Blackcap Blog

Published at 13:31 on 12 January 2021

It is time to put away the niceties and discuss in plain terms what must be done (and what is hopefully starting to be done).

We must win and the fascists must lose. It is as simple as that. Everything  that follows flows from this simple, elementary fact.

Fascists want a world where fascism is the only principle allowed. All debate, all activity, save for the glorification of the fascist order, will be sedition. Non-fascists span the whole gamut of ideologies outside fascism, and we do not want that. The vast, vast majority of us want a world where openness, debate, and dissent are not only allowed but valued. This latter state of affairs may be termed an open society.

There is simply no compromise possible between the two positions. Either open society prevails, or fascism prevails.

Open societies are vulnerable to going fascist, because their own principles of openness and debate lets fascists compete in the political arena for followers and power. Once they obtain sufficient power, they can then institute a new fascist order. This is the paradox of tolerance that philosopher Karl Popper wrote about:

Less well known [than other paradoxes Popper discusses] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Popper was not merely being theoretical here. He was born in Austria, and the first part his academic career took place in that country. He witnessed first-hand the rise of fascism, and fascism eventually compelled him to flee Austria. He thought long and hard about the paradox above, because he was baptized into it by fire.

Therefore what must be done to the fascists is to crush their movement, marginalize them, and keep them from power. That of course all very fascistic in and of itself. Hence the paradox: the tolerant must be prepared to be intolerant (to the intolerant). Tolerance, in other words, like everything, has its limits. Unlimited tolerance is self-annihilating.

This opens up a very real risk. When unleashing coercion against the fascists, we must be scrupulously careful to limit the scope of our coercion. Only fascists must be targeted. The non-fascist small-d democratic right, no matter how irritating some of them might be, must not be targeted. It is easily possible for a war against fascists to create an order as bad as the one the fascists want. The scope of any coercion must be strictly limited.

There must be an off-ramp for those who have so far passively gone along with fascism. There is a huge difference between the random two-time Trump voter and a committed fascist like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, or Stephen Bannon. There is also a huge difference between the latter individuals and Chris Christie or Susan Collins.

If the low-grade enablers are willing to acknowledge the error of their ways and change their behavior, they should be welcomed into the anti-fascist camp. They will be our unreliable low-grade enablers then, of course. This might be infuriating to those with stronger principles, but welcoming them over to our side grows our numbers and shrinks theirs.

Ultimately there is no alternative. The fascists have gotten surprisingly strong in a surprisingly short time. They almost staged a successful coup. The inauguration of Biden gives the non-fascists the upper hand, and we must not shy from using it to crush fascism. Should we fail, it is unlikely we will get a second chance. Instead, as Churchill put it, we “…will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

What has to be done is dangerous, and it has risks. We have, by virtue of a long litany of mistakes throughout our history, arrived at a point where safety is no longer possible. All that exists are choices between various types of danger. It is far more dangerous not to crush fascism. So crush it.

Published at 08:42 on 11 January 2021

I do not think most people yet realize the full gravity of what happened at the Capitol and how easily it might have been vastly more serious. Part of this is denial rooted in myth of American exceptionalism, and part of this is that we are still in the process of figuring out exactly what happened.

Consider this video:

Now consider how some of the rioters came there armed, as part of organized militia groups. Consider how some came equipped with zip ties. Consider how we have just learned that all the shit-talking about storming Congress wasn’t just shit-talking. Consider how panicked and hurried the effort to secure the safety of lawmakers was.

Yes, some of the invaders, perhaps most of them, were just LARPing and milled about aimlessly, not knowing exactly what to do (because they had no plan of what to do) when they got inside. That’s just some of them. Available evidence points to others being far more serious.

What would have happened if they had found the Vice President? There were enough armed people there that, despite their generally inferior combat skills, they could have probably overwhelmed the Secret Service detail assigned to protect Pence.

We probably came closer than we think to seeing the Vice President of the United States get lynched in the halls of Congress.

