Home-field advantage: Lots of moving parts

Brad Ridenour popped open the podcast from one of his favorite social observers and thinkers. Matt Bracken was a blogger out of Northern Florida who had been WAY ahead of the curve on CWII. If you wanted a friend with a working crystal ball, you had to pay attention to Bracken.

The podcast embedded the Spencer Street video and the speaker was shaking his head in dismay. “I looked this up on a map. It is three city blocks and the full weight of the Marxists are about to drop on them. This is what you DON'T want to do. You never want to volunteer to be a target.”

Looking at the seven, old men, Brad recognized them as men practicing for a funeral color-guard and he correctly guessed that they were affiliated with a local VFW post.

Brad called his buddy Darryl Oates. Brad lived in Sharon, Pennsylvania on the west end of the state and Darryl lived in Zanesville, Ohio in the Appalachian foothills. They had a standing bet on the big football game every year. They had met at a Max Velocity Tactical training event and had kept in touch ever since. 

Over the years they attended other classes and formed an informal "squad" of like-minded men.

“Did you watch Bracken's latest pod-cast? Brad asked.

“Yeah, I did. Those old fuckers are doomed” Darryl opined.

“Maybe” Brad said. “I think it is time for me to make a trip up to Spartan country. Bracken might be right. That old guy might have a screw loose, but I got a sense he had a lot on the ball. I just want to check it out.”
 

*

The video was picked up overseas. The British press ran it. Al Jazeer, Times of India and Russia Today (of course).

Various accumulators stateside ran it. The only air-time it got on the Mainstream Media was when Faux News ran the snip about the Marxist not being able to lead a puppy across the street.

Most important, the major donors supporting the Marxists saw the video.

They saw the video and quickly made a few phone calls. The donors had exquisitely fine-tuned noses for profit. They could smell a hundredth of a percent difference on Return-on-Investment and that stupid video had the potential to shave a couple percent off their expected return.

Disrespect is contagious and it had to be crushed, decisively. 

The pressure was on the Michigan Marxists to make a definitive statement in blood.

*

Major (ret.) Alex Villareal started getting “feelers” from interested parties a couple of hours after the video went live on the internet.

Most of the feelers were non-starters. He needed disciplined, thinking, fighting men, not inexperienced wanna-bees who would panic and make matters worse.

By the end of the day, Alex had a couple of leads that sounded promising. One of them committed to come to Lansing the next day and look things over.

The fact that the one guy refused to commit before putting his boots-on-the-ground and met Alex and checked out the terrain was very promising.

If the men were as good as they sounded on the phone, Alex hoped they would help with his recruiting problem. Even with many of the blocks around the neighborhood burned-out shells, there were still many routes the Marxist could take and it was going to take a lot of bodies to plug them.
 

*

Simon moved back in with Sateen, his ex-girlfriend.

She lived just west of Spencer Street.

Simon told her that he regretted leaving her, that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

The break-up had not treated Sateen kindly. She had gained 40 pounds and her face had broken out. She was over-joyed to take him back.

Simon was a Marxist.

*

Simon thought it would be difficult to gather intelligence on the white people but he was wrong.

Sateen had a dog named Ruby, a pitbull cross. Nobody gave him a second glance when he was walking Ruby.

Since he could barely stand the sight and smell of Sateen, he spent hours walking Ruby. He took a few pictures of the dog, trying to get preparations in the background but eventually gave it up. He took mental notes and sketched them on his phone. Then he texted the information to “higher”.

His thoughts and sketches were barely legible.

*

As expected, the inmates from Chicago were assaulted by the largest inmates from Detroit.

Horton had given the incoming shift the heads-up that he "had a feeling" there would be fights, so the guards were not caught flat-footed. They were quick to pull out batons and pepper spray. In compliance with policy, all parties to the altercation were put in solitary.

That evening, the inmates were served “outside food”, which was a rarity. Instead of the bland, overcooked institutional food, Stepanic ordered in Uncle John's cheese pizzas and cinnamon-sugar donuts for dessert.*

One of the inmates asked a guard why they got the special treat.

The guard said “The warden is a big fan of the Detroit Lions.”

Scratching his head, the inmate said “So was there a big game?”

“Yup” the guard said. “This is the anniversary of the last time the Lions beat the Bears.”

The inmate considered himself an expert on NFL history and he could not remember the year that happened. “What year was that?” he asked.

“2020” the guard said, with a grin.

Next

 

*Hat/tip to Lawdog and Peter Grant for help with jail culture.  According to them, any kind of outside food is a rare treat. Typically, it is reserved to reward "units" that cause the fewest problems to positively reinforce compliance with rules. It is also served at festive times like Super Bowl and NCAA Basketball finals.

In normal times, no warden would EVER condone using food to reward fighting.

The reason cheese pizza is specified is because inmates have sued (and won) cases where they claimed discrimination due to religious, dietary restrictions. Jewish inmates and Muslim inmates cannot eat pork or shrimp nor can Orthodox Jews eat pizza adorned with both meat and cheese. Hindu cannot eat beef and so on.

My original thinking was that KFC would be the food of choice. Unfortunately, there is a history of bones being sharpened and used as shanks. Inmates are never fed food with bones.