Book Review – Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times

The short version: A sociologist/scholar spends years hanging out with various survivalists, then offers up theories about survivalism. Well-written but loses focus. Skip the edubabble. There is no appreciable hands-on survivalism knowledge in this book.

Dancing at Armageddon was written by one Richard G. Mitchell Jr., who explains he needed a “fresh” unexplored sociological subject to write about and found one in survivalists…problem is, he doesn’t do them any favors. Mitchell starts with the claim that James Huberty was the media’s stereotype of a survivalist (my own stereotype would be Burt Gummer from the Tremors movies) and goes from there.

Dancing was printed in 2002 but unfortunately is already dated, covering only the 1980s to early 90s, before widespread internet access, Y2K and, of course, 9-11. Even these “paradigm shifts” probably wouldn’t add up to much in uniting fringe groups or makeshift militias.

Mitchell “trains” with survivalists, who run the gamut from poor loners to wealthy suburbanites. He tosses off a lot of theories about the type of person that gravitates towards survivalism, their thought processes, etc,. using a lot of edubabble that only professors and other obfuscators would find interesting or helpful.

If you only read the first half of the book, you’d think survivalists were for the most part harmless scrabblers, tinkerers, information traders and universal hoplophiles*, engaged in a kind of hobby. The tone changes in the second half of the book, after Mitchell attends retreats and “churches” of White racial purists. What he sees (and caricatures) causes him to lose all objectivity, which is understandable for a human but unacceptable for a researching writer.

The so-called “White Power” movement (which does more harm than good to Euro-American culture and traditions) is peopled with misfits and losers; the same would go for any “race pride” group.

While I admire Mitchell for walking the talk in befriending many survivalists (and exposing the media’s sensational thirst to create enemy Outsiders) in the end he remains a (naturally) liberal perfesser. Having grown crankier and more cynical during years of study, for the last third of the book his original mission of exploring survivalism all but vanishes. You can take or leave his theories, but either way this isn’t an overall satisfying read.

* lovers of firearms

News? Here’s the news: fuck this.

If you’re a fan of common sense, reading the front page of the Drudge Report won’t do anything for you or your blood pressure.  Illegal scum in the US, Muslim scum taking over Britain, the discovery that a kid playing with matches caused one of the huge California wildfires, candidates completely unqualified in every respect dangerously close to being considered for the Presidency.   

It’s very hard to maintain any kind of perspective when all of the stupid shit is laid on you at once.

I wish I could show all the idiots a time-lapse of the needless and avoidable damage and destruction they cause, then shoot them in both kneecaps, because even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they’re dead wrong, they never learn. 

I’m in a pickle here.  Life isn’t worth living, yet there are certain aspects of it I want to defend.

Whoever heard of a suicidal survivalist?

 

 

 

Hail the longbeards

Guessing what kind of dividing lines would occur in a future American civil war scenario is pointless.  Due to the dualistic nature of humans all of the fractured forces would eventually form two sides, those for and against the federal government.  Long before that conflict, factions will have to fight for overall supremacy.

Liberal-run cities like New York and LA would be the first destroyed.  Liberals believe the State is Almighty (and all-knowing).  Three days without water or electricity is enough to prove who’s zooming who.

Liberal-run cities are like quilts missing patches for serious issues like illegal immigration, gang warfare and wasted government monies, while the other patches are plates of iron:  fascism reserved for those who respect and obey laws.  To wit, anti-smoking laws.  Stupid laws breed contempt for all laws. 

Limited war with Mexico is also of concern.  Open borders and the failure to adopt a single language means the end of a nation.

I see no reason to expand speculation this at this time, because let’s face it, barring a few longbeards up in the hills, no one is really expecting civil war, anymore than Lost Angelenos are expecting huge earthquakes to hit tomorrow (which they can).

In another salute to the longbeards, none of us flatlanders are ready for the First Wave, either.

First Wave?  I don’t know exactly what it is, other than my catchall term for both the first attackers and victims of a violent revolution.  Perpetrators are likely to be an enraged minority–racial, idealogical or  likely both–while the victims will be anyone from old folks hooked to IVs at the Home to teens playing Halo 3 when a Molotov comes crashing through the glass door.  Victims will include those who have never fired a gun or bothered to ever buy a small First Aid kit, people caught totally off-guard, that’s the First Wave.

It doesn’t have to be minorities that trigger the First Wave.  What if Granny sees drug war stormtroopers raiding the house next door, flips out and picks two of them off with a .38?  They kill her back, it’s caught on video and by morning the police station is a smoldering ruin amid rioters.

The strangest thing about the First Wave will be how little it takes to kill off large numbers of peeps because they will refuse to unite with anyone:  they’re the self-absorbed consumerist “rebels” and discount-thinkers of our age.  Only when the Second Wave begins will we see the beginning of local organization and self-imposed martial discipline.  By then the numbers may be too small to matter.

What a glorious future awaits.  All hail the longbeards; maybe they can use a poet.