So you want a civil war, huh?

Think you can sit back and watch the fireworks, huh?

One night when I was in the service I had a long, boring night of duty as a radio watch. The evening wasn't very busy and the senior NCO was a man with a thick Hungarian accent that had immigrated (legally) to the States.

He had been a participant in the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and told me about burning a couple of Russian soldiers to death simply by pouring gasoline on them from a second story porch and tossing a burning rag atop them. If I recall he was sixteen years old at the time and he said he never lost any sleep over it because they were legitimate combatants.

What caused him nightmares were the civilian deaths he saw.

He had a couple relatives murdered by the Soviets because someone that didn't like them reported them to the Russians as being involved with the Hungarian rebels. The squealers were promptly found out about and were murdered by the Hungarian rebels, the entire family. Men, women and children.

Both sides played for keeps and innocence or guilt had nothing to do with it. It was common knowledge among the troops that he had problems sleeping and the guys attributed it to Vietnam. He quietly told me otherwise that night. He had been assigned to some headquarters or another in Vietnam and had not been in extensive combat in Vietnam.

A few years back I ran into a man from Eastern Europe that had been through s civil war in the Balkens. He was an American citizen now and a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and confessed he had some thing 'put away' in case of trouble here.

He described a world where he had been burned out and his family had retreated to a relatives where everyone banded together. He explained that the very first thing he acquired was an AK-47 for home defense and insurance. 

He described to me a world gone mad where money was next to useless, the public utilities out of commission and lawlessness the norm. People were being murdered over something as petty as a can of spaghetti. The economy was pretty much all barter and stealing and robbing were quite the norm.

They hauled water from a nearby river and their toilet was a five gallon lidded bucket that was emptied into a hole dug in the yard and buried periodically. They didn't even have bathroom tissue.

He said his AK-47 accompanied him everywhere when he did business to make sure the deals he made were kept on the up and up. He'd actually have his relatives armed in the background to assure there were no shenanigans. Simply trading for food to eat was a risky proposition. 

In the house he lived in and adult was always up, armed and alert at all times. It was one hell of a place to live. He spoke of the bodies of men, women and children littering the streets on a regular basis. His immediate neighborhood was an armed camp. Gunfire rang out periodically at all sorts of odd hours.

Of course, if you are in a middle or upper middle class neighborhood you think you are safe. You're not. This guy had been in upper management of a fairly large company and his upper middle class neighborhood and his home bad been burned.

Then again there are some of you that picture a civil war where the men all go off to someplace far away and line up like they did at Gettysburg and shoot it out.

Guess again. It won't happen that way. 

A civil war isn't anything like you picture it. It will be a giant $hit sandwich and every single one of us is going to have to take a big bite.

Make sure you really do want a civil war before you talk about one.











To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY