“’Of arms and the man I sing,’” over and over again? Yes, surely, to some degree. But the Resistance is also a complex and compelling tale after all of these years in part because it is almost entirely about what ordinary people did, in great adversity, and with great courage…colleagues, and often friends, coming together in small groups, two or three people talking and agreeing to take a deadly risk together.”
~Charles Potter, Editor, The Resistance, 1940
Last night I had the privilege to attend a local Chamber of Commerce dinner where a non-profit that I am involved in received an award. The dinner is an annual event — as it is in most municipalities around the country — meant to bolster community pride and to celebrate the hard work and civic efforts of those who care deeply about our community and its future.
These are important events, naturally, in the life of any tight-knit community. That is particularly true, I think, in smaller towns without an industrial base whose economic elasticity is always in question, and who therefore require a certain measure of tasteful boosterism in order to remain competitive in the pursuit of stability.
But in the middle of it all, and probably because I have lately been steeped in studies of the French Resistance, my mind took a strange turn.
Sitting amongst the many fine people in attendance, I couldn’t help but survey the room and wonder how the brighter lights in attendance — those gifted entrepreneurs, civic leaders, municipal officials, and politicians who drive the civic engine of our small community in the Cascades — might react under a sudden, violent, and overwhelming hostile invasion.
Forgive me. That’s just how my mind works after almost two decades of continually rehearsing scenarios — big and small — in a professional and personal effort to stay off the reservation and to retain an OODA loop advantage in a dogfight.
For emphasis: I do not believe a hostile army is invading tomorrow, or even next week, or next month, or anytime in the perceptible future.
Nevertheless, in an era when the word “Resistance” is bandied about rather cavalierly and, it appears, claimed by every emotional mass movement du jour, I think it’s worth thinking about what a worst-case scenario might actually look like.
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