I’m working on a presentation about the plans American tech oligarchs have for ending democracy by accelerating the collapse of the US and then turning the country into a patchwork of corporate-controlled authoritarian city-states (which are being called “Freedom Cities” because we all love George Orwell, just for different reasons), and a quote from one of the masterminds of this project really sticks with me:

I think that actually the support of the democratic public is a cipher. I think that all you need is command of the police.

~ Curtis Yarvin

Yarvin also says that “wards” (people who aren’t being paid enough to survive) should be put in “virtual reality prisons” and jokes about grinding them up to turn them into biodiesel.

The problem with Yarvin’s take on the police is that he is correct. The modern police force in America is the descendant of two villainous historical institutions: Slave catchers and strike breakers. Slave catchers were there to protect the property rights of slave owners and to reassure white people that they would be protected from the actions of escaped slaves (who were presumed to be terribly dangerous). Strike breakers were there to make sure that working class people never had enough power to resist the authority of the opulent minority (capitalists). Moreover, modern American police have become a standing army, ever-present, always armed, with fully automatic weapons and even tanks at the ready.

You may remember that the founders of the American republican did not think highly of standing armies.

What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. …Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.

~ Elbridge Gerry,  Fifth Vice President of the United States

Whenever the subject of “the militia” comes up (usually in the context of the Second Amendment), liberals shrug off the idea, saying that it is an old-timey concept that no longer applies in our modern world. Nothing could be further from the truth. The militia was meant to be made up of all citizens and its entire purpose was to prevent the creation of a standing army by serving an army’s functions with people who have real jobs. The militia is meant to respond to real problems, solve those problems, and then put their guns away and go back to work. In contrast, a standing army is always ready to respond to pretend problems created by warmongering political psychopaths with real violence — and it never puts down its guns.

A standing army lowers the opportunity cost of violence because it means that the public (who is funding the violence) and the politicians (who are deciding who receives that violence) don’t have to participate in the violence — and don’t have to risk injury or death. They don’t even have to worry about the expense of maintaining weapons, and the general cost is spread out over the entire population instead of being borne by those who want the violence. As one example of this, settlers in the American west got along with the Native Americans fairly well; they acknowledged that Native Americans had the right to their lands and because violence is risky, they had very little motivation to steal native territory. That all changed in the 19th century when the US established a standing army. Suddenly, the army could take care of the violence instead of the settlers, and the settlers decided they would just take everything.

Related: The Standing Army: A Threat to Peace

Leftists are not the only ones who acknowledge that the creation of a standing army (including the modern model for policing) was a mistake. Many on the right, and especially in right-libertarian spaces agree as well.

The alternative is a militia made up of all citizens. This is not a band of camouflaged fascists running around in the woods hiding from black helicopters. This also is not a leftist org standing around with rifles to protect protesters from right wing violence. The militia — the intended militia — is a militia of every single citizen. Had this concept been upheld, the militia would have integrated new citizens into itself as new groups of people became recognized as citizens (e.g., when Black people got the vote, they also would have been integrated into the militia, the same for women). The current way this idea is being expressed is “2A for All”. Karl with InRangeTV covered it fairly well here.

Liberals imagine that if you constructed a society with a militia of all rather than a police force, you’ll have gun fights in the streets all day long. I will concede that if you took the America of today and suddenly got rid of cops, it would be a real mess; nobody is suggesting that we do that. The proposal, rather, is to gradually adjust how society works, and one slow adjustment would be the establishment of a militia of all citizens. While certainly some people would not be able to provide this function for their community, a healthy militia can’t be made up only of a handful of people with particular political ideas — it must do a good job of representing everyone.

There’s a good example of how to do this in the Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch Program (LHSWP) which was formed in response to a bunch of neo-nazis who showed up in nazi outfits, carrying nazi flags and weapons. The group says that they are not a militia, which is accurate based on the common understanding of what a militia is, but this group is exactly the kind of militia that we ought to have more of. Specifically, it is made up of people from the community it serves, the participants are not professional military or police, and the group does not have any kind of special legal standing. Unlike police who patrol areas outside of their own neighborhood, LHSWP knows the people in their community. Unlike police who have policing as a career, the members of LHSWP are not paid by anyone and are therefore not beholden to the person who controls the money. Unlike police who have special legal standing, LHSWP have to be careful not to violate the rights of the other people in the community that they encounter.

The liberal counterargument to Second Amendment ideas is that among the modern, civilized public, voting is the only valid political activity, but voting carries exactly the same complexities. The idea that everyone should vote is predicated on the assumption that everyone knows enough to vote. That idea has been soundly defeated by the elections of 2016, 2020, and 2024. What’s happening is that people who have been ignoring politics out of a combination of sheer laziness, a belief that politics are beneath them, and the narcissistic assumption that they already know everything are making really, really stupid decisions when it comes to voting — such as voting for Democrats and voting for Republicans. But rather than encourage those who are wallowing in ignorance to simply not vote, the correct solution is to encourage them to educate themselves and then (and only then) take part in electoral politics.

If you leave power sitting on the table, someone is going to take it. It doesn’t matter if that is electoral power, martial power, intellectual power, or some other kind of power. Today’s untenable political disaster is the direct result of millions of people leaving various types of power sitting on the table to be claimed by whoever happens by. If you are scared to take power, or find it to be too much work, please consider how frightening it is, and how much work it requires, when a bunch of unhinged, fascist idiots takes over instead. I’m only suggesting that the police should be replaced as society’s official agents of violence. I’m not suggesting that things like police detectives, the court system, or laws should be eliminated.

This is the world the left wants: A world where most people are competent with firearms and voting. A world where the people hold the power, instead of a tiny group of oligarchs wielding the overpowered military and administrative functions of the government against working class people here and abroad. Anyone opposed to that vision is an enemy of the people whether they intend to be or not.