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I live in the United States. Home of the brave, land of the mass shootings. Last year, a homophobic shithead shot up a gay club. A day or two later, a racist shithead shot up a Walmart. Before that, we had like three fucking school shootings in a row. And every time a mass shooting happens (which is an almost weekly occurrence at this point,) you get the familiar chorus of talking points. The liberal Democrats will decry this country’s lack of gun control laws. Sure, they’d love to pass some, but the mean old Republicans won’t let them. That’s the Democrats favorite refrain. “We’d love to do something about this very important issue. We just caaaaaaannnnnn’t. Now give us money and votes!” The conservative Republicans, on the other hand, will say that the ridiculous proliferation of and ease of access to deadly weapons in this country is not actually a problem, and what we really need is more Jesus. Or whatever the NRA (National Rifle Association – a lobbying organization that represents the firearms industry) tells them to say.

Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to happen and the victims, along with their families and friends, end up being little more than shields for half baked talking points.

The reason gun control laws don’t really work is because they tend to be very localized. You can outlaw anything even resembling a gun in Chicago, but that doesn’t really make much of a difference when you can drive like two hours to fucking Wisconsin and buy an arsenal. So any kind of gun control legislation absolutely has to be done on a federal level. Otherwise, it’s not going to make a bit of difference.

One big problem is the issue of illegal guns. How exactly do you regulate firearms that are obtained illegally? No amount of ID requirements, background checks, and mandatory waiting periods is going to make a damn bit of difference to someone who is acquiring their firearm through illegal means. So how do you address that?

Well, it’s actually  kinda simple. The best way to reduce illegal gun ownership is to reduce legal gun ownership. The fewer legal guns there are in circulation, the fewer guns there are to steal and/or misuse. With fewer firearms being legally obtainable, the fewer firearms are going to be produced. The fewer firearms are being produced, the fewer firearms can make their way into the hands of criminals. It’s important to remember that illegaly obtained firearms don’t magically appear out of thin air. They are produced legally in a factory.

Unfortunately, this approach has some pretty big drawbacks. For one, outlawing the manufacture of new firearms does nothing to address the existence of firearms that have already been produced. You could outlaw the possession of firearms, but now you just turned a whole lot of law abiding citizens into criminals overnight. Best case scenario, whoever enacts this law loses their next election. Worst case scenario, they lose their head.

When we think of illegally obtained firearms, we usually imagine some kind of shady deal taking place in a back alley. But most illegally obtained weapons aren’t bought from a weird guy in a trehcncoat. They are stolen. Most school shootings are committed by kids, and most kids can’t exactly afford to buy a gun on the street. That shit is EXPENSIVE! So what’s an aspiring school shooter to do? Simple! They just use their dad’s gun! The kid ends up either committing suicide, getting shot by police, or going to prison for a really long time. But what happens to the person whose gun was used in the commission of the crime? Usually? Nothing.

It’s really not that hard to keep your gun out of your kid’s hands. Gun safes, trigger locks, and really tall shelves exist. If a kid is able to get ahold of their parent’s firearm and use it to shoot up a school, the weapon’s legal owner should at the very least be charged as an accompllice. Children don’t have fully formed brains and tend to make shitty rash decisions. That’s the kind of behavior we expect from a child. Adults, on the other hand, are held to a higher standard, and rightfully so. If you are an adult and a child was able to gain access to your firearm and use it to hurt someone, that blood is on your hands. There is absolutely no excuse for a child being able to gain access to an adult’s firearm. Until these adults start being held responsible, nothing will change. Once a couple of shitty dads end up doing time because Junior shot up his school with their gun, others will start being a lot more careful about how and where they store their guns. A robust background check database doesn’t achieve this. Having skin in the game, on the other hand, very much does.

Finally, gun control laws are not wihtout flaw. For example, what kind of gun control laws do you pass? An assault wepaons ban? Sounds great. Now define a fucking assault weapon. People do (and should) have a right to defend themselves. People do (and should) have the right to own and use firearms for recreational purposes. Whehter it’s target shooting, hunting, or what have you. So, again, how do you limit that?

