Capitol Hill: #LowIntensityConflict and #ForceSpectrum in the news

Summary: 1. Some protesters broke into the Capitol and chased away both chambers of the #USCongress. https://twitter.com/jonathanchait/status/1346916158583267334?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1346916158583267334%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Falthouse.blogspot.com%2F (20) Jonathan Chait on Twitter: "I didn't support animal skin guy, but he is our new leader and we should give him a chance to grow in office" / Twitter

2. #ProudBoys being sued, and the putative leader arrested, for allegedly burning #BLM banners and other symbols in Washington DC.

[Analysis Edited to Add:] In a Less Lethal Confrontation, such as a protest, Banners, MAGA hats, etc, serve as #Guidon's of yore, in their symbolic values. Destroying enemy symbols serve to lift own morale and depress enemy's.

Analysis: As I said a few months ago and many times, #Protest is not #Democracy. Protest is always a #lessLethal #useOfForce in a #conflict. As #Clausewitz says, "War is [...] but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, ..."

Democracy, at its core, is government by the "Will of #thePeople," generally using #election's nowadays. A Protest is a political instrument to influence the People, just like all political instruments. Almost always, a Protest contests the political status quo, and thus engenders #CounterProtest's. As a political instrument, Protests, and their sibling #Riot's, mobilizes its members to exercise. In that respect, Protests are a proxy of the political element's military #mobilization capacity, which is an element of its #persuasion power, conscious or not.

Assuming that it was indeed the "#farRight" that #Occupy'd Congress today, and looking at the past few days in DC, it appears that the "Far Right" military capacity might be less than that of the #BLM / #antifascist's from last summer. But arguably the "Far Right" might be more capable of taking over an objective. [Some people allege #lawEnforcement complicity, which gets counted in military capacity.]

There has been much talk of #civilWar over the past year. According to #4GW, the #moralDimension is critical in a civil war. Yet political movements are notoriously bad at maintaining moral #discipline. Therefore, to win on the Moral Dimension (and incidentally to fight #JustWarTheory), #secession #selfDefense is always better than joining #revolutionary's to campaign far from home. [Now, certainly in a Just War, an expeditionary raid may be necessary, but that's not usually how you should start out.]