Gambit
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian gambetto, literally, act of tripping someone, from gamba leg, from Late Latin gamba.
1. An opening in chess in which a minor piece, or pieces, usually a pawn, is offered in exchange for a favorable position.
2. A maneuver, stratagem, or ploy, especially one used at an initial stage.
3. A remark intended to start a conversation or make a telling point.
Men in Black.Kay: Keep him on THIS planet.
Jay: Kay, where are you going?
Kay: I'm going to get my gun back. . .
Kay to Bug: You're nothing but a smear on the sports page to me, you slimy, ugly, intestinal parasite! Eat me! EAT! ME!
[The Bug swallows Kay whole]
Jay: Kay! Kay!
I was talking over present events on the blog and around the country with a very good friend the other day, and he was urging me to back off on the direct affronts to the ATF and its armed bureaucrats. Affronts like this, and this, and this.
He couldn't believe that every time I write something about a specific ATF employee, I send them a copy to their work emails.
"Well," I explained, "You don't want me to say stuff behind their backs that I wouldn't say to their faces, do you?" I smiled.
He looked at me with exasperation.
"Damn, Mike, you know what you remind me of?"
"What's that?"
"Remember in Men in Black where Kay insults the interstellar cockroach and yells, 'Eat me! Eat me!'?"
I laughed.
He said, "It ain't funny, boy. Sooner or later they WILL eat you. Why the hell do you keep tempting them?"
"Gambit."
He's a chess player and he knew what I was saying. After a moment he commented.
"Pretty damn hard on the pawn, though."
"Yeah," I answered. "Probably so. But if it's the only way to kill the cockroach? Besides, somebody's got to be the pawn, might as well be me. You know what they say, 'never ask your troops to do something you won't do yourself.'"
"We don't have that many 'troops,'" he pointed out. "Not that are ready to go now."
"Well, that's the whole point, isn't it?" I replied. "If there was somebody else able to do the job, I'd let them. But there isn't."
We both paused, thinking.
"Besides," I offered, "you don't think they're that stupid to make an example of me, do you?"
He looked at me and shook his head.
"Yeah, I do. They ARE that stupid."
Here's the conundrum for the ATF under the regime of the Obamanoids:
a. On the one hand, they know that they will face no rigorous oversight if they try to pull another Waco, on me or anybody else. On the other hand, they cannot predict what the reaction of the armed citizenry will be, especially that of the Three Percenters. They may despise us and pooh pooh us as a countervailing threat, BUT THEY CANNOT BE SURE.
b. On the one hand, they really hate what I and some of my friends are doing to them and saying about them. Not that we are breaking the law, mind you, just that we are pointing out how THEY are breaking the law. On the other hand, if they DO anything about that they will just spread our message farther and wider.
Here's the plain facts of it. My website gets only 2 to 3 thousand hits a day, sometimes less. In Internet terms, why should that bother them? It's nothing. Miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Yet we know, from various sources, that it does, greatly.
Why?
Because they cannot abide, personally and institutionally, citizens standing up to them, unafraid. It sets a bad example for the other people they try to bully. While tactically they can concentrate enough strength to botch a dynamic entry raid a la Waco (where they backed away without ammo, with their hands in the air, at the Davidians' sufferance), strategically they have always been a big, bad bluff -- "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Numerically, when compared to even three percent of American gun owners, it is THEY who are statistically insignificant.
That is their PRIMAL fear -- that one day the ants will figure out that they outnumber the grasshoppers a hundred to one, even a thousand to one, and if even a fraction of us act together, their bully-boy gravy train, the possibility of their cushy retirement, even, perhaps, they themselves, WILL CEASE TO EXIST.
I think, I hope, that they understand that, as I told Eric Holder, "there are no more free Wacos." I hope they understand, as one ex-Marine Corps scout sniper promised, when the heads begin to be collected, mine will not be the only one.
A smart chess player, especially playing on a board with flesh and blood pieces, one of which is his own, will, when confronted with a gambit, decline to be stupid. He might even consider the board, look at the cost, and be willing to call it a draw.
That is my hope.
That is, indeed, my prayer.
But if they are determined that the game must begin, I want them to make the worst mistake possible. I am willing to risk the gambit. If they take it, they will lose in the end.
That is why I do what I do.