What would have happened then? Now there is no Vice President to perform the Constitutionally mandated duty of tabulating the Electoral College votes until a new one is appointed by President Trump. Can there be even the slightest particle of doubt that the new VP would be a lickspittle who would refuse to do his duty per the Constitution?

At that point, the country would have been in a full-blown constitutional crisis, most likely with spontaneous eruptions of violent unrest nationwide.

We will probably learn in the coming months and years how this coup attempt could have easily been much, much worse.

Published at 10:22 on 10 January 2021

I recently ran across an article containing this:

The [Capitol Police] officer even described coming face to face with police officers from across the country in the mob. He said some of them flashed their badges, telling him to let them through, and trying to explain that this was all part of a movement that was supposed to help.

Now this is interesting. You see, there was some truly shocking behavior on display at the Capitol on Wednesday. We saw Capitol Police officers opening barricades to let rioters in. We saw officers stand aside and let rioters pass. We saw officers retreat without making the slightest effort to engage the mob and thwart its progress. We saw officers helping rioters up and down the Capitol steps. We saw officers posing for selfies with rioters.

At first glance, this points to fifth columnists amongst the Capitol Police. But wait, that puzzle piece really does not fit very well. Why didn’t the plot leak out (conspiracies are hard to keep secret)? Why did some officers still attempt to defend the Capitol and the officials therein?

The claim in the quote above fits far better.

Cops are known to lean right. Many of them are big fans of Trump. One of the reasons people become a cop is that they are authoritarians who get their jollies pushing other people around (what better job than one that allows you to do so legally). Trump is an appealing figure to this sort of person.

Cops give other cops special treatment. It even goes so far as many of them giving their friends and family special “get out of jail free” cards.

There is no special conspiracy at play in the following scenario: just the normal, well-known, institutional rot in policing. Off-duty cops from other departments showed up in the mob, migrated to the front of it, flashed their badges, and got special treatment. Once the barricades had been opened, the rest of the mob streamed through. By the time the violent and destructive intent of the mob was clear, it was too late: the Capitol had already fallen.

The whole problem was then made worse by the fascist element within the Capitol Police who sympathized with the rioting. This could have also affected the lack of preparation on the part of the Capitol Police: they sympathized with the coming mob, so they were not interested in doing a good job of preparing to protect the Capitol.

But there was no conspiracy. It was, to reiterate, simply normal and well-known systematic rot at play.

Published at 12:04 on 8 January 2021

Earlier, I claimed:

American democracy has one foot in the grave. If the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice refuses to investigate and prosecute Trump’s crimes, it becomes a corpse. It might then take a while for it to start stinking and bloating enough for people to notice it is a corpse, but it will be a corpse.

Let’s look into some of the evidence (some of it new, some of it quite old) for that claim, shall we?

Recent Events

As I write this, the Democrats are still dithering about whether or not to impeach the President for inciting an attempted coup. They may still decide to, but:

• This should not be a hard decision. Trump literally attempted to incite a coup d’etat! Yet the Democrats have to think about it long and hard.
• The Republicans will probably refuse to convict in the Senate, anyhow.

What does it say about the state of a supposed opposition party that it has to ponder it over when the party in power literally tries to stage a fascist coup against them? What does it say about that party’s institutional commitment to any principles it claims to profess?

What it says about the Republicans, a majority of which voted to ignore the results of the election on Wednesday, is clear. The GOP as an institution is a fascist party. There are still non-fascists still among its members, but the Romneys and Raffenspergers will doubtless be purged from its ranks soon enough.

However, back to the Democrats for a moment: The descent into fascism that the USA is presently undergoing is almost as much the fault of the Democrats for failing to oppose it as it is of the Republicans for pursuing it.

Impeachment

If it happens, the Senate will probably not convict. That said, it is still a useful exercise.

In the House, it will be a demonstration of principles for the Democrats to go through with impeaching Trump a second time. Their dithering has already irreversibly weakened the point they will make, but not doing at all will weaken such a point into oblivion. Better late than never.

