The Guerrillas Deck Gun – Pistol Division, by GuerrillaLogistician
Reference – 18C
This all began just like how the US is going right now. History rarely repeats itself, but it almost always rhymes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3giTYRttoRQ
You sit in a small bar with low lights and that musty beer smell of most dive bars. Across from you is a contact suggested to you by a friend of a friend who knew a guy who may just be able to help you out. Until two days ago, you were a die-hard enemy of people like this; you would have scoffed and belittled them as maggots, but that had slowly broken apart in just a few short days. Now you were sitting across from a man that you absolutely would have despised 48 to 72 hours ago, begging for any help to protect yourself because you knew you had said things that didn’t entirely fall along specific agenda lines. It didn’t matter anymore who you worked for or with as long as you stopped the destruction of the society you grew up in, even though you knew your old society had its issues that needed to be fixed. You had been sure that some things needed to be fixed with society, but how much and how you went about that change had been flipped upside down.
Just two days before, you watched in shock and horror as young socialists screamed and cheered the beating of a professor on a makeshift stage. They shouted at this professor who was spreading false claims and was trying to tear our country apart violently as he killed children. Young socialists chanted and jeered as they dragged this man out on the stage, a thick boat rope around his neck tied like a noose for a lynch mob. You were appalled at seeing a black man being drug around by a noose and never thought anyone in this day and age would allow this. You stood in shock and fear as the heat of the crowd, both physically and emotionally, hammered you like a storm. The police would stop this, wouldn’t they? Sure, you had supported ACAB because people like the professor had been innocently killed, and something needed to be done, but this was over the top, and he needed help. His hands were tied behind his back, and his face was bloody and smeared with grime. You remember clearly the bullhorn chanting and the crowd replying until everyone was told to calm themselves. This professor has been charged with several offenses, but no police were in sight, and no judges were present. The only thing holding this man was the mob and the accusations that held him there. They claimed this man had pushed genocidal beliefs and was directly responsible for the death of at least three children. As the allegations were listed, you started realizing what you had suspected in the first place. Your friend, a professor at a local Community College, had never once spoken any lie purposely to hurt anyone, but here he was being charged with insanity. They said that because he wasn’t a doctor, he could not say there were only two sexes, and everyone knew there were more than two genders. The people standing around weren’t all socialists, but many had back the blue wave and pronoun pins. As each one of the accusations was presented, the crowd booed and hissed as you realized how terrifyingly bad the situation was for your friend. What could you do, though you had no power, no ability to defend anyone, or even a bullhorn to counter the comments?
Up until this point, you were a diehard Democrat; you believed in the cause of protecting innocent people and not vilifying individuals because of their skin color or where they were from. Hell, your professor friend felt the same way, but here he was standing at a mob trial; both of you had been to rallies against Trump and his deranged lunatic MAGA supporters. How could anyone with that much power who’d been charged many times with different criminal accusations get away with it? You knew you had to fight against that kind of power…right? Your reality was starting to crack as you saw this man on stage in fear for his life. You watched this lifelong liberal black man stand on stage who always was kind to everyone and supported these people’s cause constantly, a friend, not always a close friend, but a friend nonetheless being lied about. You watched as he cried and said he supported them, and he didn’t understand why anyone couldn’t know that he meant it was the sex of an individual and not the gender.
That didn’t matter though because they had said this man had killed Sarah, who used to be Tom, even though you knew Sarah and she had a horrible drug problem. She was a sweet person and didn’t mean any harm to anyone, but she came home crying to one of her boyfriends about how evil the professor was for misgendering her. Much like every accusation like this, it ran viral across the Internet, but you didn’t spend time seeing this or disputing it. You were too busy fighting the Orange Man supporters on X.com to see what was happening locally. Democrats don’t lie, and you knew this as a child growing up in your family. How often had Trump been caught lying about not using spray-on tans or other such nonsense? You knew the Democrats were the right people because they always called out the lies, but here you were now, watching as they lied about your friend.
That day, however, the lies had taken the life of your friend in the most brutal way you’d ever seen in your life. An elderly man whom you respected and was highly knowledgeable had been beaten with sticks, and the last coup de grace was something you couldn’t see because of the crowd. Unlike most situations when the shot rang out, the crowd didn’t run, but they cheered, as an enemy against their ideology and faith finally took his last breath, and you lost a mentor and friend. Both of you had voted Democrat your whole life, and both of you believed in the world they had been building, but no longer could you look in the mirror and believe that it was the Republican Party that had built this horrible trial by the mob. This was not the Democratic Party you were brought up in, and you knew that almost no one would understand that without being there and watching the vicious nature of what had happened. They wouldn’t understand without seeing that, along with the next 24 hours of TV and media coverage playing up your friend’s connections to right-wing extremists while covering almost nothing about what had really happened. What was said was, “ A group of his peers had found him guilty,” and that he was executed after that. Unlike an older execution, your friend, the professor, had been hung up with a sign around his neck that said counter-revolutionary.
Now you are sitting with a guy begging for his help for any protection, even though you knew the protection he offered was already ille