Although the scythe isn’t pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants’ revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome. –Terry Pratchett
I was catching up on reading Lawdog’s blog just a day or so ago, and the linked post resonated with me.
Our DNA is rebellious outlaws that were kicked out of the mother country because Great Britain couldn’t deal with us. We took the hit-and-run warfare of the Native Americans, and we made it our own. WE LIKE TO FIGHT.
Bittersweet truths the man speaks. It isn’t in any way the future I want to see. I can’t say that often enough, or loudly enough. I do not want it. Do. Not. Want.
But would I be ready should we come to the bitter end? Yes.
I have a peculiar background. And I don’t mean that in just ‘you’re weird, Cedar,’ although I won’t deny that, either. I’m also, I hasten to add, not boasting here. I’m about to lay out plain facts more for myself than for you, first of all. I tend to downplay myself. I’m more comfortable that way. I’m also not laying out my whole CV here, just what seems pertinent to the discussion of this particular leg of the pants of time (Terry Pratchett, the brilliant sage of our time, talking about the forks in the path of history as being akin to pant legs). I’m talking about it because while I’m peculiar, I’m not alone. When I say peculiar, I mean deliberately set apart. There are reasons I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories, survivalist or ‘prepper’ rhetoric, and post-apocalyptic fiction in general. I’m not going to get into that here on the blog. Catch me in person sometime when you have time and an alcoholic beverage if you really want to know.
Lawdog talks about the American past and present when it comes to fighting. I’m no warhawk, although yes, I’ve been accused of that too. Not on the blog. Mostly here you see me at my motherly apolitical best, but let me put it this way: when attacked, I am of the opinion that we ought not hold back in our retaliation because yes, violence does solve problems. Pratchett, again, says it very well.
“War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?” he said.
“Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?”
“Absol—well, okay.”
“Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?”
“All right, I’ll grant you that, but—”
“Saving civilization from a horde of—”
“It doesn’t do any good in the long run is what I’m saying, Nobby, if you’d listen for five seconds together,” said Fred Colon sharply.
“Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?” –Terry Pratchett in Thud!
My first instinct when I contemplate the awful possibility of a second civil war, bloodier and more terrible than the first (and do not forget I also dabble in history and am very well versed on the first), is to lean toward my gun cabinet. But today when I read Lawdog’s pungent and inspiring words, I brought myself up short and realized something. I can’t do that.
Look. I was raised by parents who were very interested in self-sufficiency, and who were poor enough that it wasn’t a ‘getting back to their roots’ game. We really did have to know how to garden, hunt, trap, and fish in order to survive. Among my skills I count the ability to be a hunter-gatherer although God, I hope we won’t throw ourselves that far back into the depths of history. I can build good dirt, I can garden according to organic principles (otherwise known as farming the Old Way, or farming with one hand tied behind your back). I can milk, and more to the point, I can keep goats alive because the myth of them surviving on tin cans has it all wrong, goats are delicate freaking flowers especially when you throw pregnancy and kidding into the mix. I know how to shear, although I haven’t done it. I have, however, cleaned fleece, dyed it with natural materials, spun, woven, and crocheted it. I spent a couple of years as an apprentice shepherdess. I can ride a horse, and more to the point, care for it. I know how to break horses in at least two ways. I can train dogs – and let me tell you, dogs being man’s best friend has absolutely nothing to do with ’emotional support animals’ and anyone who keeps stock will tell you that.
I can cook. I can cook, can, and clean with no electricity or running water. I can cook broadly with wild foods or what comes to hand and make it tasty and varied fare, and again, that’s a skill that is underrated but if you look at the stories of the early settlers and explorers, food was monotonous and… dangerous. Which is where my other special skills start coming into play. I’m a chemist and microbiologist with special interest in toxicology and infectious disease and parasites. I’m no doctor, but I have enough training for rude medic. I know how to handle and treat food so people don’t start dropping like flies from botulism or salmonella or cholera. I know how to dig an outhouse pit – and even more important, where to put it versus the house.
I have training in search and rescue (also usefully reversed to escape and evade), special training in leadership, and if it came to it, I know how to teach military drill and marching. We’d have to be in a very bad way to get me pulled into that, but I was trained in it and can train others. I used to play survival games in the woods for fun, including tracking and surveilling, just for giggles. I know how to build deadfalls and a number of other interesting obstacles to put on my trail that would make someone following me have to think twice. I know what plants are good to eat, and what to put in an enemy’s water to make him regret life. Weapons aren’t always physical. The most potent one is between your ears and it has amused me over the years to play at ‘what if?’ and read extensively on the same.
I’m not special. There’s a lot of us out here in rural America. But that’s what our job would be, if it came to it. To keep the home fires burning while our husbands, sons, fathers, and friends are out on the pointy ends. To keep body and soul together so they have hope to come home to. Because without hope, war becomes even more terrible. To some men, combat is a seductive mistress, and unimaginable horrors come when hope dies at home and they have no one to save themselves for, body and soul.
