Yesterday, Western Rifle Shooters Association suggested looking up the definition of "confidence target." I found not only an explanation of the term, but an interesting article to boot. The article should be of interest to you because it is written by someone claiming to be a former Green Beret who is all in for mentoring the Leftists of today.
The article is "The Confidence Target — a political metaphor salad" by Stan Goff and published by Medium. Goff begins:
It’s been 30 years since I went through the Special Forces Qualification Course at the age of 38–9, but it’s a pretty durable memory. Mine lasted about 63 months, and the final phase was a four-week exercise called Robin Sage. That may have changed, no idea now, but the Robin Sage scenario was that we were to train a foreign civilian force to conduct guerrilla operations. In Army-speak this type of mission — in real life — was categorized as Unconventional Warfare, or UW. The idea was that we were to train people — and training foreigners turned out to be a big part of my Special Forces period — who had little to no experience of weapons and tactics. One of the concepts we employed for UW was called “the confidence target.”
A confidence target is a relatively easy first target taken down with a relatively simple plan, under supervision, but which hopefully starts the new guerrillas’ careers with a win that bolsters their confidence for more challenging targets. Then the force can improve and grow, even with a few setbacks. With a good foundation and a success, they are less likely to break up in the face of challenges later. Like training wheels. We’ll remove them soon after. When they have a sense of their own strength and competence.
He then wanders off into the topic of how important is this upcoming election, but then returns to the topic of the title of his article:
The election is important for electing people, but it is also valuable for shaking down and tweaking this millennial left as a fighting force. We are practicing and gathering allies for the future. The 2016 election was somewhat like that confidence target. We were doing and learning at the same time. When this began in 2016, it looked like a race to the finish line phenomenon. I didn’t and don’t see it that way.
The election is one move in the game of Go. Others didn’t see it as a football game either, where when the clock runs out, everybody packs up and leaves. They saw this as a key tactic to conquer key terrain in a larger movement, one that includes colonizing the moribund Democratic Party (understood as the conquest of terrain en route to more primary objectives).
When Sanders came within striking distance of the pre-coronated Clinton in 2016, the movement — to its credit — did not pack up and go home. They left that field and blasted into local elections, and they started making more and more connections to various on-the-ground initiatives. The Sanderistas did not lose the 2016 election, their forces advanced significantly into the Democratic Party — which has to be seen not merely as an institution, but as hostile terrain which we have to cross to arrive at primary objectives.
The millennial left gained a sense of its own power, and to its credit, it hasn’t been shaken from its sense of mission. Given that we could see the world start to cook down in less than two decades, I can’t blame them. We need that intransigent mission-focus, and the key thing this movement has accomplished — organization.
He warns his readers, however, that "We may have to take great risks . . . throwing sand in the gears of another four-year stint with the clown fascist government. It could get even worse than that, so we need to be ready. (Study tradecraft, especially non-technical means of communication!)"
I've said before that we are seeing a revolution or power struggle within the Democratic party, and that is confirmed by this article. If they achieve political power, that revolution will be turned outward.
Very disturbing essay and it is the "matter-of-fact" tone of Liberals that I've always found so striking. I've long said that in the future USA, there will be a three party system instead of the traditional two that we have becomed accustomed to. It will consist of a radical Left...a moderate Left...and an inconsequential Conservative Party. The Conservative Party will be mostly symbolic and lacking the numerical clout to win a majority in any branch of government...sort of like the Liberatarian Party has been for the past few decades. Former Republican voters will eventually become supporters of the Center Left because, at that point, it will be a lesser of two evils contest. With that type of society looming in our not so far off future, I see a Trump win in November not so much as a victory, but merely stalling the process and buying us another 4 years. Even if Trump wins, the leftward drift of society and the system is still in motion. Then there's the House and Senate elections of 2020. There's not much use in having a Republican President in the White House if the Democrats completely control the House and Senate. Overall, the prognosis is grim. During the prosperous 80's, 90's and early 00's, while we all were focused on earning beaucoup bucks and acquiring more toys and bigger houses...the Left had infiltrated the education system at all levels and indoctrinated at least two generations of kids who now vote. The process is still continuing today from kindergarten and college. Those are the voters of the future...and they are augmented by a massive (and still growing) immigrant population. IMHO it is an unstoppable movement and the best we can do is to stall it as much as possible. Being of middle age, I for one want to finish the last half of my life in the same type of surroundings as I was born into and grew up in.
ReplyDeleteI agree. We are, metaphorically, fighting a delaying action. I see only a handful of routes forward, and all of them result in civil war and/or Balkanization. One is that things continue as they are--conservatives become locked out of power, the country continues to become more ethnically diverse, the POC coalition breaks down as being anti-white becomes less significant and as economic misery increases under a socialist system, and the country Balkanizes (including the predominantly Hispanic states demanding autonomy or independence). Two is that there is a Constitutional crises with this election or in the near future, and the country Balkanizes. Three, things continue on the same course, but the economic situation becomes so terrible and the civil unrest so dire, that the country welcomes a dictator who will, with an iron fist, put down disorder. This may or may not involve cattle cars and death camps for a disfavored group (political, religious, ethnic, or a mix). Five, some disaster (natural disaster, war, and/or economic) strikes the country that is so terrible that survival requires rejection of the r-selected liberal traits and a backlash against those promoting r-selected traits.
DeleteThe reason that I don't see any peaceful solution is that the Left has moved so far Left that commonality and rapprochement is impossible. The Left has become the antithesis of all that is good. And the elite are so focused on globalization that they don't care about any individual people or country.