Then you have the fact that gun control laws (at least as they currently exist) are inherently discriminatory. Preventing felons from owning firearms sounds like a great “no shit” idea. Until you start thinking about it a little more. Most people, when they hear the word “felon” think of someone who probably killed a guy, tried to kill a guy, robbed someone at gunpoint, shit like that. We automaticlaly imagine someone who is violent and dangerous and absolutely should not have access to firearms. But a TON of things classify as a felony that have nothing to do with violence. Got caught with a joint ten years ago? Congratulations, you are a felon now and can’t own firearms!

So you say “OK, well let’s just apply it to violent felons.” OK, what classifies as a violent felony? Get in a fistfight when you were 20 years old? You’re a violent felon now. Say goodbye to some of your basic constitutional rights for the rest of your life because you were a shithead at 20.

Then there’s the concept of restorative justice. If you do a crime, and you do the time, should you really continue ot be punished for the rest of your days? You’re never really free then. The stripping away of constitutional rights just seems like a very extra judicial way of fucking people over. Especially when you consider the fact that our so called “Justice” system is racist as fuck and minorities get railroaded over bullshit offenses ALL THE TIME. Gun control laws included. Hell, the main reason we had gun control in this country in the first place (and it had broad political support0 is because black people started arming themselves to protect their communities from racist cops. Implementing strict gun control laws, without addresisng the issues of systemic racism is only going to give cops a pretext to shoot even more black people.

These mass shootings aren’t happening in a vacuum. We’re seeing a spike in mass shootings at a time of extreme inequality and wealth disparity. The best way to address mass shootings in my opinion isn’t to outlaw guns. It’s to make sure that people’s basic needs are met. So many of these shootings are motivated by racism, antisemitism, or some form of conspiratorial thinking. That kind of thinking tends to bloom in times like these. When people’s basic needs aren’t met, they tend to look for someone to blame. Who do you think they’re more likely to blame? A complex system of levers, pulleys, sticks, and carrots that is designed to keep them barely scraping by while exploiting their labor for profit, and one from which they may have tangentially benefited? Or the Jews? Especially when they are being bombarded with megatons of fucking propaganda on a daily basis that is expertly designed to make them reach those exact conclusions.

Make sure that people’s basic needs are met and mass shootings will decrease. They won’t go away (they will never go away) because as long as there are people there will be shitheads. But you’ll get much better results than you will with gun control legislation, which is little more than a neoliberal bandaid on the gaping wound of capitalism.

I’m a big fan of military history. Always have been. Especially if it has to do with pointy objects; swords, spears, and the like. It’s no surprise, then, that I am a big fan of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. Maybe “fan” isn’t the best word, since they did a lot of really shitty things (mostly of the murder variety), but I certainly find them interesting and fascinating.

I’ve seen quite a few social media discussions over the years where the subject of Genghis Khan’s Mongols facing medieval European knights. Military history fans certainly love their fantasy match ups, and it’s easy to see why this one would be so appealing. After all, the Mongol cavalry wiped the floor with any force they faced in Asia. They absolutely dominated the continent. No one seemed to have an answer for them. By the same token, mounted, heavily armored knights dominated European warfare. They were an absolute force of nature. Imagine those two forces meeting on the field of battle. How badass would that be? Thing is, you don’t have to imagine. It’s already happened.

In the early 1240s, Genghis Khan’s star general, Tsubodai (Subutai), invaded Europe with around 20,000, maybe 30,000, men. At this point in time, the Mongols knew next to nothing about lands to the west and Tsubodai was essentially sent to scout and gather intel. This wasn’t supposed to be an invasion. More of a reconnaissance expedition. A fact finding mission, if you will. In the process of conducting this fact finding mission, the Mongols went ahead and absolutely spanked several major medieval European armies.

Many people who like to theorize about fictional potential military encounters between the Mongols and European knights generally believe that the knights would prevail. The Mongols’ main weapon was the bow and arrow. This is what made them famous and what built their empire. They were highly skilled archers and horsemen, often having spent their entire lives perfecting these disciplines. This had served them well against their enemies in China and Asia Minor, but how much use could simple archery possibly be against heavily armored knights? After all, the knights had encountered archery before. It wasn’t exactly a novel concept in Europe. But how would the Mongols do against the latest in chain mail and plate armor technology? Chinese lacquer armor was one thing, but this was the finest European steel we’re talking about here! Surely it would give the Mongols a fair bit of trouble.