My job? If it comes to it? It’s to keep the hearth fire warm, but not only for my family. It’s to teach anyone I can how to survive this new and inimical world. I don’t give a flying flip who they are. Because the mewling quims who advocate for the abrogation of liberty that will lead to this mess have no idea what they are bringing down on themselves. They have no idea how long it will take for civilization to recover, if ever, and they have no idea that by wounding our nation, they would leave us crippled to the hyenas that circle looking to pull us all down into hell at the slightest opportunity. I have no illusions. If it comes, life as we know it will never be the same. And that means I have an obligation not to fight with my hands, but to use my head. To teach. To pass on dying arts that we can all live again. To keep the love of liberty and human rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness fresh in the minds of those who remain, that one day the dream we live in can again be a reality.
I pray the day will not come. I fear that it may. I stand ready to put the wood on the fire and to keep the embers banked until they come home, if the call for Liberty goes out across our land. I never swore an oath to the Constitution, but I was born under it, and by God, I’ll die under it.
Comments
21 responses to “Keep the Home Fires Burning”
Your point about the circling hyenas is a very good one as most of the talk about the possible civil war seems to believe it will happen in a vacuum.
Thank you for the eloquence of this post.
I wasn’t sure it was eloquent enough. Still not! But that’s a skill I left out. I can write about all of this, and do it in a way that hopefully makes sense to people. Communication is a key component in any history, although what would be left of the internet in the event of a breakdown? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s time to pull the essays together into a book.
Given the relative ease of movement, some bright boy would decide the homefires were an excellent target.
Not teaching history is a very, very dangerous thing.
Yes it is. Funny how I’ve been pounding that point over and over in recent blogs.
Hopefully it’ll get through to folks… everybody seems to be assuming a battlefield, when the hit-and-run type raiding seems so much more likely…..
I certainly have not been picturing a battlefield. I know what it will be, and a lot of it won’t be deliberate action, but unintended consequences of introducing chaos and allowing the lawless to run rampant.
*shudder* Yep.
Good article, Cedar. Similar thoughts have been on my mind (one reason why I have several older history books is to save the information for future generations). Also — after reading a bunch of military sci-fi with female fighters — I keep thinking along the same lines you are. Need stories about the women who keep the home-fires burning. They are just as important; without them, what is there to fight for?
I *did* swear an oath and because of the strange way my discharge ended up working out it was never formally released from it…
I think most veterans I know – including my husband and father – considered it a life oath.
If it happens sooner rather than later, the hyenas are likely to find themselves dragged down into it as our economic collapse brings down the global house of cards. You may have heard me opine that CW2 is going to be Bleeding Kansas everywhere, all at once. Pray you don’t live in an urban area if that comes to pass.
My opinion? 8-10 years, max.
Some of us need to live in the suburbs for multiple reasons. Medical issues, job, getting older. etc. I can see CW2 coming but it looks like it’d be the ultimate Charley Foxtrot. Being somewhat older(approaching 60), with chronic health issues like diabetes, arthritis etc, being a total city girl, it totally scares me. I put it out of mind because I don’t think that there’s much I can do about it. I’ve made some minor preps but that’s it.
There’s some clueless people in this country trying to knock the country down.
Good work, and dead on. I’m not convinced that it must happen, but I am convinced that it’s more likely than not (in the same way that a US/USSR nuclear exchange was more likely than not. We ducked that bullet, I pray we duck this one too.) Your point on the Hyenias is solid as well, and then there’s the big question you didn’t breach, the Nuclear one.
If this does go down, it won’t be a simple two value fight, it’ll make the 90s Balkans look simple by comparison. The “tribes” of inner city gangs, and groups have been kept mostly peaceful (for Chicago gangland violence values of peace). The reason they’ve been peaceful is the thin verneir of civilization and law enforcement.
We go civil war 2.0 that all collapses, and we see what real gang wars look like. At what point does “command athority”, through fear, or idiocy or the realization that they have lost something important to them, decide to open the ball with a bang?
In my best hopes about this most horible posibility (civil war 2.0) I see the strategic assets refusing all orders, and saying “we’re above this fray, and the first one of you outsiders that sticks your nose in, is going to be on the recieving end of our punch.” In my most nightmarish visions, a president who just lost D.C. to the gangs or one of the oposing armies from one of the sides, launches on DC on his way out.
I pray it never happens. I know that it could, and the Cold War analogy is a good one.
There are hyenas internal and external and the feasting on the corpse would be… I don’t have the words for it. I’m familiar with genocides and still don’t have the words. Nukes are the least of my concerns to be honest and they are a dreadful shadow over this possible future.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
–And removing the Scourging of the Shire from the movies, just removed the soul from the narrative.
why are post apocalyptic books so popular these days.?
Becasue even the head blind “punters”, “Suzy SocerMoms” and “Joe Sixpacks” can tell on some level how every out of kilter things are…
Post apoc books offer no relief for my depression. I want to read about better times not worse times.
Dang Cedar! This may be your best one yet. I wish that it felt a bit less prophetic…..
Thanks for this. My kids and theirs need to understand what’s written here.
Just teach them history, as close to how it really happened as possible. Take them through the Holocaust Museum if you ever get the chance. The parallels are chilling.