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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

#231

Post by timmytokyo »

notch656a wrote: post #55
maerF0x0 wrote: post #32

more than half of americans are unfit for a bar fight let alone a war. I hate to say it but these kinds of surveys are pretty weak. I recall a friend who's a history buff telling me something along the lines of non-professional soldiers often refuse to shoot their firearms, or intentionally miss, because people often don't truly want to kill. A quick google suggests some credibility to this claim[1]. I always try to…

I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I've heard it said only 3% of Americans actually fired a weapon in the American Revolution (and likely the Civil War as well). Still those unfit to fight did often fulfill a role by supporting the economic engines supplying those who did fight.

Not accurate. This is a claim frequently made by the far-right "Three-Percenters" paramilitary group, and they use it to recruit and radicalize followers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Percenters

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...

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

#233

Post by notacoward »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #119
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-...

See that's an important thing people don't realize about a new civil war. In the civil war you had various clearly defined government apparatuses that chose to withdraw themselves from the union to form a new nation state. This time however it isn't a certain group of geographic area it is divided along urban vs rural lines. If a "civil war" were to come again it is much more likely that we'll see something more alon…

Agreed that the ~1860 civil war is not a likely scenario. Here are some other possible scenarios from US history.

https://www.history.com/topics/early-us/shays-rebellion https://www.history.com/topics/early-us/whiskey-rebellion

Were those civil wars? Or did they fall short? There's no simple, clear line. What we can almost certainly expect is terrorism, civil unrest, and moves toward legal autonomy short of actual secession. It will probably be a decade or so before we can tell whether those things (plus the reactions to them) are leading to an actual civil war.

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

#234

Post by watwut »

Imnimo wrote: post #30
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

Source is apparently a preprint (that is, not peer-reviewed) uploaded here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.22277693v... > Participants: Cross-sectional nationwide survey conducted May 13 to June 2, 2022; participants were adult members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel. 8,620 respondents, but I don't see how they were recruited or how potential bias was accounted for. Given how weird some of the interne…

I guess it depends on what you count as "over politics" - I think a lot of people would be willing to engage in violent resistance to something like "the president declares the constitution suspended and all elections indefinitely postponed", but not to something like "the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell vs Hodges". I find the referenced numbers perfectly plausible if they interpret the question to mean something…

Unfortunately' another reason for violent resistance is "I believe Clinton killed babies behind Abby with help of lizard people". Or "I believe Trump should be president regardless of election results and don't think democrats can legally win elections ever".

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

#235

Post by oneplane »

hinkley wrote: post #210
malingo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reliance on the federal government, by state: https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal...

It's funny, I can find ten different charts of this. On some of them, Texas, Florida, and/or North Carolina are 'less dependent' and on others they are just as dependent as most of the rest. A few disagree about Tennessee, Missouri, and Georgia. But for the most part, they agree on just about every other state.

It really depends on what those charts are based on, what they measure, how they scope dependency etc. but considering the scale of population and reliance on industrial processes there is practically no modern way of living that is reasonably locally sourced indefinitely.

There are things that can be done with no dependency, but they themselves are not as useful without dependants. Take cobalt mining for example; it's not something you need anyone else for, but once you got all that cobalt, who's going to process it? Who is going to buy it?

Same goes for more fundamental things like wheat and corn, either you do it at a small scale where you can't really live off of the returns, or you do it at a large scale but now you need dependants to buy it off of you.

(in the concepts I wrote I assumed independence from an isolationists perspective which isn't realistic but somehow does seem to coincide with the not-very-well-thought-through independence wishers)

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

#236

Post by paganel »

CSMastermind wrote: post #122
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #29

One of the biggest problems is that most current gun violence doesn't necessarily represent any sort of targeted pattern (i.e. shooting up a political convention or party headquarters). It's malls and schools because that's such an easy way to create shock and awe. If we do wind up in some sort of civil conflict, I imagine it will look a lot like Ireland from the 60's to the 90's, which was by no means a good time.[0…

Yeah it's really hard to imagine a full blown civil war just because of what the battlelines would be in a right-left split in the country. I've heard people jokingly say, "One side collects guns and the other collects mental disorders." That's obviously an unfair shot but there's some truth to it. Left leaning areas tend to be centered around city centers where right leaning areas tend to be rural and control things…

> The police and the military all have a noticeable conservative bend at least at the lower levels.

I think this is the gist of of it, i.e. what the leaders of the forces holding the monopoly on violence really believe, no matter if the lower levels are right-leaning (and I agree with you on that). If the majority of those leaders (both at the federal and at the state level) are pretty much on the same page I don't see any chance of an actual civil war, no matter the actual political hatred between the civilian factions.

But, and it's a very, very big but, it those US military and police leaders were to get divided, like really divided, the same as it happened in Spain in 1936 with Franco, then all options are on the table. Again, I don't think there's any remote "chance" for that happening, but imo that's the only way a civil war can start (in the US and in most other places). If it matters I'm not a US citizen, but I am interested in US politics.

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

#237

Post by dukeofdoom »

teg4n_ wrote: post #203
dukeofdoom wrote: post #95

Maybe mail in voting wasn't such a great idea, when so many people don't trust the results. In person voting, paper ballot, simplest and most transparent.

Weird add to grind. States have had mail in voting for years and it has not been a problem.

It's at the center of the dispute over the credibility of the last election. While mail in voting has existed before, never at scale where potential fraud would decide elections. te.

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

#238

Post by Aaronstotle »

Izkata wrote: post #111
Aaronstotle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm too naive, but I feel absolutely no need nor desire to act violent towards my fellow Americans. I feel the divineness growing, I don't know what a "civil war" would actually look like. It seems like most Americans already live in bubbles where most people are aligned politically, so who are they going to fight?

> It seems like most Americans already live in bubbles where most people are aligned politically We're not. The most likely geographic split would be urban/rural, cities against everyone else. Around half the population is tightly concentrated and align mostly with the Democrats, the rest are spread out and align mostly with Republicans. Even blue states are mostly red outside of cities. For just one example of somet…

Even with the Urban/rural split, are rural people going to come into Urban areas to fight?

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

#239

Post by henryfjordan »

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…

Worth noting that this is the filibuster rule and it can be changed/eliminated with a 50% vote. We're only deadlocked by choice.

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

#240

Post by notacoward »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #32

more than half of americans are unfit for a bar fight let alone a war. I hate to say it but these kinds of surveys are pretty weak. I recall a friend who's a history buff telling me something along the lines of non-professional soldiers often refuse to shoot their firearms, or intentionally miss, because people often don't truly want to kill. A quick google suggests some credibility to this claim[1]. I always try to…

The survey didn't ask whether people wanted a civil war, or would participate in one. It asked whether they expected it to happen. Whether the respondents themselves were fit/capable is kind of irrelevant.
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