Aug 3

Aug 3 Time to load up on canned goods & ammunition? America creeps toward Armageddon By James Bruno

We need to worry about the steadily building tension that, with no brakes, will lead us to widespread civil violence.

Just after the MAGA-mob assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, police arrested an Alabama man whose truck was parked nearby. In the truck were hundreds of rounds of ammunition, five illegal firearms, including an AR-15 rifle, a large capacity magazine and napalm-filled Molotov cocktails. The previous evening an unidentified person planted pipe bombs by the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties, and remains at large. Again, law enforcement acted in the nick of time.

The Department of Homeland Security issued an intelligence bulletin to state and local law enforcement partners last month warning of increasing chances for violent extremist attacks this summer. Domestic violent extremists eager to foment a race war “may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States,” it said. The FBI added that the fact that 20 of those arrested for participating in the January 6 insurrection are QAnon adherents “underscores how the current environment likely will continue to act as a catalyst for some to begin accepting the legitimacy of violent action.”

“There are also concerns about the level of infiltration,” a source told CNN. “This mindset is not really as fringe as we would all probably like for it to be. These people are in civil society, they’re in public-sector jobs and positions of authority, and that’s troubling.”

“What's scary is that these groups have specialized training, they have access to weapons, and the rage is shocking and overwhelming,” another source said.

Many ex-military and law enforcement-trained agitators are skilled in encrypted communications and security tradecraft - or what the professionals call, COMSEC and OPSEC. We witnessed some of these in action at the Capitol insurrection.

So, should we be worried?

Absolutely.

God knows how many military-and-police-trained Timothy McVeigh-wannabes are out there scheming and training to carry out violent acts. Primary targets are government officials and facilities, racial minorities and activists on the left.

My own training and experiences as a Foreign Service officer and intelligence analyst alert me to the heightened danger. The Indicators & Warnings (I&W) signals are blinking bright red.

I had reported my concerns last December (“Bring On the Firing Squads”):

There’s a bad moon rising in this country. Our democracy is endangered. Our society is fraying at the seams. We’re becoming Weimar America, Americans battling Americans.

I’ve seen this movie before, but not here, having lived through coups d’état, guerrilla attacks, kidnappings, terrorist attacks and fatwas to assassinate American diplomats. In almost all cases, there were warning signs of oncoming violence - like volatile Nebraska wind storms. Something doesn’t seem right. Locals are cringing, animals fidget, cars are racing through the streets, sound of gunfire.

For my money, the film that best portrays this gathering storm tension is The Year of Living Dangerously. A slow boil tension builds as unseen forces maneuver in 1965 Jakarta in the lead-up to the violent coup that ousted Sukarno. The viewer can almost sweat along with the protagonists, Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, amid the sweltering tropical heat and raw suspense. Something’s about to break and it ain’t good. Neither the foreign journalists nor diplomats have a firm grasp on what’s happening, which makes the suspense that much more taut.

Adding to the volatile mix is the yet-to-be-revealed role Donald Trump and his GOP politician acolytes may have played in instigating the January 6 riot as well as any behind-the-scenes machinations currently underway.

The far-right also now has in Ashli Babbitt - the woman fatally shot in the 1/6 assault - a martyr who was, according to Rep. Peter Gosar, “executed.” Babbitt is to the U.S. extreme right what Horst Wessel was to the Third Reich - a powerful martyred symbol of The Cause around which to rally and mobilize followers.

Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a seminal essay on The Paranoid Style in American Politics in 1964 in which he posited, “in a populistic culture like ours...a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.”

The fact is, perhaps half the American population resides in a parallel information universe, “in the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge,” in the words of Rod Serling. We read the articles and listen attentively to the pundits who try to explain the genesis of this bifurcation of reality. We’ve never been here before as a nation. Even the catalysts leading up to the Civil War were based in essentially rational factors like slavery and states’ rights, not lunatic fabulism such as QAnon.

Our law enforcement agencies have done a superlative job of rooting out and aborting incipient terrorist acts. But they cannot be expected to nail the bad guys 100 percent of the time. It takes just one lone wolf Timothy McVeigh, or an actually competent cabal of Three Percenters to pull off a single spectacular act of violence like Oklahoma City 1995.

What we need to worry about is the steadily building tension that, with no brakes, will lead us to widespread civil violence. You may dismiss talk of a coup d’état and Trump’s nattering about returning to power as the fleeting imaginings of crackpots.

I hope this is true. But call this ex-fed anxious.

James Bruno (@JamesLBruno) served as a diplomat with the U.S. State Department for 23 years and is currently a member of the Diplomatic Readiness Reserve. An author and journalist, Bruno has been featured on CNN, NBC’s Today Show, Fox News, Sirius XM Radio, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, and other national and international media.