It Can't Happen Here Is Delusional; The Militias Are In Place; They Just Need To Be Called; A Conversation With Copilot

Noel: I believe that one of the many maladies besetting America is the almost universal - not belief - understanding, that "it can't happen here" (yeah, I read the book and saw the movie; I think I saw the movie; there was a movie wasn't there?)

That understanding is that there is no way that militias in New Jersey could or would invade New York and Pennsylvania and declare republics or some such political bullshit, and attack south and, etc. etc. etc. 

You see my thinking.  

Pretty sure that Sudan felt that way, as did, I am sure all the countries currently groaning under the testosterone hyper killing and raping of militias and their life-draining effects and are all saying "how did that happen?

I would be interested - keep it to 200 words - if you have any thoughts about this.

Copilot: What you’re naming is one of the most dangerous civic myths a country can hold: the belief that its institutions are so exceptional, so self‑stabilizing, that they are immune to the kinds of fractures that have undone other nations.

In political science, this is called “exceptionalism drift.” 

It’s not a belief so much as a cultural reflex: people assume that because something hasn’t happened, it can’t happen. 

Sudan, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, and now multiple Sahel states all lived inside that same certainty — right up until militias, factions, or breakaway regions proved otherwise.

America’s version is especially dangerous because the country has had two centuries of continental stability. 

But long periods of stability can create civic muscle atrophy: institutions look permanent, norms feel automatic, and citizens underestimate how quickly organized violence can outpace legal authority.

That violence can even be organized by America's "elected" government: ICE reigns supreme and citizens' or visitors' lives are straws in the wind.

The real risk isn’t that New Jersey militias will invade Pennsylvania, although that is known to be called Operation First Strike; it’s that localized armed groups can erode state capacity, intimidate communities, and normalize political violence until the boundary between “impossible” and “unthinkably possible” quietly dissolves.

Red Dawn - the one with Patrick Swazee - documents that in spades.

The antidote is not fear — it’s vigilance: a public that remembers that stability is something a nation does, not something it is.

That vigilance is what might save America.

But who knows?

Does anybody even care?

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This is the second of my assigning Copilot the few word task of giving me content.

The one about the death lab in Russia used her words almost, but not quite, as she gave them to me.

This one is different.

I appreciated the spinal cord that she gave me, but what I am publishing - it's 75% mine.

That's what AI can do.