Friday, December 21, 2007

FAQ

1. What should we do?

Buy a gun. Practice.

2. Is a violent revolution the answer?

No. Yes.

3. Why are you such a jerk?

Fawk. Yooz.

4. Will you please just give us a straight answer?

See #1.

5. Seriously, what should we do?

Make sure that you've disconnected the external grounding wire and power source before attempting repairs.

6. Wait, what?

Buy a gun. Practice.

Posted by IOZ at 10:57 AM | email »
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14 comments:

alansmithee said...

What kind of gun?

12:53 PM
thoreau said...

What kind of gun?

Dude, asking that kind of question on the internet is just begging for a flame war. All the fanboys will show up and argue over Glock vs. whatever and 9 mm vs .45.

1:24 PM
puppylander said...

alan,

i know nothing about guns, but i assume i should purchase one sniper rifle (no idea what make or model) and one handgun (no idea on this either).

i also assume i should buy bullets.

1:34 PM
Thomas Daulton said...

Well said! Now all you have to do is code yerself a spambot that hijacks browsers over to here whenever it detects any of the following phrases posted in the comment box:

"And your suggested alternative to any type of group action is...", "ypu're feeling unjustifiably smug", or "If there's pretty much no hope"....

"please tell me where I said"...

"how pathetic that you must argue"...

"If you're gonna advocate ___, you should ___"...

"For Pete's sake" is also usually a giveaway.

2:01 PM
nasrudin said...

C'mon, IOZ, I know you're not a native Lawrenceviller but still:
"Fawk. Yooz."
should be
"Fuk. Younz."

Other than that, great FAQ. Another good one (though it took me a while to get past my allergic aversion to anything like an earnest "35-Point Practical Guide for Action" manifesto):
http://www.insurgentamerican.net/intellectual-hardball/insurgent-americans-35-point-practical-guide-for-action/
with #18 and #23 particularly bearing on your points 1, 2, 6 and perhaps 5. Suggestions on these matters from an ex-Delta Force, ex-Marxist radical feminist can't be all bad.

2:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Look, if you folks really want a plan, just go buy the Zombie Survival Guide and follow it to the letter. It will prepare you for the breakdown of our infrastructure (worst case scenario, probably), and you can drop out of society and disengage from all the madness. Failing that, you're fucked, study up on post-Empire Britain and cross your fingers.

3:03 PM
Arvin Hill said...

When Glenn Greenwald gets 1000+ letters for his every burp, hiccup and fart (almost there!); and Joe Klein is fired from Time (finally!); and Hardball is hosted by Amy Goodman; and Hillary-Obama resurrect The Constitution... who can doubt The Republic will soon thereafter be restored to its pre-911 majesty? IOZ, you're gonna be so embarrassed.

In the interim, I enjoy the astonishing simplicity of a long-barreled, flame-spitting, thunder-casting Ruger Blackhawk as much as the next malcontent. Maybe more. But handguns are enormously overrated for all but the most intimate of Jack Ruby affairs and Angelina Jolie apparel.

For a Christmas present or birthday gift to the cynical, forward-thinking special someone in your life, it's hard to go wrong with the versatile shotgun. Minimal practice required. Just remember: Buckshot. Slug. Buckshot. Slug. Buckshot. Slug.

4:55 PM
TGGP said...

I'm glad to be ahead of the curve on this one, although I am admittedly a lousy shot. I've been getting to think that I should know more about explosives though.

The ideologically pure might want to restrict themselves to buying only from people who will not pay taxes on their purchase, so as to deprive the Evil Empire and build up the new society within the shell of the old and whatnot, but that's kind of a hassle.

7:24 PM
stephanie g said...

In the unlikely event that a full blown civil war erupts in the U.S. then you'd want to have already boned up on insurgency history throughout the 20th century. And if you did you'd know that rifles by themselves aren't that useful. They play their part, but if you want to really put the hurt on the U.S. military you need explosives. As demonstrated daily in Iraq and Afghanistan the main damage is caused by IEDs and RPGs. I don't think there are as many RPGs in the Midwest as in the Middle East. But if you know how to construct explosives which can be detonated reliably from afar using common materials then you can put a stop to those armored patrols. If you know how to make shaped charges your skills would be in high demand because that can potentially take out an Abrams, although I believe that requires a higher grade of tool than you may find in your garage. The rifles mainly come into play after you've blown up a column of trucks or humvees or whatever and the jarheads are crawling out of the smoking metal. Then you can spray them down while they're in the open.

An insurgency is a tough gig to run. Lots of networking, spying, and psy-ops going on. It's tough to keep everything under wraps. You'll have to do lots of unsavory things, like blow up police stations, fire houses, churches, and infrastructure. I'd think I'd just move down South somewhere. Women don't seem to do well in war zones, even if they know how to shoot.

8:05 PM
nasrudin said...

"If you know how to make shaped charges your skills would be in high demand because that can potentially take out an Abrams, although I believe that requires a higher grade of tool than you may find in your garage."

Well...depends on the garage. Certainly not a higher grade of tool than was available in US junior high school machine shop classes in the late 50s-early 60s. Despite the relentless "only-modern-eViL Persian ultra-high-tech geniuses can-do-it" propaganda over the last couple years relating to "EFPs", certain units of our military was teaching these skills to largely illiterate and ill-equipped Laotian tribesmen in the 60s.

11:40 PM
Anonymous said...

I'm not convinced we should be listening to IOZ for anything other than reasonably cogent analysis.

But advice? Good lord, no.

He's an anonymous blogger who is not starting a revolution, wouldn't help a revolution along if someone else started it, and does nothing to prevent the further decline of civilization except for not vote. Which, if you think about it, is still nothing.

None of this takes away from the clarity and intelligence of his writing (much of it, anyway). Judge the writing on its own terms, not by the anonymous man who does the writing.

But to think we should be asking him for advice about "what to do" in the first place is absurd.

He doesn't know what to do. But the combination of generally terrific writing, full of witty insights, and his titanic, bristling arrogance causes some of his readers to think he must have the answers.

He doesn't.

Sorry, everybody.

Find your own answers.

11:48 PM
Arvin Hill said...

Nice straw man, Anon, but the Lionization of The Mighty IOZ isn't what the post or the comments (aside from your own) concern. The majority of people who post and link here are bright enough to understand that looking for heroes and knights in shining armor is the opposite of, for lack of a better term, a solution.

One can visit a thousand websites where the comments - for years now - reflect anxious hand-wringing and desperate, pathetic What can we do?" questions.

The fretful liberal hordes do not want to hear any answers which lie beyond the laughable confines of (a.) petitions, (b.) letters to one's Congressional "representatives" and (c.) the ballot box. Deviations from fake activism are summarily rejected because people are steeped in denial and understandably reluctant to entertain pesky notions of risk and sacrifice. We are, after all, a society of spectators.

It ain't about IOZ. It's about what people are and are not willing to do. And whether they're willing to do anything at all besides feed the machine.

2:37 PM
Anonymous said...

I don't think that you, IOZ, or any of the readers and posters are willing to do anything at all besides feed the machine.

And the post IS about people coming to IOZ for answers.

Which I'm saying he's incapable of giving.

So, no straw man. That's a nice term to throw around, though.

"Straw man."

As in, "If I say that someone has used a straw-man argument, then I don't have to address anything they actually say, and I WIN without having to construct an argument of any kind."

I'm going to start throwing that around at the dinner table, the break room at work...

And all the gun-talk. Well, that's impressive too.

5:58 PM
Anonymous said...

It also strikes me that there is a certain kind of person who claims to not be looking for heroes, or answers, but actually is.

5:59 PM

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