Not so fast. Let’s talk about the Mongol bows for a moment. These weren’t your run of the mill bows that were common in Europe at the time. Mongol bows had a draw strength between 80 and 120 pounds (hard to pin down exactly, since so few reliable records exist), and had a maximum range of around 500 yards. How powerful is that in real world terms? More powerful than the famed English longbow. That’s pretty impressive.

On top of that, the Mongols at this time weren’t your average, run of the mill, archers. These guys were highly skilled warriors, with a lifetime of constant training under their belt. They spent their life in the saddle and trained with the bow every single day. This resulted in these guys not only being able to shoot their extremely powerful bows with ease, but they were able to do so for long periods of time, at a high rate of speed, and with great accuracy. This enabled the Mongols to put a lot of flying steel in the air in a very short amount of time, while staying safely out of the reach of their enemies. That kind of firepower was absolutely devastating. Even the finest European plate armor stood little chance in the face of Mongol bows.

By comparison, the common European bow would do for hunting or fighting an enemy wearing little to no armor. They weren’t very powerful and didn’t have much of a range. This wasn’t really a problem for European armies, since they had crossbows. A crossbow was a pretty popular ranged weapon in medieval Europe because it was more powerful than most bows and required a lot less training. Not only did this make it easier for medieval European armies to put large numbers of crossbowmen in the field; it also made them easy to replace. If an archer went down in battle, he couldn’t be easily replaced, while pretty much anyone could pick up a crossbow, point it at the enemy, and shoot. Even with very little training, a massed block of crossbowmen could still do some serious damage.

Tsubodai figured this out pretty quickly and decided that he wanted no part of these crossbowmen. While the Mongol bows had superior range to European crossbows, the presence of the latter still made it risky trying to close with the enemy. Tsubodai didn’t have 100,000 warriors at his disposal like he was used to when he faced the Chin back in Asia, and he couldn’t very well afford to waste his men. Now you might wonder why the crossbowmen were even a concern, given that the Mongol bows had superior range. Why would the Mongols even need to close with their enemy? Well, if they didn’t close with the enemy, how would they execute their favorite battlefield stratagem, the feigned retreat?

Mongols (and Tsubodai in particular) were very wily strategists. Even though they were usually outnumbered during their European campaign (and quite a few of their Asian ones), they still usually came out on top, thanks to superior strategy. Whereas the medieval European armies would generally seek to meet their opponent on the field of battle, launch a frontal assault, and rely on their force of arms to carry the day, the Mongols sought out every tiny tactical advantage they could exploit. They even used their enemies’ own ferocity against them. In medieval warfare, most of the battle casualties were suffered when one side decided that they’d had enough, broke, and ran. The victors would then run them down and kill as many as they could. The Mongols were keenly aware of this fact and used it to their advantage with great success.

In the heat of battle, the Mongols would signal a retreat, and almost as one, turn back and run. Their enemies, thinking that the Mongols had lost their will to fight, would pursue, relishing their impending victory. Only, it never came. The retreat was a ruse. The Mongols would use the feigned retreat to get their enemies to pursue them, thereby breaking formation, and stretching their own lines across a great distance. The Mongols would then take advantage of this situation in one of several ways. They could employ what’s come to be known as the “Parthian shot”. As they were apparently running away, they would turn around in the saddle and start shooting at their pursuers . This is a maneuver that could only be executed successfully by a force of extremely good horsemen who were also extremely good archers. The Mongols happened to be both. This maneuver dealt massive casualties to their enemies.

Another tactic the Mongols liked to combine with the feigned retreat was the classic ambush. They would have fresh troops hidden away from the battle, and during their feigned retreat, they would lead their pursuers right into the trap. The fresh troops would then hit the enemy in the exposed flank, causing absolutely massive casualties. And if the troops that moments ago were apparently running away turned back and also engaged their pursuers, they might even manage to completely encircle their pursuing enemy, with devastating results.

The Mongols were also very tough and durable. They could ride all day without getting tired. Their horses, while not as fast or as strong as the European battle horses, were bred for durability and toughness. This meant that while they wouldn’t win a race against mounted knights, they could outlast them. European battle horses were large and strong. They had to be, in order to be able to carry heavily armored knights into battle. And they were fast. But they couldn’t keep up that speed for very long and would tire very quickly compared to their Mongolian counterparts. Once their horses ran out of steam, the knights were practically sitting ducks. They were still highly skilled warriors, absolutely deadly in single combat, but the Mongols wouldn’t engage them on those terms. Rather, with no crossbows to worry about, they would turn back on their exhausted foes and fall upon them with savage fury.

