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Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

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Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#241

Post by taylodl »

lgbrandon wrote: post #217
chasd00 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the whole secession thing blows me away. I live in Texas and had a couple friends who were on that bandwagon. I asked them had they thought about going toe to toe with the US Marines while bombers are over Austin and drones over everywhere else. All i got back was silence. The union will be preserved at any cost, there's precedent for that. No state will secede without defeating the US military first.

just look to Vietnam. The military can occupy but it gets expensive. To win a true war you have to keep the local population happy and bombing them Won't achieve that. Plus you have to think the people in the military are going to be ok bombing local populations and possibly areas they have family. It isn't so cut and dry. I think a break could happen. We are at the end of this empire and the fall is going to be bad.

You must not be American otherwise you'd know the answer to the (rhetorical?) questions. The American Civil War showed us the atrocities each side was willing to commit. It was warfare at a level the rest of the world wouldn't experience for decades to come.

And unlike the first Civil War, the United States didn't have the means to destroy the rest of the world should their weapons fall into the wrong hands. The world has an interest to concern itself and intercede. When you say the end of the empire is going to be bad, that's not the half of it - it's almost unthinkably bad.

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#242

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

moduspol wrote: post #115
jasonjayr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A deeply religious conservative America, or a secular progressive America. Groups are not seeing eye to eye on the fundamental role of government, and lines in the sand are being drawn.

Which side has 95%+ of the guns and land?

There are 120% the number of guns in the US as there are people. Only a great fool would believe they are all in the hands of a group that can't even muster up a popular vote win in a presidential election.

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#243

Post by phtrivier »

baud147258 wrote: post #168
jokethrowaway wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting! Generally, in the country in the Europe I've lived in, the people who want to secede are those who don't want to see their taxes go to the country's lazy and scammy region (almost all countries have one).

Funny, in France one of the region that want to secede, Corsica, is like the lazy and scammy region, which is basically living off handouts from the rest of the country.

They don't want to secede so much as to be able to decide for themselves how to the 1/95th of the government money that their headcount happen to mean.

(I have no data, but as suspect it's actually only a small minority of local politicians clinging to keeping a large part of a the small part of the pie.)

I suppose the metro government has something to keep in here too (national waters in Mediterranean see, maybe ? Links to the drug cartels ? No idea.)

But I suspect the French government that will announce true indépendance for Corsica would be met by forks and pitches _from_ the Islanders.)

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#244

Post by JamesSwift »

petilon wrote: post #102

If a civil war happens, the blame will be on (1) social media and (2) politicians using topics such as abortion and guns to divide people in order to get votes. But politicians leveraging divisive topics to get votes is not new. What is new is social media. In the old days news was filtered, vetted and verified by reputable news services before being distributed. Now because of social media everyone is a publisher, a…

I agree social media is mostly the problem but I think the issue is that social media (and more generally a globally connected digital world) creates a _much_ tighter feedback loop. So you can see that politicians or anyone else with an agenda is able to test messaging and see how it succeeds/fails then iterate at a much faster pace. I don't think its a coincidence that we saw so many similarities in how certain world leaders mimicked Trumps approach of declaring Fake News etc.

You see the same thing in a lot of app development frameworks / languages being more homogeneous in features these days after github and open source has really taken hold. Its much quicker to see something working in another ecosystem and then adopt it into your own.

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#245

Post by krallja »

School-Cotton wrote: post #164
thechao wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voting system in the US (FPTP) is fundamentally unfair. Combine with post-red-map gerrymandering, it is becoming obvious even to the people "on the wings" that our election system fundamentally disenfranchises large swathes of the population. As a short hand, think "Democrats and Independents in red states" and "Republicans and Independants in blue states". Being disenfranchised sucks . The system is designed to…

The US actually has an additional issue on top of FPTP which as far as I know is unique among (supposed) democracies: a bicameral legislature where one of the houses requires a 60% supermajority to pass anything. This is such an incredibly fundamental part of the US political system that it amazes me that it isn't more widely talked about. It means the US is effectively not able to pass any laws that are even mildly…

There is no legal requirement for a 60% supermajority to pass anything in the Senate; it’s just a Senate rule. The filibuster has been modified before, and could be modified at any point in the future. I personally am a fan of leaving it, but you HAVE TO TALK. If you stop talking, you yield. If you want to grind up the gears of Congress, you have to actually do something.

