I disagree. The only ending that doesn’t make things worse in the long run is one where they are made to look utterly ridiculous, a “whimper, not a bang” ending where they voluntarily walk into the paddy wagons because they desperately need food or, optimally, Kaopectate, lots and lots of Kaopectate.
The one critical lesson of the Civil War that these idiots have correctly grasped that seems to elude many on the left calling for a crackdown comparable to Ferguson is that nothing causes conservatives to set aside any qualms about the morality and propriety of the means employed by the “hotheads” among those with whom they are ideologically aligned and “pick a side” like an act of violence. And it doesn’t matter who starts shooting. The point, rather, is that shooting has started and “you’re either with us or you’re against us.”
John Brown didn’t set off a slave rebellion or widespread agitation for a forcible end to slavery in the north, because that’s not how most liberals think. But it did have the effect of stamping out every last inclination toward compromise and Unionist sentiment among white southerners and caused a descent into the kind of “‘compromise’ means we get everything we want and, in return, we don’t kill the hostage” mentality that marks the modern right today.
Lincoln’s election led to the secession of seven deep South states and the formation of a CSA that was not, in the long run, viable as a national entity. It took an act of violence to cause the “moderate” southern states to set aside their qualms and pick a side. The provisional Confederate government, and South Carolina in particular, fired on Sumter with malice aforethought for the specific purpose of forcing the other southern states to “pick a side.”
That’s the game these idiots are playing: they want to provoke an act of violence that they think will make those who agree with their ideology, but not their actions, to set aside any qualms they have about the means being employed and pick a side. And pick a side they will. Oh how they will.
The only way to win this game is to make them look ridiculous. There must be consequences, but they must, above all, be made to look ridiculous.