For one, the bow and arrow, while still being the main weapon in the Mongol arsenal, was hardly the only one. Aside from their core of light cavalry of mounted archers, the Mongolian army of this time period also featured heavy cavalry with lances. Also, while the European knights were certainly familiar with bows and arrows, they weren’t familiar with Mongolian bows and arrows. Mongolian bows were extremely powerful. More powerful than anything the Europeans had ever faced; even the English longbow. Combined with the Mongols’ incredibly high skill level, these bows were absolutely deadly, even to knights wearing the latest European plate armor. Combine this with the heavy lancers who could run down fleeing enemies as well as charge at formed ranks, and the knights are in some serious trouble.

But the powerful bows and heavy lances weren’t even the most fearsome weapons in the Mongols’ arsenal. The biggest advantage the Mongols had over their European counterparts was their leadership. They were EXTREMELY well lead. Tsubodai didn’t become Genghis Khan’s no. 1 general by chance. He was a born leader and brilliant tactician. While the Europeans were playing checkers, Tsubodai was playing 4-d chess. A big part of Tsubodai’s success was his intelligence gathering ability. He used spies and scouts to great effect, always staying one step ahead of his enemies. By the time his enemies even knew he was there, Tsubodai already had their number, their strengths, and their weaknesses, as well as a plan for how to exploit them.

Another thing worth noting is that the Mongols moved with incredible speed, especially for their time period. This is because, unlike traditional European armies, the Mongols did not travel with a cumbersome baggage train. Everything they needed, they carried with them. And being composed entirely of mounted warriors, they also had no infantry to slow them down. Each warrior had several remounts (spare horses), enabling them to constantly be on the move. They wouldn’t need to stop in order to rest their horses.

This speed of movement was something their opponents had never encountered before and it had a dual effect. Not only were they able to get from point A to point B in record time; their speed of movement also made their numbers seem much larger than they actually were. Because settled societies simply couldn’t get their head around an army moving that fast, they assumed they were fighting multiple armies. This kept the Mongols’ enemies from concentrating all their forces in one spot and using their superior numbers to their advantage. Instead, they would leave their forces fractured, allowing the Mongols to dispatch them one by one.

Another trait the Mongols had for which the European armies were entirely unprepared, was the Mongols’ unprecedented brutality. Tsubodai wasn’t satisfied merely defeating an enemy on the field of battle. Once the enemy broke and ran, the Mongols would ride them down and kill every last man. Total annihilation was their goal and they accomplished it with terrifying efficacy. They made damn sure that after they defeated an enemy, they could never rise up to trouble them again. They didn’t want the remnants of the force they just defeated to go off and join up with another army.

Even when the Europeans were able to put a sizeable force into the field, they were still at a disadvantage to the Mongols. The Mongol force was organized in units led by skilled commanders who earned their right to command through skill and merit, with a strict top to bottom hierarchy. Discipline and obedience were paramount and strictly enforced. Every warrior knew to whom to answer and everyone knew who was in charge. Their European counterparts were organized slightly differently.

When it came to warfare, the European feudal system presented its own unique set of challenges and limitations. While the various armies may have all coalesced under the banner of a particular prince or duke, they were each commanded by, and loyal to, whichever minor duke or noble brought them there. This could prove to be an issue in battle, as these nobles could simply take their army and go home for any of a myriad of reasons. Maybe they didn’t like the way the battle was going and weren’t too keen on seeing any more of their men slaughtered for a lost cause. Maybe they disagreed with an order the prince had given. Maybe they disagreed with the way the order was given. Maybe they didn’t feel like they were given the honor they were due or didn’t like that another noble was getting preferential treatment. Regardless of the reason, the prince who gathered the army didn’t have absolute command over it.

Tsubodai’s men, on the other hand, were fiercely loyal to their general and would obey his orders without question. Even the Mongol princes who were on campaign with Tsubodai and were direct descendants of Genghis Khan himself, knew better than to question their general when it came to battle. Tsubodai was a brilliant commander with absolute command of a brilliant army. Whereas many in the European ranks weren’t full time soldiers, every single man under Tsubodai’s command was a highly trained professional soldier, who spent every waking hour either fighting or training.

