Tom Phillips's 116th Dream

-- By Tom Phillips 

Irreparable 

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 rebel 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? 

At this point 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.  Under my pillow, I found the current Order of Battle for the conflict between the Powers-that-Be (PTB) and The Movement (TM).  

 

 

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 private militias 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)  
 

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.  Unavailable except in extremest emergency.  See notes of POTUS OO mtg w MM 6/1/2020, Top Secret.)  
 

THE MOVEMENT  (TM)   

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

Antifa: Approximately 1,000 violent activists.  Armed with bricks, crowbars, slingshots, metal chains and water bottles, some 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.  Military considerations aside, the slaughter of unarmed protesters could damage political standing of PTB.  

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

                                                          

                                                      OUTLOOK  (Classified) 

As the tear gas clears and emotions subside from this, one of the larger uprisings in the history of American civil disorder, a familiar landscape emerges. The Movement is now moving toward an acknowledgement that revolution is not feasible given the balance of strength, that as a result democracy will evolve incrementally rather than systemically. The PTB are moving on a corresponding track toward the same central conclusion.  The issues of systemic racism and White Privilege are now permanent features of public discourse, and, while not acknowledged by PTB, will affect its policies and actions going forward.  

Political change may not match cultural progress given the rise in anti-democratic practices.  If the gap between those two vectors widens, potential exists for even larger civic uprisings in the near and middle future, though actual change will remain incremental regardless. 

The pressure for cultural change is constant due to the existence of an anomalous condition found only in the US: "a crack in everything."  This may be represented as a DNA drive fragment corresponding to the rupture in the Liberty Bell – stable, irreparable, dynamic and disruptive.  Cf. Folk-singer W.W. Guthrie, DOD Wish Division.   (see next and final edition of Viral Spring.)    

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