Ko-Ko Kamala And The Kalorama Kommissar

They never would be missed:

Vice President Kamala Harris keeps a list of reporters and other political types who might be racist, according to a profile published in the Atlantic on Monday.

“The vice president and her team tend to dismiss reporters. Trying to get her to take a few questions after events is treated as an act of impish aggression,” writes Edward-Isaac Dovere. “And Harris herself tracks political players and reporters whom she thinks don’t fully understand her or appreciate her life experience.”

In important ways, the less said about Harris’s life experiences, the better. But while most may not consider her an old school politician, her little list is straight outta 1885:

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found
I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!

List keeping is kind of a thing for our current leadership and their mentors. Consider this exchange from a previous administration:

“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told [Oregon Congressman] DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.

I don’t doubt it for a second. Nor should you.

6 thoughts on “Ko-Ko Kamala And The Kalorama Kommissar”

“They’ll never be missed” can easily morph into “he needed killing.” That should bother people more than it seems to.

Decades ago, I sat in a poli-sci discussion group tasked with this question: “Pretend you are the leaders of a guerilla movement intent on overthrowing the legitimate government of the State of Minnesota. How many people must The Movement assassinate to do it?” The list wasn’t as long as you’d think.

It’s obviously never going to happen: it was a thought experiment intended to illustrate how concepts from Burke and Hobbes contrast with Locke and Rosseau in striking a balance between Order and Liberty – can’t have one without the other – and how fragile the balance between them remains.

But I remember the list, at least part of it. Everyone knows it goes from Governor to Lt. Governor, etc., but that’s not the complete list. You’d also need to gain control of the courts, the police, the media.

But not even all of them. A district court judge sitting in Lac Que Parle county isn’t much of a threat, nor the Chief of Police in Sleepy Eye nor the perky weather girl on Channel 45. The Mayor of St. Paul might respond better to threats against his children than outright killing. Certain legislators might be bribe-able, or blackmail-able, or otherwise persuaded to resign. It might be possible to destroy political order in the state by eliminating fewer than 100 key officials and intimidating the rest.

Not that you’re going to be able to take over, necessarily. The assignment was simply to overthrow the existing power structure. Look at the No Go Zones in Portland or Seattle or even Minnepolis for examples. Who takes over after the existing order is gone – that’s a later assignment.

At the time, we were looking at the tactics used by guerillas in Vietnam and Central America as well as our own Civil and Revolutionary Wars, but nowadays we could supplement them with tactics used by Mexican narco-terrorist and Gulf War insurgents and Afghanistan rebels (nobody talked about IEDs in the 1970’s, nobody could imagine insurgency without them today).

What if the discussion was no longer a college bull session, but an active response to overbearing, heavy-handed, in-your-face government? What if the discussion group assignment was:

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Describe in detail.”

This should frighten people more than it seems to.

Nope, I am scared sh*tless Joe, I think the other side is going to push too far, and they don’t understand the possible outcomes. They want us dis-armed and silent, just obedient peasants. And they think we will go along quietly with that.

The response I usually get is: “The police will protect us.”

In round numbers, St. Paul has 600 sworn officers for a city of 300,000 and Minneapolis has 817 slots but only 638 active sworn officers for a city of 430,000. 1,200 cops to protect nearly a million people spread out over 100 squre miles and the cops can’t all be on-duty all the time, which explains why carjackings and shootings are at an all-time high.

So get help, right? There are 13,000 Minnesota National Guard and another 9,000 cops scattered across the rest of the state. Call up all of them and that’s about 20,000 cops/troops guarding 5 million people spread out over 80,000 square miles but while they’re guarding you, who’s guarding the cops’ homes, their families? Guerilla tactics, remember? The purpose of terrorism is to create terror. Don’t have to kill every cop’s child in order for the remaining cops to get the message: don’t answer the call, tell them you’re sick, take disability retirement, stay home and protect your own families.

Meanwhile, there were 800,000 deer hunting licenses issued, every one of those hunters – by definition – a killer who is accustomed to stalking his/her prey. If even 2% of them got riled up enough . . . .

People aren’t scared of where this could go. They should be.