It was nearly six months ago that I first predicted that Republican National Convention in New York City would be marked by rioting on a scale comparable to, at the very least, Seattle in 1999 and, even more likely, to that of Chicago in 1968. In the intervening time little has occurred to change my mind and much has changed to reinforce my earlier conviction: there will almost certainly be political violence in New York City during the Convention and the days surrounding it. This is both a danger and an opportunity to exploit.

Frankly, I don’t think that much of the public has any idea of the degree to which a fair-sized chunk of the American left has slipped the surly bonds of sanity. The sort of pathological paranoia which infected elements of the American right during the Clinton years has spread throughout the whole of the left. During the Clinton years Michael Moore-style conspiracy theorizing was the pastime of a kook fringe (a fringe which, I might add, had a great deal to be paranoid about) among the Democratic Party in the years of George W. Bush it has simply become mainstream discourse.

More than a hundred thousand people are going to descend upon New York City. A hundred thousand people who, due largely to their own laziness and stupidity, have few prospects of a truly successful career and who also happen to passionately believed that the United States is already in the grip of a fascist regime who seized power via a coup and who are prepared to destroy the whole of the world for profit’s sake. That many people, in that sort of place, in these sort of times: that, to say the very least, is an extremely worrisome thing.

Where I modify my earlier prediction is this: I don’t think that the violence will be isolated. From the look of things, I think it’s highly likely that the violence will be widespread and well-organized. The planning for these protests has transcended anything I’ve ever observed before. The protestors have apparently organized themselves into hundred of small cells which can be linked together for large operations but which also, because of their intimacy, will be difficult to infiltrate. They have, however, managed to infiltrate the staff of the convention itself. Frankly, their method of organization seems to be one better-suited for waging a guerrilla war than for protesting.

Don’t expect what we’ve seen in the days of old: big mass marches ending in a rally with lots of speeches and songs. Do expect deliberate efforts to obstruct both New York’s transportation and security systems. Expect constant disruption and disturbance. The operation of a great modern metropolis like New York City is an operation which depends upon the cooperation of the people and, if people set out to deliberately disrupt that, they can do a great deal of damage.

Think about what happens to traffic in any major city if, say, a pair of cars get into an accident along a major bridge during Rush Hour. Now, imagine if a group of “activists” were to take a dozen or so old cars and deliberately disable them along vital New York arteries during that period of time and imagine as well that a hundred other activists, at various points throughout the city, lay down to form human chains, further obstructing traffic. These are the sort of plans which the activists are making: plans which almost blur the line between legitimate political protest and a mild form of terrorism: the use of force to achieve one’s political ends.

Of course, it’s also relatively easy to imagine that the violence might be something more than simply “mild”. The great danger of calling the President “Hitler” and comparing Republicans to “Nazis” on an everyday basis is that, sooner or later, someone is going to take your words based upon face value and act upon them. Remember when, in 1995, President Clinton tried to suggest that Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing radio hosts were responsible for the Oklahoma City Bombing because of their “anti-government” rhetoric? Well, turnabout is fair play. If Rush complaining about tax rates and the inefficiency of government can somehow be sold to the public as a motivating factor for Timothy McVeigh, than the liberals should hardly expect us to remain silent if their irresponsible and provocative words provoke some lone nut into action.

The great danger with having opposing political factions whose words make it sound as though they’d like to go at eachother in the streets with fists, rocks, knives, and guns is that, sometimes, something will happen to make them actually do it. From the level of anger I’m hearing come out of the left I’m envisioning that New York is going to see smashed windows, Molotov Cocktails, and perhaps even worse. Unless the NYPD is very careful, we might well end up with street brawls as well. I’ve no idea how many leftists have infiltrated the convention, but it isn’t hard for me to imagine that a dozen or so of them might well attempt to start some sort of fight right on the convention floor was the President accepts re-nomination.

Frankly, were I running al-Qaeda, I’d look at activist crowds as an ideal target for attack. After all, from their point of view, dead Americans are dead Americans and, in all probability, the protests will be the least well protected (from outside attack) mass grouping of people in the United States in memory. The helpful codicil to any such attack for al-Qaeda would be, of course, that most radical leftists in the United States would probably blame President Bush for such an attack and that Democrats would be soon be making politically-loaded charges that such rallies were deliberately stripped of protection from terrorist attack because they were made up of Bush’s opponents.

Of course (as long as the final danger does not come to pass), there’s a real opportunity in this for the Bush campaign. Namely, if we spin things right, we can use the protestors to our great benefit. After all, no one really likes protestors very much and people like rioters even less. If we react quickly enough and aggressively enough we can do several things. First, any rioting should be blamed on the “overheated rhetoric” of the Kerry campaign and its surrogates, most notably Michael Moore and Howard Dean men who are (arguably) the two most important mass-appeal figures on the left of the Democrat Party and who are widely known to the public as a whole. As soon as the first riots start, Republican spokespeople need to be in front of the media with those quotes saying things like, “in the atmosphere that’s been created by some people, something like this was bound to happen. For example…” This, naturally, would be followed by the production of a list with some interesting phrases.

Now, there will be some who will say that this is all the President’s fault: for making these people mad, for going to New York City, for striking his deal with Satan and a cabal of Jewish Bankers, etc, etc. This pernicious nonsense needs to be dealt with up front: George W. Bush is the President of the United States and the delegates assembled to nominate him are all citizens of the United States. To suggest that, because a radical and potentially violent minority opposes them, some areas of the nation ought to become “no go” zones for them is obscene. The leaders of any free nation can never let themselves be cowed our bullied by gangsters and thugs. To suggest that any leader of a nation ought to avoid some area within his own nation because he is threatened by a minority of violent or dangerous individuals is to suggest the very surrender of freedom itself to the tender mercies of the mob.

In any case, in the spirit of the Chinese curse, the days ahead are going to be interesting ones. Throughout them we must all have to same goal in mind: to re-elect George Walker Bush in November so we can get on with the real business of killing the enemies of the United States of America.