Counting The Cost

The Enemy Is Playing For Keeps. What Are You Prepared To Do?

Within my top 50 movies of all times is the 80’s gem about Al Capone and Elliot Ness, The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Sean Connery, and Andy Garcia.

Ness (Costner) is trying to put Capone (De Niro) in jail. Ness is green, inexperienced, and a by-the-book kind of officer. Malone (Connery) is a salty old Irish cop that bucked the system, exposed corruption, and was busted down to walking the beat - not something a cop of his age and experience should be doing.

As Ness begins to go after Capone, he looks for advice from Malone. I love this scene:

Malone: You said you wanted to know how to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? See what I’m sayin’? What are you prepared to do?

Ness: Everything within the law.

Malone: And THEN what are you prepared to do? If you open the ball on these people, Mr. Ness, then you must be prepared to go all the way, because they won’t give up the fight until one of you is dead.

Ness: I wanna get Capone. I don’t know how to get him.

Malone: Wanna get Capone? Here’s how you get him. He pulls a knife? You pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! THAT’S the Chicago way.

This is what we call “counting the costs.” And spoiler alert, one of these guys ends up dead.

In my article “Meet Me In The Middle”, I discuss those us of that aren’t on the radical edges of the authoritarian horseshoe need to come together as quickly as possible and put old, less important bickering behind us for now.

I also propose what the Endgame is, as well as how to get out of Mass Formation.

In writing these, I’ve had some great discussions with commenters. But my favorite is Guttermouth. This person is the yin to accepted yang, and I have a lot of respect for their perspective, because it’s authentic and black and white.

Please read their response on the Mass Formation article:

This is a good start to a much bigger conversation. (Hello from the future- I've already read the next post.)

There's a very important #3. I'd like to offer you a rough draft of it. It's a hard truth (the ones I enjoy communicating the most). Feel free to use it wherever, if it please you.

3) You will have to pay a price to win this war. It will not happen painlessly, it will not happen cheaply, and we will not all survive it.

Sacrifice will be required, and if you are not prepared to make those sacrifices, YOU ARE OF NO VALUE TO VICTORY. That 40% in the "big middle "? They're there because their instincts are different from yours. Compliance with effective tyranny (one able to actually exert power to punish dissent) keeps you in greater homeostasis than resistance.

They are not specifically pro-evil. They'd be just as compliant, just as "go along to get along" with actual good guys in charge. They don't care who the boss is, as long as they know who the boss is and what he or she wants and get a paycheck. They're the "buy cheese and watch television" people in Fight Club, and they will always be the majority of humanity because that's how we're programmed and the existing distribution has won the natural selection Olympics every single time.

You, on the other hand, had better be prepared to pay for what you want. That whole "freedom isn't free" thing isn't just a truck decal.

You have to be prepared to lose your job.

You have to be prepared to lose your friends and family and professional reputation.

You have to be prepared to lose your freedom (i.e., go to jail).

You have to be prepared to lose your home, or to stop living where you currently live.

You have to be prepared to lose your comforts- easy access to consumer goods, cheap food, and what I'll just call dumb luxuries, like your Facebook and Netflix accounts.

You have to be prepared to lose access to health care.

You have to be prepared to be physically harmed.

You have to be prepared to be killed.

I'm not saying all of these things will happen before it's over, or that they will happen all at once, or in some combination, or to many of us or just an unfortunate minority.

But make no mistake, they are all on the table. (Always have been.)

Make peace with every one of those possibilities or you are not only going to spend the rest of your days miserable, in paranoid terror, you will be useless.

Make peace with the real possibility that your government could declare you a "public health crisis" and strip you off every material and immaterial piece of property you own including the clothes on your back.

Make peace with the possibility that a strongly-worded political sentiment posted online could cause a drone to huck a Hellfire missile through your roof and instantly vaporize you, your dog, and your entire family, and you will never feel a thing or see it coming.

Make peace with the possibility that you will spend the rest of your days in a "mental hospital" drugged into vegetation and never have a trial.

All of this has happened before. All of it will happen again.

Be prepared to pay those prices and that the important part is that if they happen, they happen because you're fighting.

Sit with these sacrifices, work through the horror, and come out the other side.

Again, you will not necessarily personally pay all or any of these prices. But they are all on the table.

Prepare your soul, and then you never have to worry about it again.

But be prepared to get hurt. Be prepared to pay a price.

I told Guttermouth they must be a lot of fun at parties, and they responded, in classic Guttermouth fashion:

I wouldn't talk like this at a party. I'm a blast at parties. 😊

This ain't a party. This is serious business here. Lest we forget.

It’s true. It’s damn true.

What are YOU prepared to do?