On top of all the issues I’ve already listed, the main one was the issue of unity. While the Mongols were a completely unified force with fierce loyalties and a clear cut command structure, Europe was anything but. A lot of the European Christian kingdoms of the time didn’t really like each other all that much. This was probably the biggest of all the obstacles facing the Europeans in this fight. Even with all of the Mongols’ military prowess, their sophisticated tactics, excellent leadership, and killer weaponry, the Europeans still had a pretty good chance. They were on their own home turf and knew the geography better. That meant that they could essentially pick the battleground that they felt was the most advantageous to them. On top of that, unlike the Mongols, the Europeans didn’t need to forage for food and supplies. One of the big benefits of being at home. Also, they had (at least on paper) the ability to put large numbers of men in the field, dwarfing the Mongols’ numbers. If Europe could present a single, solid, unified front, there was a pretty good chance that it could beat back this fearsome invader. Problem is, they couldn’t.

Europe at the time was a far cry from the Europe of today. There didn’t really exist what you might call a European mentality. People didn’t think of themselves as Europeans. They thought of themselves as Russians, Frenchmen, Germans, and so on. Far from being any kind of a union, Europe at this time was a bunch of small independent kingdoms, most of whom didn’t like each other very much. So when the Mongols came knocking on the door of the kingdoms and principalities in the East of Europe, their neighbors to the west didn’t really see this as much of a problem. The figured “This guy to the East has been a pain in my ass for ages. If the cursed Tatars (what the Europeans called the Mongols), give him a bloody nose, all the better!”

Problem is, the cursed Tatars didn’t stop at a bloody nose. They tended to finish the job. And when they had finished dispatching one kingdom, they would move on to the next one. So now, the kingdoms to the West no longer had the guy to the East to act as a buffer. The cursed Tatars were now knocking on THEIR doors. The guy even farther to the West would look at this situation and react pretty much the same way. He’d figure “Hey, this guy to the East has been a pain in my ass for ages. If the cursed Tatars give him a bloody nose, all the better!” Wash, rinse, repeat. By the time enough European kings got their heads far enough out of their asses to figure out what was going on and what the logical conclusion would be, it was more or less too late. The Mongols were rampaging all over the place, doing as they pleased. They had absolutely demolished every single army that tried to stop them, and Europe was running out of armies with which to fight them and gold with which to bribe them.

In the end, Europe got lucky. Genghis Khan died and Tsubodai and his men got recalled back to Mongolia to participate in the election of the next Great Khan. Had Genghis Khan not been such a heavy drinker, Europeans may very well be speaking Mongolian today. But then again, you don’t become the greatest conqueror in the history of humanity by doing things in moderation.

Benedict Arnold gets a bad rap. That tends to happen when you’re the first traitor in the history of your country. But the image of Benedict Arnold we’ve learned about in history class is a far cry from the man himself. It has been heavily edited, simplified, sanitized, and simplified to the point of being almost cartoonish. It’s essentially “Benedict Arnold hated freedom and betrayed America to the very bad British!” The man’s name has essentially become a byword for a turncoat. Even people who know hardly anything about Benedict Arnold know that being referred to one is a bad thing.  As usual, the real story is a bit more complicated.

Benedict Arnold was a very highly regarded American general ruing the Revolutionary War. He was held in especially high regard by George Washington. The dude picked up two leg wounds in service to his country, and led his troops to multiple very important victories. He achieved the rank of major general, which is nothing to scoff at. But when you realized that he achieved the rank of major general in like four years of total service, with no prior military experience, (certainly not at officer level), while fighting a glorified insurrection against a first rate superpower, his achievements become all the more impressive. Before the war started, he was a wealthy merchant. During the war, he lost everything. And he still fought, and he still lead, and he still WON. Benedict Arnold was a legitimate fucking badass with balls the size of Plymouth Rock. It’s no wonder George Washington thought the world of the guy, even if he was, according to numerous reports, kind of a dick.