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#246

Post by wishfish »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #207
wishfish wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current situation with abortion will pose a threat similar to the slavery divide. There's a clear division of states which allow it and those with bans. Some of the states with bans are threatening prosecution of women who cross state lines for the procedure. There's a similar situation coming up regarding gay and trans rights. Some states will continue having equal rights. Other states may not. This situation wi…

But how does this effect the wealth and power of elites? That's the point. A civil war has to be organized from the top, and elites, who always look out for their own self-interest first, aren't going to organize an expensive, disruptive war to prevent 10yo rape victims from getting an abortion.

Sometimes these things come from the bottom up. In some countries, a small number of violent people set the spark and the flames start. The elite do have far more power than the rest of us, but sometimes they're also caught up in a wave they can't control. Just like the rest of us.

The elites of the South wanted to keep their slaves and their wealth. Many of them ended up having their plantations burned down or seized. Their wealth diminished or vanished. Their cities occupied. They lost control of the situation fairly quickly.

And it's not like the wealthy are unified exactly. Some, maybe most, would like to avoid future conflict. While others give money to the groups that seem hellbent on creating a conflict of some sort.

You're correct. No one's going to immediately start the civil war based on abortion. But, to me, it feels like dry tinder being set. Just needs a spark.

I'm not saying it's a certainty by any means. We have a decent chance of muddling through the current crises. But it does feel like the stage is being set.

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#247

Post by nomel »

ako wrote: post #178
nomel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reference please?

Soldiers? Many wars are fought for unjust reasons, and soldiers just obey orders without considering if the orders are justified (e.g. Russians in Ukrainian, US in Irak, Dutch soldiers in Indonesia after WW2)

None of these are a "large fraction" of people.

edit: for an example, the entire US military is around 0.45% of the population. Only a small fraction of that is not purely support. Around 0.2% of the population are police. The vast majority never kill anyone.

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#248

Post by t_mann »

dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #197

Whenever I read this trash I wonder who is pushing the narrative. Is this writer even an American? What does he have to gain by fomenting a narrative that Americans want to go to war? Who's in his back pocket? Americans need to wisen the fuck up that so much of this "America divisive, we disagree so much, civil war coming" is manufactured. Especially in the age of GPT-3 where it can be as simple as telling an AI bot…

Take off your tinfoil hat, Science is one of the most respected academic journals in the world, and it is a US-based publication (its twin is the British journal Nature, together they form the pinnacle of academic achievement). This specific article is about a preprint, not a Science publication yet, but do be aware that the organization behind that website has a lot of reputation to lose if they were to engage in the weird sort of propaganda that you are alleging.

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#249

Post by krapp »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #61

I think there will be a civil war. But I think it will be more of a "cold" civil war with flashes of loosely coordinated and unsanctioned mob violence. Edit: Dreher has an excellent book called "Live not by Lies", that explains a theory of soft totalitarianism. Combined with the devestating power of weapons, the reluctance to use them, the powerful surveillance state, and the strong desire to live in comfort means th…

Yeah, I've been hearing about the "cold civil war" since Obama's administration, it seems to have been part of the right's attempt to stoke fear among white voters about his "radical Marxist agenda" or some such, making it seem as if there was widespread populist anger against him that could flare up into a wave of violence if he weren't stopped. I'm convinced Trumpism and its accelerationist messaging is, among other things, a reaction to the Tea Party not getting the noose party they were promised.

Re: Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon

#250

Post by watwut »

bsagdiyev wrote: post #147
tjstankus wrote: post #67

A full-blown civil war, circa 1800s? Probably not, although a growing number of fascist types are fantasizing about it and planning for it. More frequent and extreme episodes of violent civil unrest? Yes. I think it's going to get worse. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/08/they-are-...

I hate to "be that guy" but this ends up being a both sides issue. There was a notice sent around to some churches after the RvW appeal to be vigilant since they had received some info on people possibly acting violently towards churches since they blamed them for it. (Edit to add: Please see https://janesrevenge.noblogs.org/2022/06/26/janes-revenge-ni... -- these are pointedly anti-fascists, the opposite of the righ…

Yeah no. The political and especially terrorist acts are not two side issues, they in fact flow from right much more. It is just that right always gets benefit of doubt.

But also, overturn of RoW is long term work of evangelicals.

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