In the Senate, it will force Republicans to take an up-or-down vote. As Jonathan V. Last writes:

The Republican party, as currently constituted, is a danger to democracy. Full stop. Which means that anyone working to further the prospects of this party is supporting the institution that favors authoritarianism.

If the Republican party is to be reformed, such reform is not going to happen organically, from the inside. It will take place only in the aftermath of a schism which drives either the forces of authoritarianism, or the “reasonable” center-right, out of the party. Only then will it be even theoretically possible for a responsible party to emerge.

Forcing Republican senators to vote on removing Trump will hasten this schism. This is critical for the long-term health of our polity.

The Sickness

Just how ailing the Republic is can be illustrated by the phone call that Nancy Pelosi made to the Joint Chiefs of Staff this morning. She begged the military to engage in insubordination against their commander in chief:

This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike. The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy.

It’s all for the best of intentions, of course: avoiding a war, possibly avoiding a nuclear war. But, she still is encouraging insubordination. There is nothing in the Constitution saying that the military should follow the orders of the President except if the Speaker of the House requests otherwise. What Pelosi has done is itself a transgression of the Constitution.

There are two Constitutional ways of dealing with an unfit commander in chief: impeachment and conviction, or removal from office via the 25th Amendment. Neither are being used. Instead, an extra-Constitutional way has been invented on the spot and is being attempted.

Nobody is even much talking about this. It is being taken as self-evident that it is too difficult for the Federal government to operate within the bounds of the Constitution. The rot is so all-pervasive, and recurring evidence of it so routine, that people are used to it, and do not even much talk about it.

And yes, it is all-pervasive. In my lifetime we have seen (incomplete list):

• A president lie his way into a war in Southeast Asia, a war that was engaged in without Congress going through the proper procedure, per the Constitution, for declaring it.
• A president lie while he was expanding that war into Laos and Cambodia,
• A president create a secret police squad that operated outside the law, and use it against the political opposition by spying on them.
• A president covertly sell weapons to a terrorist state that had just held our diplomats hostage for over a year, and use the ill-gotten proceeds of that sale to fund right-wing terrorists in Latin America.
• A president perjure himself in front of Congress.
• A president lie his way into a war in Southwest Asia, a war that was engaged in without Congress going through the proper procedure, per the Constitution, for declaring it.
• A president institute torture as an official state policy, in contravention of international law.

Nobody high up has been held to account for any of these actions. Nobody. Occasionally, there have been a few designated fall guys take the hit, but that’s it.

And I have not even listed anything the Trump Regime has done! If I did, that list would be at least twice as long. It would finish, of course, with the literal coup attempt that is likely to go uncensured.

This is the degree to which constitutional principles actually matter in our supposed constitutional republic.

Conclusion

When I said our democracy had one foot in the grave, I was not being dramatic. I was being optimistic. The likelihood that it is already a corpse, but not yet stinking and bloating enough for people to notice that fact, is actually pretty damn high.

Published at 09:31 on 7 January 2021

I will start with a premise: an insurrection of the sort we just saw can be a valid tactic.

I am not going to get sucked into a lengthy digression on the legitimacy of political violence, and I appreciate that many reading this will disagree with me on this subject. Peter Gelderloos makes makes many of the arguments that motivate my beliefs, and I direct you to those for now. Maybe I will go into details of my own beliefs, and where they differ from Gelderloos’, sometime in the future here.

For now, however, I will stick with the point I made above. Whether or not you personally believe it, I believe it, and I am not alone. I am not alone, and such beliefs are not limited to those on the radical left. In fact, they are more common on the political right than on the left. Also note that I said can be above; my statement was not a blanket endorsement for casually engaging in political violence for any reason whatsoever.

Suppose, for sake of argument, the election really was being stolen by a cabal of Castro fans who wanted to implement a USSR-style dictatorship in the USA. It’s a preposterous assertion, given the current reality, but just give it a whirl. Suppose Congress was about to finalize the whole process by certifying a fraudulent election. Keep in mind how brutal and violent the Soviet system often was. Could it not be reasonable to then use a little force to stop that whole process?