So, to whom it may concern:
EAT ME.
Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.
10 comments:
As a relative newcomer to your scene I cannot thank you enough for being willing to step up as the canary in the coal mine.
I know you want to see your children grow old but you have at least had the chance to shepherd yours to young adulthood.
Mike, I appreciate all your posts and like your attitude. This is what the President and Pelosi seem to fail to understand. How to lead by example. I hope to shake your hand someday.
Mike,
You are, and have been, "pushing your luck" with the ATF. I have been reading your blog for appox 2 years and agree with most of what you say. I do not agree with your position of waiting for them to come take you away. If they do come to arrest you for whatever charge they can invent, go quietly.
Resisting the henchmen is futile.
Waco fueled the Oklahoma city bombing by Mcviegh. Stupid mistake! Killing workers and children in a daycare put Mcveigh at the same level the ATF thugs are. Targeting the puppetmaster would have been more appropiate,and quite frankly more effective. The policy makers would be reminded that they are not above justice. Living in their ivory towers has given them a sense of invulnerability. Pop their balloon, and we will see much quicker reform.
Paul
Paul,
You say "resisting the henchmen is futile." The answer to that is in a quote from Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn:
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! We didn’t love freedom enough. Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."
Mike, All I can say to Cheyenne 0317 is "Semper Fidelis, my brother" You are very lucky to have a guardian angel. As a former S-2 Scout myself and then a 0321 Recon Marine, I know how he feels. I truly believe men join the Marine Corps because of a belief system in being a "dog soldier" for the tribe. It is our duty to protect others in the group.
Which brings me to another related idea. With big brother tightening the noose and breathing down our backs, perhaps they should understand that for every one of us they want to take out, 10 or 100 more of us will step up and fulfill Cheyenne's promise. As you have told us many times, rocks and phone books are very easy to come by. I believe all of us Oath-Keepers and 3'pers should start forming closer ties with our local brethren, if for nothing more than to start covering each others backs. I know this may be hard to do, but we have to tighten our perimeter. And expand the brotherhood.
It's also high time these gestapo thugs start seeing they can no longer bully us, we also have teeth. 2 years ago my 81 year old dying mother returned to Idaho from Hawaii to spend her last days at my sisters house. She was taken aside in Spokane and strip searched, then held for quite some time, while no one in our family had any idea where she was. She missed her flight and was put up in a hotel by the airline while my sisters were frantically calling everywhere to try to locate her. Late that evening she called to let them know where she was. She passed away from cancer a month later. I did not hear about this for several months or they would have had to pry me off some airport goons body. This can no longer happen in America!! We must put them in their place as the civil servants that they are and not some god on a pedestal who look down on us as trash to kick around. I know not everyone was a Marine or a Ranger but you men have to reach down and confirm you still have a set hanging there. Then ask yourself what you will do to protect your loved ones and live by it. Semper Fidelis, Sig.
May God Bless and protect you Mike. And as 0321 stated, there will be 10 or 100 to step into the fray if the ATF continues down the path they have chosen.
Pickdog
III
The ATF should keep its mouth closed and head low. I believe we are getting close to a second revolution as it is. The people are getting tired of the government taxes, corruption, and ignoring the Constitution. There are thousands of us that want to bring the government back into the confines of the Constitution. We are just waiting for the government to do something stupid enough to push us into action. That action might be a movement against a leader like you.
Leader? Not of me.
Inspiration, certainly. Example, even. But if you are looking for a leader . . .
a) the pawn offered in a gambit is probably a bad choice, because if they eat him, you have no leader, and
b) a leader should be local. As in, if you had to you could walk to their house.
$0.02
If the people were tired of taxes, corruption and the ignoring of the Constitution, the second revolution would have started long ago. One courageous person showed up openly armed at the Obama town hall meeting in a state thats motto is "Live Free or Die." Where were all of the Oath-Keepers and 3'pers? Maybe he was all.
[quote]
Where were all of the Oath-Keepers and 3'pers? Maybe he was all.
[/quote]
If you were not there, how would you know? Trust to the MSM reports?
Quite a few were there, well armed. I know some of them. I suspect they didn't see any advantage to a mass demonstration.
The man who played the gambit did just fine on his own right then, but I know he wasn't alone. I hope he knew that too.
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