The fact remains that Benedict Arnold was a traitor. In the middle of a war, he changed sides, and went to fight for the enemy. That is about as clear cut a case of treason as you can get. It’s basically the textbook definition of the term! But why? He was highly regarded, at least by George Washington, and if George fucking Washington, in the middle of the Revolutionary War, thinks you’re a cool dude, it doesn’t really matter what the fuck anybody else thinks. Everyone else thinks you’re a dick? Fuck ’em! George Washington thinks you’re alright. So you’ve got George Washington as your BFF and an unbelievable track record you’ve racked up during a brief, but ridiculously illustrious military career. Why give that all up and turn traitor? He had to have known that history would not be kind to him, and dudes at that level very much care about their reputation, both during  their lifetime, and especially after. Yet he still turned traitor. Why? Well, it’s complicated.

There isn’t exactly a strict consensus on the reason for the treason. There were multiple factors. For one, as accomplished and capable a general as Benedict Arnold was, he felt very strongly that he was under appreciated. A guy loses his livelihood and everything he spent his whole life building to fight for the cause, it’s hardly a surprise if he expects the cause to give back. The cause did not. Arnold felt very strongly that he was being passed over for promotions in favor of younger and less accomplished officers. He felt that other people were unjustly taking (and receiving) credit for his accomplishments. He felt that the Continental Congress didn’t like him and were treating him unfairly. The army was in disarray. Morale was low. The Continental Congress, the beating heart of the revolution, was a quagmire. If you think today’s Congress is ineffective and a general all around clusterfuck, it is practically a well oiled machine compared to what it was back then. And you can’t really blame them. They were learning on the job. Making it up as they went along. There was no precedent for what they were trying to do.

It’s easy to look back with 20/20 hindsight, knowing how everything turned out. and wonder “What the fuck was this guy thinking?” But at that point in time, at that point in the war, success was far from a foregone conclusion. The Continental army was still basically a bunch of rag tag militias and they were up against a foe who was orders of magnitude better organized, better supplied, better equipped, and better trained than them. If nothing else, British soldiers were getting regularly paid, which was more than could be said for the Continentals. To say that their odds were long would be the understatement of the century.

Say you’re a guy who’s been on board since pretty much day one. You’ve given a lot. Suffered two serious wounds to a leg that already had fucking gout! Sacrificed everything you had for the cause. Fought in numerous major battles. Won quite a few of them against staggering fucking odds! Sure, you’ve achieved a pretty high rank in the army, but you feel like you’ve plateaued. You feel like you’re not being given your due. Hell, even the big guy, your once BFFF GW himself, seems like he’s kinda giving you the side eye. The army isn’t exactly looking like a world beater, and Congress are a bunch of bickering bastards who can’t seem to agree which way the fucking wind blows. You really wanna stay on this sinking ship? And that’s before your new bride, who just so happens to be a gorgeous young Tory loyalist starts whispering sweet treasonous nothings in your ear. Oh, and by the way, you’re already a traitor to the crown and if this war doesn’t go the way you planned, you are FUUUUCKED! A random foot soldier might be able to fly under the radar, but a goddamn major general? They’re stringing your ass up just to set an example! Hell, it’s a wonder he didn’t switch sides sooner.

Like I said earlier, Arnold was already a traitor just by the very nature of fighting against the British. Just like George Washington, the Continental Congress, and every single person who participated in or supported the war. If we’re gonna shit on Benedict Arnold for betraying America, are we gonna shit on America for betraying Britain? American history textbooks tend to gloss over this fact, but the Revolutionary War didn’t exactly come about by unanimous consensus. Lots of people were against the war and very much liked the way the crown was running shit. Or, at the very least, they were used to it. This was the way things worked, they were used to it, and they didn’t really see a huge problem with it. So when shit hit the fan, A LOT of people in the colonies were less than thrilled about it. Those people viewed Arnold, Washington, and everyone else connected with the revolution with the same, (or perhaps even greater), derision than people today view Benedict Arnold.

If we are going to deride Arnold for the sole reason that he was a traitor, shouldn’t we then deride George Washington and the Founding Fathers for being the same thing? Or are traitors only bad people if they betray OUR side, whatever our side happens to be? Now, lest you think that I am being intentionally obtuse, allow me to clarify something. I believe that treason directed at a monarchy, (especially one with a long and storied history of doing awful shit like the British monarchy), is not only okay, but a moral imperative. Monarchies are unjust, immoral, and all around fucking awful. They serve the interests of a few at the expense of humanity as a whole. So if someone decides to start a revolution to throw off the yoke of empire, they’re going to get nothing but love from me.