None of the above actually is the case, of course. The rub is, many believe it to be the case. And for those who believe such things, actions like those which took place yesterday are only reasonable and to be expected.

Why do so many people believe those untrue things? Because the president, and his enablers in Congress, and his enablers in the media, keep saying them!

Therefore, yes, Trump (and his many enablers) are very much responsible for yesterday’s attempted putsch.

Published at 18:34 on 6 January 2021

Not a Surprise

Really, can anyone say this all is a surprise, after all the garbage that Trump and his enablers have been spewing about a “stolen” election? Because if an election really is being stolen by those intent on destroying freedom, then an insurrection is totally justified.

Of course, there was only a very tiny amount of fraud, nowhere near enough to change the outcome. As is usual. (And yes, fraud is usual. This is Planet Reality, not Cloud Cuckoo Land. Some people will do crooked things.) So the whole thing is nothing but a gigantic exercise in gaslighting: those clamoring “Stop the steal!” are the ones actually advocating for a stolen election.

But still, if you get a bunch of people to believe the election was stolen, things like what happened at the Capitol today are pretty much to be expected.

In fact, independent journalist Robert Evans cataloged all the signs of the coming storm, being openly posted and talked about on the Internet.

The Obvious Discrepancy

I’ve been to lots of demonstrations, and witness lots of confrontations at police barricades. Typically, the cops will try at least five times as hard to defend a barricade that protects some windows at Niketown (just the windows, because Niketown had been closed) than I saw them try to defend the one protecting Congress (not just the Capitol, Congress which was in session at the time) today.

In fact, some cops have even been videoed posing for selfies with the fascists, inside the Capitol building.

But, but, they were understaffed, some say. They couldn’t defend those barricades; circumstances compelled them to make a strategic retreat. But, but, it’s just a few bad apples, some say.

That does not answer my point. Suppose they were understaffed. Why were they understaffed? Why was a right-wing mob threatening people automatically judged to be less of a threat than a left-wing one threatening mere property?

Individual cops to not get to decide whether or not to deploy at a protest. Those higher up in the command structure make those decisions. That they evidently did not points to the rot and bias in policing being structural and systematic. Far from being a defense of policing, any understaffing at the Capitol today serves as a further indictment of it.

Accountability is Critical

Will Trump be held to account for all he did to incite today’s attempted putsch?

Ideally, he should be impeached post-haste, then investigated for sedition and whatever other charges seem to have probable cause. Then, assuming convincing evidence is found, comes prosecution and finally conviction.

Not just for what happened today, but for every law he has broken while president.

Accountability is Unlikely

But this is the USA. I have not once in my adult life ever seen a person at or near the apex of the social hierarchy be held truly accountable for his or her misdeeds.

I do not expect this to change, because I can not reasonably expect it to change.

There is a hierarchy of authority in all class societies, and that hierarchy is particularly severe here. It is why, unique amongst the most affluent nations, the American political system has steadfastly refused to guarantee health care to all as a right. The property of those on top is held to be more important than the lives of those below, and the lack of universal health care is but an expression of this guiding principle.

The richer you are, the whiter you are, and the further to the poltical Right you are, the more your life matters. The poorer you are, the browner you are, and the more to the political Left you are, the less your life matters.

This is why the police posed for selfies with the brownshirts. This is why they did not defend their barricade, if they were not understaffed. If they were understaffed, this is why they were understaffed.

One Foot in the Grave

There is a message in all this. The message was sent when Nixon was pardoned. It was sent again when Oliver North got off scot-free, and nobody higher up was held to account for Iran Contra. It got sent again when nobody got seriously held to account for lying their way into the Iraq War, or for using torture as official state policy.

There is no rule of law for the political Right in the USA. If you are on the Right, and in power, you can do basically whatever you want, and get away with it.

The American Republic has one foot in the grave. Very few realize just how sick it really is.

