Zombie Patriots and other musings

[John Kelsey]

At 09:19 AM 12/12/03 -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
...
>You need to think about the "lone warrior" scenario that the Gang
>worries about.  McVeighs and Rudolphs.
>They were influenced by memes which were not immediately suppressed.

One interesting property of the lone warriors is that they can't actually 
make peace.  With large sets of them, there's not only no way to force them 
to surrender, there's no way to even surrender to them!  The demands of 
different lone warriors are different.  Because they're not under anyone's 
authority, you can't negotiate a truce that's worth anything with 
them.  You've executed the FBI and BATF agents involved in the Waco 
disaster, and so Tim McVeigh has made peace with you.  But Randolph still 
blows things up, because he wants abortion clinics and gay bars shut 
down.  And the Unabomber wanted (as far as I can tell) technology shut down.

Of course, there's a more fundamental problem with surrendering to the lone 
warriors.  Imagine that there's such a wave of pro-life terrorism that we 
finally agree to ban abortion.  You're a fanatically committed pro-choice 
activist.  What's your next move?

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
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