Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by weeblewobble » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 5:47 AM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #376

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.

While I think the idea of secession is ludicrous (who would give up the free services that the Federal govt hands over, especially after it gives the state oversight?), the idea that Bombers and drones and soldiers stave off a secession is pathetic. You can't aim a gun at someone to changing their beliefs, much less kill your way toward that goal. What you will do is create more and more costly asynchronous warfare,…

Not trying to be glib but this literally already happened. The Southern states seceded (with a very similar mindset to those who want to secede today) and the federal government physically dominated them with guns.

Obviously a lot has changed since 1861 but it seems odd to act like it's totally inconceivable

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

#402

Post by watwut » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 6:55 AM UTC

kokanator wrote: post #300

watwut wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a VERY bold statement to make without citing any sources. If for instance you were to look across recent world history you will find many communist ( left ) groups/factions are exceedingly violent toward civilians and account for millions of civilian deaths.[0] In this country very recently, "...New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio... blamed anarchists and "far-left extremist" groups, including antifa, for inci…

Gotta love how you responded to contemporary risk of violence in America with link to ... great purge in Russia in 1938. And a link that does not shows left wing as more violent then right wing.

Also, I said majority and I stand by that. The terrorism in USA is more likely to go from right wing then from anything else (including muslims). It is right wing media and politicians who promote violence. It is right who is actively talking about violent usurpation of power and builds militias. It is right wing who engineered 6.1. and repeatedly tried to blame left and "antifa" for it. It is right wing who is trying to get control over education by harassing and threatening (actual physical threats) opposition.

There is also no symmetry in who gets promoted and wins elections on either side. The more aggressive and radical side on right wing is having control over the party. As much as they try to make it look like there is symmetry with Democratic leadership, there is none. If anything, democratic leadership is incapable to stand up to them and constantly looking for non-existent bipartisanship. America does not have actual communist party or activism going on to speak of. Communists are not getting votes. It does have fascist politicians getting more and more votes within GOP. And it does have right wing trying to frame any social system they dont like or public education as "communist" to make it look like there is symmetry.

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

#403

Post by ako » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:11 AM UTC

frob wrote: post #216

ako wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what? And was it really that different in the past? Often it feels like people don’t have a good historic perspective and think the past didn’t have its difficulties. In reality, there’s probably no year in the past where most of us would have been better off than today. Doesn’t mean that today is perfect, lots of problems to address: housing, income, healthcare, global warming, destruction of the ecosystem, lis…

In the past month, women in large swaths of the United States have lost their right to bodily autonomy, health, and even life. A woman in Wisconsin was forced to carry her dead fetus inside her for ten days because the hospital was afraid to perform an abortion to remove the fetal tissue due to the law from 1849 being unclear about when exceptions are allowed to its complete and total ban even in the case of rape and…

Yes, this is a big problem, but to solve it the US needs to fix its broken democratic system.

Civil war will only achieve the opposite: many deaths, expect 50% of your family to die including small children, and afterwards people will no longer care about abortion: freedom, a roof over your head, income, safety are the only topics that matter coming out of a war.

At the same time china, Russia and other countries will use US’s internal struggles to increase their global control, US economy crashes, everybody ends up poorer, everybody is worse off.

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

#404

Post by ako » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:14 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #247

ako wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Millions of soldiers is significant, even if it is low in percentages.

There are more people in the army then there are women having abortions, so if abortions is a big enough issue to address, people killing in the name of should also be considered an issue.

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

#405

Post by weaksauce » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:31 AM UTC

yucky wrote: post #388

weaksauce wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

california has the 6th largest gdp in the world... ahead of every country save 5(that's including the US). California is a juggernaut and just saying that it would be taking 10% of the US GDP is underselling it.

They wouldn't survive very long without water. You can't drink GDP.

what do you think desalination plants would do?

