This is a characteristically thoughtful column and I have some thoughts. Read it first and I'll post my own below it. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/business/media/capitol-anthime-gionet-buzzfeed-vine.html

I've always thought in the abstract, and it's true in my own life, that men without children (especially daughters) are the biggest threat to stability.

There's nothing mooring you to society. You're on a never ending fake hero's journey, egged on by other childless young men.

I've modulated my own behavior, not due to the ridiculous belief that I want to be liked by those who hate me, but because eventually my daughters will be able to get an outside view of me.

It's one thing for them to say, "Oh 15 years ago your dad said some stuff." By then, deep fakes will be so prominent, I'll just "Joy Reid" any bad stuff.

But since my daughter's birth, I made it a point to not do anything *recent* that's over the top.

You have no in the West, and this was true of the Islamic world, young men with no children, no real sense of dating prospects, and really no one raising them.

Their own fathers are for the most part absent or weak.

They are raising themselves.

And so you get a bunch of young men egging each other one. I've met a lot of these people, they aren't really like that. They don't believe what they pretend to. But they are caught up in some act combined with peer pressure, and no real escape valve.

When Charlottesville happened, I begged guys not to go. They did what young men do - mock me as a weak old guy.

I said they'd ruin their lives, and I've watched one after another get caught up. Some bad actors, and a lot just showed up not really understanding the implications.

It was like beating my head up against the wall. Warning people that events often sweep people away. "Caught up in the game" is a term you hear in law. Wrong place, wrong time. You're maybe just curious, but you end up getting swept up in events. And then it's over for you.

But from the young guy's perspective, what's the answer?

There's no escape value. It's all, "Oh you're broken becuase you're a man. You have toxic masculinity."

The only socially offered fix is for men to become less like men and more like women.

Otherwise, they're diseased.

I saw political violence coming because I understand men.

ANTIFA is largely white men. That's been proven over and over again.

You're a man, you want to live out Fight Club, and ANTIFA is a way to do this and basically get a free pass.

The counter to that is the Capitol.

Extremist researchers from Muslim world know that you have to offer a moderate solution, an off road. That when you call men terrorists, you drive them into radicalized groups.

That research is being tossed out now in the West.

Every man who has alternative view is a terrorist.

The incentives are to create more problems, that drives funding into "extremism research." To raise money, you need more extremists!

And yet that's how you summon more of what you're supposed to be militating against.

The researchers know this, and they don't care. It's money.

I've said this consistently since at last 2015 - terrorism will become a way of life in the U.S. It'll be like parts of Middle East. Because everything we learned about Islamic terrorism, that you don't attack *all* Muslims, that you build up moderates, is being thrown away now.

The biggest mistake a society can make is to confirm the righteousness of zealots.

That started with "Punch a Nazi," where Nazi predictably grew to mean every Trump voter.

Capitol rioters watched attacks and riots celebrated by media, and now they feel righteous, too.

Diaster.

The U.S. is poised for a post-911 crackdown on civil liberties - which was a disaster then and will be a bigger disaster now.

You cannot enforce authoritarianism against 40% of the country.

To do so is to incite a "civil war," which won't be what people think.

Capitol LARP'ers watched too much Bravehart and 1776 stuff.

They are in an old model of war.

A current model of war will be 4GW, which is the worst possible way of having a war, because it never ends.

You end up not with Balkanization, but the cartelization of society.

Balkanization = Yugoslavia split up into sides, fought, had genocide, and now there are separate countries.

Carelization = Mexico and how the cartels control the government. Military units defected to take control of territory.

They become their own governments.

It never ends.

Just as Capitol LARP'ers live by outdated 1776! models of warfare, so too does the establishment

Our Thank the Troops creep led to people thinking that the military is millions of people. It's not.

50,000 to 100,000 troops. Infantry and SOF do most of the fighting.

What happens when no one believes in the idea of America anymore?

You have support people in military who follow orders. Drone operators.

What happens if the real hitters give up?

The idea that this can't happen ignores history - recent history in fact. Just look at Mexico.

Cartels in Mexico were elite soldiers who became disgruntled with their government.

They didn't need to take over the country.

They took over small parts.

When Mexican government arrested El Chapo's son, what happened?

We are in unbelievably perilous times. Just as people who didn't see Trump's rise and dismissed it, because they know it all, think they can just put the boots down the necks of 40% of the country.

I just can't believe what I am watching, and what will *obviously* happen.

It's not the Q people or fat LARP'ers I worry about.

It's that the oppression becomes so severe that you get what happened in Mexico.

A Special Forces Group says, "F*ck this."

Then what?

There is 0 reason to believe It Can't Happen Here.

We are not special.

I won't go into tactics, not only for reason to not educate bad people, but for others.

If you watched the Capitol storm you no doubt asked

- What if these weren't fat LARP'ers, lost young men, and Q dummies?

What if this had been *real* guys?

If the attack on the Capitol had been real guys instead of fat middle aged men and Q boomers and aimless young men, it would have been *hundreds* of dead Congress members.

That's how vulnerable an open society is.

That's how fast civil society can disappear.

The Scalise attack, the Capitol attack, all of this shows that - thank God - it's simply the case that real guys don't want to do violence and domestic terrorism.

Anyone anything about solutions must start from there.

As of now, real guys don't do that.

How do we preserve it?

I don't have a lot of answers on how to preserve civil society, but I do know one fact.

You *do not* preserve society by turning the state against 40% of the country.

This isn't Soviet Union, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or Mao's China.

Different culture in U.S.

My take on Trump is that you let him leave ignobly. Don't make him a martyr. Keep him on a leash and dog walk him out. He'll keep the truly low tier element of society, but he's lost his smart and competent supporters. He's neither Hitler nor Caesar. He's a Karshasian.

As for how to *not* radicalize the rest of society?

I can't think of a worse solution than destroying small businesses.

Giving millions of people, mostly men, *nothing to lose* is chilling.

It keeps me up at night thinking of what desperate people might start doing soon.

My privileged friends never miss a meal. They get on Twitter demanding lockdowns. SO BRAVE.

They then speak out against Big Government $2,000 checks.

For their own sake, they should ask: "Is creating a situation where millions of people have nothing to lose in our interest?"

I love seeing my rich friends (or ones with rich spouses) going off about people daring to try to keep their businesses open.

I'd love to tax these people 100% of their income, so they can be on par with the anti-lockdown crowd - people losing businesses.

Then see their takes.

But whatever. Like most of my writing, this will be read, people will say it's interesting, and then years from now I'll get some vindication for being right - as society completely implodes.

We can move forward, but the current path isn't it.

As for me, all I can do is remind men: You don't need to be some David French groveler.

Nor should you go to events and act like you're auditioning as an extra in a Mel Gibson film.

There's a third way. I live it, try to demonstrate it.

God bless.