood at the heart of the Left’s success in America for several years now, and Morgan says “enough’s enough.” Courts won’t fix this, so there’s really only one way to fix it.
Many people in Wisconsin already know what is about to occur, and who will cause it, but not with any organized focus on “disrupting, deterring, scaring and punishing” them, which is the only real thing to make them stop, according to Morgan.
“The unexpected consequence of an illegal act is its greatest deterrent. Most of the Left views their acts as risk free.”
To the extent the Left is acting lawfully in Wisconsin, they should be repelled lawfully, a la Alinksy, who rarely suggested criminal acts outwardly. But even when they step over the line, as they will likely do,
“You don’t have to break their balls. Just let them know you can, and you will usually achieve your objective.”
Intel and Target acquisition: For the longest time I have recommended a national TOC (tactical operations center) for doing nothing more than listening in, and stalking the Left, then passing that info along to c-i elements to interdict them in some way.
People I know who do this as a hobby (a lot of eye-weary work on the internet) saw the Occupy Movement develop months before it actually began, but was unable to take it to the next level of “disrupt, deter, scare and punish” as no one seemed interested. So, we’ll see it back in spades later this season.
Morgan believes Wisconsin needs a statewide TOC serving the same purpose for the June election. But his idea of a TOC is to be totally dark, with no website, no IP address to trace, no high-profile MoveOn.org-type cachet .
“Never let them know you’re there until you’re long gone and their photo and story ends up on the internet at some anonymous website out of Finland.”
Ground ops: Morgan’s c-i operations are based on five man teams (cells), which are connected with each other at only one point, somewhat like a honeycomb. Therefore no one knows more than four other members. Wisconsin needs a minimum of twenty.
Cells are easy to form, but, says Morgan, according to a security formula that predates the internet and cell phones by a thousand years. Everything is done face-to-face or by hand-written notes (with some exceptions) to maximize security and the “scare factor”.
“There’s nothing more frightening than to receive some still b&w photos of yourself in various public places in a plain manila envelop.”
On ground ops there are few specialized skills sets required. His book includes how to make code and security books.
He devotes chapters to local recruitment of these teams, security and communications, and designing operations, but always with an emphasis on security, using a poker analogy as to why even the most trivial operation must be treated the same as a life-and-death operation:
“If you’ve played table stakes poker, you know when to hold them, when to fold them, and you never take unnecessary risks. You must play penny-ante poker the same way or you pick up potentially dangerous bad habits.”
“So, we go after minor misdemeanors as if we were robbing a casino. There are several good reasons for this, including the simple fact that every legal thing we do today could be illegal tomorrow.”
“It really isn’t hard to let someone know he/she shouldn’t do something. Some people will fold their cards simply by knowing someone out there knows they’re about do it. But others have to get one of those ‘It isn’t nice to fool Mother Nature’ thunderbolts, just to get their attention.
“We fix people, not process. Return things to a state of nature and process will fix itself.”
Because of the Left’s sense of invulnerability, they tend be to walking security leaks creating a target rich environment. But it won’t always be this way. But as we saw with Occupy, they become darker. It would have been best to have gotten to them early. An opportunity lost.
Morgan (and I) believe Wisconsin is a harbinger for the rest of 2012, as most leftwing ops now are designed to affect the November election. Still their strategy there does not lean toward violence (yet), and while this is so, the principle counter-strategy should be to disrupt and deter (send warnings), allowing the people of Wisconsin to do what they have already shown a predisposition to do.
So, Morgan believes the key to winning in Wisconsin is getting good intel quickly, then parceling that out to the several cells to throw them off their game.
I agree with Morgan’s operational premises here. As I said, I have long argued for a national TOC center that does nothing but spy on the Left, then parcels out intel to groups around the county who can then turn that intel into action. But I’m not a tech guy who can intelligently discuss the available technologies, or manpower requirements. Morgan estimates 20 ops teams.
One of the obvious shortcomings of the “dark” TOC is fundraising. Like gangsters, even the Left uses a kind of accounting oversight that allows backers see if their investments are bearing fruit. To jump start it would require a leap of faith. Ground ops are relatively inexpensive.
A Cautionary Note:
It’s in the operational phase that we must distinguish ourselves from the Left.
I’ve written about this general scheme for a long time, having learned it in various parts of the world where the stakes were different and time not always of the essence. I’ve been involved in and set up my operational formats for others for over 20 years.
So, I have to remind you all that this is dangerous work in more ways than you can imagine. It isn’t a lark, as so many useful idiots on the Left conceive it to be.
Every successful society exists on the notion that there is an Invisible Hand of Judgment for wrongdoing. It doesn’t have to be God as we know Him, or even Law, as Americans have traditionally known Her, blindfolded and impartial. But all survivable cultures share a common ethos, a moral code everyone subscribes to, creating in wrongdoers a sense of guilt just for doing a thing. This is the self-regulating deterrent that keeps civilizations civilized.
The society that loses this sense of self-regulation risks losing all. This is where America finds itself today…with far too large a percentage of our people moving through life as if there are no consequences to their actions, only gratifications, from petty theft at Walmart, to cheating on exams, to crapping on police cars, to falsifying signatures…to setting fire to public and private property. It’s an easy progression.
But while we want to impede this trek, it’s a dangerous thing for any group to take upon itself this mantle of the Hand of Judgment just because, if even for a little while, the Law stands around and does nothing.
I always carry an image of John Brown around me when I consider this.
I am not saying that you should not make this leap, but you must acknowledge that self-appointed Hands of Justice, throughout history, have always brought themselves down, for they never seem to know when it’s time to hang up (or lay down) their commission.
Don’t be that guy.
I don’t think Morgan’s book will ever be available to the general public, for what it’s worth. That’s what we’re working on.