Those are the people Benedict Arnold betrayed. So you could make an argument that the problem wasn’t Arnold’s betrayal in and of itself, but rather against whom that betrayal came. It came against the side which held the moral high ground. After all, not all treason is created equal. An American general in World War 2 defecting to Nazi Germany would be judged much more harshly by future generations than a high ranking Nazi defecting to the Allies. But how solid, exactly, was the Continentals’ moral high ground? Sure, they were fighting to overthrow the yoke of empire, but was there more to it? As it turns out, there was. One big difference between the British and the Americans was slavery. Both sides in the Revolutionary War had slaves. But the difference was that the British were setting their slaves free, while the Americans were, if anything, trying to get more. Now, it should be noted that the British weren’t just freeing their slaves out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. The condition for freedom was fighting in the war. If a slave agreed to fight for the British, they would be granted their freedom. It was a simple way for the British to bolster their ranks on the cheap, and preserve goodwill at home, since they would now have to send fewer men to fight in the Colonies. Still, as cynical and self serving as the British reasons for freeing their slaves may have been, they still resulted in slaves being freed. Freeing a man from slavery, even for cynical and self serving reasons, is still a better thing than doing the opposite.

So, while Arnold most definitely and beyond a shadow of a doubt betrayed the Americans, he did not exactly betray the side with the moral high ground after all. Arnold betrayed Britain, a monarchy, when he joined the American Revolution. But his rebellion against the crown had little to do with moral opposition to the concept of monarchy, and more to do with how the actions of Parliament negatively affected his business and bottom line. When he betrayed the Americans, it had nothing to do with the immorality and cruelty of slavery and more to do with the £20,000 the British offered him to hand over the strategically important fort at West Point in New York (of which he was commander at the time.) These actions, combined with Arnold’s numerous attempts to profit from the war, show him to be, if anything, consistent. The man’s main concern appears to have always been his bottom line. Everything else came second. 

If you’ve made it this far in this article, you may think that this is a defense of Benedict Arnold. I assure you, dear reader, that it is anything but. After he defected to the British, Arnold was given the rank of brigadier general and allowed to raise a force of American loyalists. This force was called the American Legion. With his troops, Arnold fought in several battles, including the capture of Fort Griswold in Connecticut, upon which Arnold and his American Legion attacked and killed American soldiers who had already surrendered. I believe that loyalty to humanity supersedes loyalty to an arbitrary chunk of territory or a piece of cloth with some colors on it. Countries, governments, flags, anthems, they are all just symbols. They are little more than fictitious entities. You cannot kill a country. You cannot murder an anthem (at least not literally.) But you CAN murder humans, and that’s exactly what Benedict Arnold did, even though he didn’t have to. Benedict Arnold may have been a traitor, but he was also a war criminal and a murderer, and that is much worse.

Fuck that guy.

If there is one thing about the American electorate that can be relied on, it’s our short attention span and terrible long term memory. I realize that’s two things. My point stands. The average American voter has the attention span of a cat with ADD. This is especially true during election time. Our attention moves from one shiny thing to another so fast, it’s a surprise we aren’t all walking around rocking neck braces. To be fair to the average American voter, we are bombarded with literal fuck tons of political propaganda every election cycle. This feeds into my next point. The average American voter has the long term memory of a goldfish with Alzheimer’s. This, combined with the aforementioned fuck tons of political propaganda can legitimately warp one’s perception of reality. After a while, it all starts to blend together. How do you keep it straight?

The scary attack ads, with the ominous music and the serious (but concerned) voiceover, and the optimistic “vote for me” fluff pieces all start to look and sound the same after a while. Expose a person to enough bullshit, and after a while, they’ll start to believe it. Lots of people believed that Donald Trump is not only a competent businessman, but also a genius deal maker, all because he played one on TV. Lots of people thought Hillary Clinton was on her death bed because she sneezed a couple of times and there was a picture where it kinda looked like maybe she needed a little help getting up some stairs. Bullshit, when repeated often enough, can quickly come to be viewed as fact.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. More than I should, really. More than anyone who cares about their own sanity should, but such is life sometimes. On Facebook, I get involved in lots of political discussions. I am a member of several politically oriented Facebook groups, so obviously, I don’t exactly shy away from the stuff. Hence this article.