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

#406

Post by giardini » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:32 AM UTC

russellbeattie wrote: post #211

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…

In my opinion, the extreme right-wing is building themselves up to begin politicide. For the past year, we've seen daily news stories as Republican extremists don’t just say that Democrats are wrong, but that they are evil. This is a classic authoritarian method of vilifying your opponent both as corrupt and subhuman. Having just read about the Spanish Civil War, I can see how this will potentially play out. It will…

russellbeattie sez>"While the federal government is incapacitated, there will be a huge right-wing rally in some red state with full-throated attacks on the left. The ramped up crowd will head off afterwards and destroy a bunch of businesses and homes of people they suspect as being “pedophiles”. There will be violence and killings, recorded and shared freely as conservatives celebrate..."Nah, you've described the first 15 minutes, which is all that will happen. After that everyone will buy popcorn and go home to watch TV.

What a total utter crock of shite the posts on this topic are! YC needs to pay better attention to nutball posting on their website.

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

#407

Post by trasz » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 8:24 AM UTC

bsagdiyev wrote: post #196

trasz wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people possibly acting violently towards churches since they blamed them for it. Why, I wonder. /s

Justify it however you like. Violence just makes people go against you and is wrong, full stop.

Except that in this case the "violence" is actually defence. It's the Church that's the source of birther's fringe ideas, which led to laws that violate fundamental human rights.

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

#408

Post by russellbeattie » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 8:32 AM UTC

giardini wrote: post #406

russellbeattie wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the extreme right-wing is building themselves up to begin politicide. For the past year, we've seen daily news stories as Republican extremists don’t just say that Democrats are wrong, but that they are evil. This is a classic authoritarian method of vilifying your opponent both as corrupt and subhuman. Having just read about the Spanish Civil War, I can see how this will potentially play out. It will…

russellbeattie sez>"While the federal government is incapacitated, there will be a huge right-wing rally in some red state with full-throated attacks on the left. The ramped up crowd will head off afterwards and destroy a bunch of businesses and homes of people they suspect as being “pedophiles”. There will be violence and killings, recorded and shared freely as conservatives celebrate..." Nah, you've described the f…

I thought the comment was a pretty straightforward projection of events based on the current direction of American politics, especially the conservative trend of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric, and simply extrapolating based on historical precedent. Given other comments and a few upvotes, I'm not alone in that assessment.

Checking your comment and post history it's quite obvious why you've taken exception to it. But you're a long-time HNer, maybe you're reasonable. Could you talk to your fellow conservatives and ask them to stop threatening the lives of their fellow Americans? People have been killed this year already by real nutjobs who were inspired by it. Just a thought.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/us/politics/republican-vi...

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

#409

Post by belorn » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 8:33 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #313

belorn wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to estimate how close a country is to a civil war, the people they should poll is those involved in the military. An attempt to take power through violence without military backing will look something like the 6 January 2021, which is to say a bunch of crazy people dressed up as Indians and cowboys who thought that storming a building means controlling a country.

> which is to say a bunch of crazy people dressed up as Indians and cowboys who thought that storming a building means controlling a country. I don't know why people are still pushing this narrative when the hearings have made it perfectly clear at this point that there was orchestration and support among the government, Capitol police and likely even the Secret Service. The "crazy people dressed up as Indians and co…

If we want to see what a insurrection look like, let take a look at the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt. There were tanks taking control of airports, people abducted by military splinter groups, buildings bombed by military helicopters, town squared occupied by military troops, TV stations taken, and attacks on government positions occurred in multiple cities. Multiple generals was involved.

We can also observe the reaction (overreaction) that turkey had to the coup, and how the world perceived those actions.

Now compare that to what ever secret conspiracy that led to a bunch of useful idiots making a clumsy farce. How realistic is it that those events will be the start of an US civil war?

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

#410

Post by nazka » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 8:59 AM UTC

Arainach wrote: post #355

Retric wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t personally expect a US civil war in the next decade, but I think we are much closer to that point than is safe. What’s really concerning is IMO the odds have been getting worse over time and nobody seems to be trying to calm things down. Gerrymandering for example is extremely beneficial for elites in both political parties, but increasingly corrodes peoples faith in the system. It’s the perfect example of pe…

It's also an unfortunate consequence of game theory. If one party Gerrymanders and the other does not, that party will solidify their hold over the House tighter and tighter. They'll also solidify their grip on the states (who run the elections, and who set the rules on who can vote and when they can vote). Trying to play nice and believe in the system is a recipe for being eradicated - it's exactly what's happened t…

At the same time there are ways in game theory too that can give tools to almost avoid all gerrymandering even where players are all against each other.