Soon: A Corpse

Given all that, why not do whatever you want, if it looks politically profitable? Why leave money and power on the table?

If, as is likely, Trump is not impeached, and nobody suffers consequences for what happened today, what is the lesson in all of it? Simple: once again, the rule of law doesn’t matter. The Right gets to do whatever it wants.

At that point, the Republic becomes a corpse. It may take a while (as in: a few years) for the stench and the bloat to get to the point where nobody can ignore it any more, and the oblivious may pretend otherwise until then, but a corpse it will be. Its constitution and its laws might still technically exist, but their irrelevance will have been incontrovertibly demonstrated.

The next coup attempt — and there will be one, sooner rather than later — will, in all likelihood, be successful. The inevitability of it will be obvious to historians, who will wonder how those enmeshed in it all could have been blind to the signs.

Unless

Unless, that is, tradition is broken with and the USA starts holding the powerful to account.

Published at 18:48 on 28 December 2020

First, the bomber is probably not a right-winger because he tried to limit the effect of the bombing to property damage by using a PA system to broadcast warnings to evacuate. Right-wing terrorists generally do not care about human life. Consider the Oklahoma City bombing or the 9/11 attacks as two examples.

In fact, I was originally going to speculate that it was likely a left-wing group behind the bombings, specifically because of the warnings. For example, both the Provisional IRA and the Weather Underground Organization specialized in calling in warnings to evacuate areas where they had placed bombs.

Except now we are learning that it was a lone wolf attack. Most left-wing bombings have groups behind them, so I now believe, by process of elimination, the bombing is be motivated by personal grudges. The target seems to have been the AT&T building in Nashville.

AT&T is a big, bureaucratic business with many customers. It is not hard to imagine that the bomber was harboring a grudge against AT&T for some past business dealing that went wrong, or some act of corporate malfeasance.

That is just one possible reason; the motive could easily be a moonbat conspiracy theory, or a grudge against some other business in the same immediate area. Mental illness is also a possibility, given that it was evidently a suicide bombing.

But it does not appear at this stage likely to be politically-motivated terrorism.

Published at 14:02 on 16 December 2020

Of course, it matters because will give Democrats control over the Senate. Everybody knows that much. However, I don’t think everybody knows just how important that will be.

First, if we know anything about the Republicans, we know that they will be dead-set on obstruction to the max if they retain control of the Senate. Nobody aware of Mitch McConnell’s antics over the past five years can plausibly argue otherwise. If the Republicans control the Senate, Biden will probably not be able to appoint anyone other than actual, pro-Trump, pro-fascist Republicans to any Senate-confirmed position. He will not be able to pass any laws except the laws Trumpers want.

Government will lurch from crisis to crisis, and the Republicans will blame it all on the chief executive and his party. Because voters are by and large stupid, and because Democrats are by and large incompetent when it comes to messaging, voters will overall fall for the Republican lie hook, line, and sinker.

Because Biden’s cabinet nominations will be frustrated, he will resort to doing what Trump did and nominate acting secretaries. In fact, he will largely resort to doing what Trump did in other ways. Doubtless he will use executive power to direct spending without Congressional approval, much like Trump did with the border wall.

In doing so, Biden will cement, by bipartisan consensus, that Trump’s innovations in the way of greater executive power were legitimate and establish precedent for an increasingly imperial presidency. Sooner rather than later, a Trumpy fascist will win the White House again, and at that point it will be Game Over for democracy.

All of this is likely should Democrats not win the two runoffs in Georgia. This, not just some lack of breathing room when it comes to enacting policy, is the real stakes at play in the Georgia runoffs.

In fact, the breathing room afforded Biden on policy really won’t be that great. The Senate will be split 50–50; Democrats will prevail only because the Vice President gets to cast a tie-breaking vote. Anything that passes the Senate will therefore have to get ayes from the likes of Joseph Manchin III, Angus King Jr., Jon Tester, and Kyrsten Sinema. That is aside from the fact that Biden himself is no progressive.