One subject that I see pop up a lot, especially with the 2020 presidential election looming ever closer, is the 2016 election. Namely, how (and/or why) Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. After all, that should’ve been a cake walk for her. She, an experienced politician and stateswoman wiht a well oiled political apparatus at her back. He, a crude charlatan, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. This was a done deal!

Spoiler alert: she did not win. Bigger spoiler: it was actually a pretty near run thing. There were some REALLY close states that could very easily have gone the other way. Donald Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by a combined total of just over 100,000 votes. All things being the same, if 100,000 people voted differently in the 2016 presidential election, we’d be talking about President Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would probably be a historical footnote. Whether that’s good or bad is not really the point of this article.

Yet, for some reason, every time I see people talk about the 2016 presidential election, they act as if Donald Trump won by a landslide. He won by 77 electoral votes. He LOST the popular vote by over three million votes. Now, for all intents and purposes, the popular vote is more or less meaningless. In the United States, the presidential election is decided by who gets to 270 electoral votes first, regardless of how the popular vote breaks down. Usually, one follows the other, as the person who wins is usually the one who is more popular with the overall electorate. But, as can be seen from this example, this is not always the case.

So why do so many people believe that Hillary Clinton got spanked in the 2016 election, when nothing could be farther from the truth? A few reasons, I think. For one, literally EVERYONE expected her to win and win big. No one thought Donald Trump had a snowball’s chance in hell. DONALD TRUMP didn’t think he had a snowball’s chance in hell. Granted, as the election grew closer, polls started predicting outcomes that were more favorable to Trump, but the overall narrative was the same. Clinton was going to win and she was going to win handily. So, when she lost, it just seemed like such a huge upset that the actual margins of victory and defeat became more or less meaningless in people’s minds. Another reason why I think this belief prevails, has to do with the looming 2020 presidential election.

Trump is a shitty president and an even shittier person. A lot of people on the left would really like to see him gone. In order for that to happen, they feel like we need the best possible candidate. Sure, maybe even a relatively weak candidate could beat Trump (the man is, after all, exceedingly unpopular), but there’s too much at stake and you don’t want to take any chances. We don’t want to nominate another lukewarm neoliberal centrist, just to see Trump get another four years. After all, we don’t want a repeat of 2016, when the Democratic Party put forth a shitty centrist nominee, who never quite got the electorate excited. There’s only a small problem with that belief.

The Dems (meaning the party establishment, party brass, the powers that be), did not put forth a shitty, centrist nominee. The Democratic voters did. Overwhelmingly. Hillary Clinton may have been crowned the proverbial Dem nominee on day one by the TV talking heads, but she still had a primary to win, and that was no walk in the park. Bernie gave her a run for her money, but in the end, she won. By a lot more votes. This is the part where some people like to bring up super delegates. For those who don’t know, super delegates (in Democratic Party primaries), are party big shots, lifers, and insiders, who are free to cast their vote at the convention any way they please. Whereas regular delegates are bound to whichever candidate wins their state, super delegates can pledge their support to whomever they like and are free to change it at any time (until the convention, obviously).

At the start of the 2016 primaries, most super delegates pledged their votes to Hillary Clinton, so on paper, it looked like Hillary Clinton had a huge advantage over the rest of the candidates out of the gate. No wonder she won the primary, right? Wrong! Regardless of the super delegates, she simply got a lot more votes than the rest of the people vying for the Democratic nomination. Yes, even Bernie. And here’s the kicker. Hillary Clinton had the support of all the super delegates to start the 2008 Democratic primary, too. So what happened? Obama simply cleaned up in the popular vote, won more states, and the super delegates changed their mind and supported him at the convention. The super delegates generally support the favorite, but they’re not gonna go against the will of Democratic party voters. Technically, they can, but they’re highly unlikely to do so.

So what have we established? In 2016, Hillary Clinton handily beat Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination. Once it was all said and done, she had about a thousand total delegates on Bernie and almost four million more votes. Those are seriously overwhelming numbers. She absolutely wiped the floor with him. So, as it turns out, the Democratic Party didn’t foster a shitty, centrist nominee on us. We chose her.