The ‘Totally Appropriate’ Tail Risk
It's not likely that Americans, as a body politic, will come to any kind of "consensus" in the near future vis-à-vis the correct course for the country going forward.
The nation will remain divided, and almost hopelessly so. That's a truly unfortunate state of affairs but, alas, it's the country's reality. And part of the reason why that's America's reality is precisely because large swaths of citizens have been conditioned to live in what I described Tuesday as an "alternative reality," which
Yes and no. You already have a rolling wave of right wing militias violence against federal agents in the midwest/rural areas (worthy side note : since they’re whites, they suffer no consequences)…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/09/us-capitol-attackers-violence-rural-west
… but it’s not televised either so does it even exist?
Imagine a hundred thousand McVeigh’s trying to find ways to upset applecarts… ok maybe a couple thousand… not that hard to find in 330 million. I’m not sure this is a tail risk. At this point I suspect we see sustained violent right wing terrorism. I suspect senators and congressman will continue saying the things Trump was even after he’s out of office as they’ve seen how well it plays. At some point we’ll need to consider impeaching a whole lot of elected representatives for supporting terrorism… that’s the next escalation as these “disenfranchised” right wingers will see it as authoritarianism and get even more amped.
I just saw these “patriots” were using go fund me to raise money for the attacks. This starts to look an awful lot more like Al Cracker than the initial jokes would have you think… Domestic terrorism is the status quo and might we see foreign actors begin sponsorships? Buckle up.
I don’t want to over expect on this, but we should have a reasonable expectation that the security apparatus within the US infiltrated the organized groups, and if so, probably some time back. This obviously, does not stop the lone wolf actors.
All said, it is conceivable that innocents are going to get swept up in forthcoming confrontations. Not immediately, but I’m thinking about things like power to cell towers turned off and gas stations closed, and units go in and make arrests after having obtained warrants. No television news crews this time.
Possible second- or third-order effect…non-violent drug offenders are released from prisons to free bandwidth in the judicial system for prosecutions of insurrectionists. Obviously, many of the drug-related offenders in federal cells are violent, or otherwise committed crimes that are heinous. All the while, it’s conceivable that we see a shift in resources away from one war and on to the new war. Let’s hope the new war is more effectiveness than the drug war we wind down.
All wars are a war on human nature.
Democracy is the only hope for freedom to alleviate masters and slaves.
Six sigma quality management is often considered to be the gold standard. In a normal distribution six sigma leaves a tail risk of 0.0000034, a seemingly infinitesimally small number but in the US that would include 330,000 people who might want to do something beyond comprehension. Only 1% of the population is 3.3 million. Not a small number. The tail risk is bigger than we all think.