But none of that matters so much. Putting a brake on the runaway train to fascism, not enacting any progressive wish list, is the real reason those two Georgia seats matter.

Published at 08:56 on 7 December 2020

Of course, he probably will be made so, and that is a huge problem, because it continues the long, sad, and highly dangerous American tradition of never holding the most powerful in society to account.

While there are a few voices calling for the right thing to be done, some quick Internet searching using the term “prosecute Trump” indicates they are distinctly in the minority, which indicates the likely course of action. Or should I say, the likely course of inaction.

Trump only happened because past precedent (Nixon was pardoned, Reagan got off the hook for Iran/Contra, no high-up Bushies were prosecuted for lying their way into Iraq or establishing an official policy of torturing prisoners, etc.) indicated that in the USA, the most powerful are almost never held to any standards. If this dangerous and disgusting precedent is allowed to stand, there will be another right-wing authoritarian regime, soon, and it will be far worse than the Trump regime ever was.

Published at 12:12 on 2 December 2020

Introduction

Stories like this one are circulating in the local news.

What we actually have here is the nexus of several factors:

• A prosecutor trying to make those whom s/he is accusing look as bad as possible (as prosecutors always do),
• A reporter ignorant of the basics of railroad signaling and railroad operations in general,
• Broadly-worded post-9/11 anti-terrorism legislation, and
• A couple of activists who badly neglected their homework.

What we do not have is a gang of hardened and depraved eco-terrorists willing to cause significant human and ecological damage in order to make their point.

First, we need to look into just what the “shunting” these two are accused of actually does. In order to do that, we must delve a bit into the basics of railroad signaling.

The Basics of Railroad Signaling

There is much talk these days about “smart” vehicles and “smart” highways, and how these offer the possibility of vastly safer road transport in the future. Well, railroads have been creatively using late nineteenth-century technology to minimize the likelihood of crashes basically ever since… the late nineteenth century! It’s one of the reasons rail is such a safe transport mode, compared to highways.

What they do is called automatic block signaling. The railroad track is divided up into a series of electrically-isolated blocks and small opposing electrical charges, typically around a volt or so total, are applied to the two rails in each block. Even though the rails are not very well-insulated from either the ground or each other, the small voltage means that very little current will flow between them.

That is, unless a train is present. Then, a current will flow up through one steel wheel, across the steel axle, and down through the other wheel, completing the circuit. This current will trigger a relay. The presence of a train has been detected.

It is then a simple enough matter to use electromechanical logic to cause signals to turn red, disallowing two trains from occupying the same block at the same time. If one successfully does that, crashes between trains become impossible.

The same principle can be used to activate signals at grade crossings. (Although, to be technical, what is now done at crossings is rather more sophisticated, allowing the distance and speed of the approaching train, as well as its mere presence, to be detected.)

These days, most signals have been upgraded to computerized and electronic controls more sophisticated than the old electromechanical ones, but the basic principles remain the same: voltage is applied to the rails, and when current can easily flow between the rails, it is interpreted as the presence of the train and signals are set accordingly.

If you wish to see a diagram of how this all works, go here.

The Basics of Shunting

Of course, if one were to connect a sufficiently thick wire between the two rails, and electrically bond the wire to the rails with low-resistance connections, one would create a short between the rails that mimics the presence of a train. This is all that shunting does, no more, no less.

Phantom Trains

Remember how I mentioned that the two rails are not well-insulated from each other? Well, it turns out that sometimes moisture or metallic debris can cause an accidental and unwanted electrical connection between the rails.

Either way, we now have a phantom train on the block. The signaling system thinks a train is present, even though none is. Railroad operations are being disrupted.

This happens frequently enough that railroads have a procedure for dealing with it. After the train stops, the dispatcher can tell the engineer to proceed through the red light. The catch is that the train has to proceed very slowly, slow enough so that, if there is something on the tracks, the train can be stopped before it hits it.

The real solution, of course, also involves dispatching a repair crew to locate and cure the root cause of the problem. Making trains stop, contact the dispatcher, and creep through a block needlessly slowly still costs time and money.

What Shunting Can, and Can Not, Do

Now that we know the basics of what the two have been accused of, and how railroads operate, we can delve into some of the supposed adverse consequences of the alleged crimes.

Shunting Will Interfere with Railroad Operations

How could it not? It causes signals to needlessly turn red and stop trains. That was, of course, the whole point.

Shunting Will Not Cause Crossing Gates to Fail to Drop

Shunting works by mimicking the presence of a train. In order to make crossing gates fail to drop, one must mimic the exact opposite: the absence of a train. Shunting will therefore cause lights and bells to activate, and gates to drop, if done on a block containing a grade crossing.

Suppose the railroad has some way to disable the crossing signals in such a situation, and chooses to do so. In this case, it is not the shunt that caused the signal to be disabled, it is the railroad. Moreover, there is still a phantom train on the block. In order to enter it, trains will have to stop, contact the dispatcher, and proceed through at a very slow speed.

If there is a way to disable the crossing signal, there will also be a way to re-enable it. Any failure to so re-enable the crossing signal after talking the train through the red light will thus be the fault of the railroad and not those placing the shunt.

Suppose that worst case happens anyhow. The train is only creeping through the crossing; it is not approaching at maximum speed. The train has a horn, and will still use it, so there will still be some indication of it.

The horror scenarios of trains sailing through crossings at full speed, with no advance warning whatsoever, as a result of shunts are therefore pure bullshit.

Shunting Does Not Typically Cause Emergency Stops

Railroads do not like emergency stops, because they often cause minor damage to the stopping train. The most common form of damage is flat spots on the wheels caused by them locking and skidding. (The affected wheels and axle must then be removed from the truck and turned back into round on a big lathe.) Sometimes the couplings between cars get damaged as well.

Since emergency stops are bad, railroad signals have indications in advance of occupied blocks, so that engineers will not encounter a red signal by surprise and instead be able to gradually bring the train to a routine stop. A shunt will cause these advance indications much the same as an actual train would.

The only way a shunt can cause an emergency stop is if one is placed on a block immediately in front of a running train, which will then see an unexpected red signal.

Emergency Stops Do Not Often Cause Derailments

The most frequent adverse consequences of them are, to reiterate, flat wheels and damaged couplings. Neither is a derailment. Neither endangers the public or the environment from errant rolling stock or spilled cargo.

Emergency stops are strongly correlated with derailments, but they do not typically cause them. Consider the following scenario: a rock slide blocks the tracks. The engineer rounds a bend and sees it, immediately putting his train into an emergency stop. It is hard to stop a train, so the train does not stop in time. It hits the slide and derails. There was both an emergency stop and a derailment, but the cause of the derailment was not the emergency stop.

Enter the PATRIOT Act

It is a huge piece of legislation hurriedly passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, containing enhanced penalties for just about anything that can conceivably be construed as terrorism. One of these things is tampering with railroad signaling systems. Installing an illegal shunt is a form of electrical tampering with a signaling system, therefore in the eyes of the law it is prosecutable as a terrorist act.

The main intent here was to prosecute other types of tampering, ones intended to produce false green signals that sent trains to their doom, but the way the law was written, any tampering is prosecutable.

Those Two Did Not Do Their Homework

But, fair or not, it doesn’t matter now. The law is the law, and it allows them to be aggressively prosecuted as terrorists for what they did.

If you are not willing to accept the consequences of something, you should not do it, whatever that something is. This is basic Direct Action 101 sort of stuff: always do your homework.

If you wish to make a point by stopping trains, there are ways to do it that, while still unlawful, do not entail the high legal risk that shunting does. It is not difficult to figure out some of these ways. Why needlessly expose oneself to legal risk? Why impose on one’s comrades the burden of defending against needlessly serious charges?

And that, not “terrorism,” is what those two saboteurs are really guilty of: failing to do their homework.