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

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

#421

Post by Supermancho » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

weeblewobble wrote: post #401

Supermancho wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> The Southern states seceded (with a very similar mindset to those who want to secede today)

The incentive and reasoning is a lot weaker than in the 1800s, so I wouldn't say similar. Now it's more of a nostalgic fantasy and it's known that the sentiment endures.

> Obviously a lot has changed since 1861

That's the point.

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

#422

Post by taylodl » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

mrep wrote: post #364

taylodl wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worl…

Not OP but am a born and raised American. That civil war that was a freaking 160 years ago! In what aspect would a civil war today be any similar to that one?

I was addressing our willingness to commit atrocities against one another. I don't see anything making me think that willingness has abated any in the past 160 years.

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

#423

Post by TheCoelacanth » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 2:29 PM UTC

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Source is apparently a preprint (that is, not peer-reviewed) uploaded here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.22277693v...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…

4% is roughly "Lizardman's Constant", i.e. the percentage of people who will answer "Yes" to poll questions no matter how ridiculous the question is, so I would hope most of them don't actually believe that they will shoot someone soon.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

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

#424

Post by giardini » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

russellbeattie wrote: post #408

giardini wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. B…

russellbeattie sez> "..could you talk to your fellow conservatives and ask them to stop threatening the lives of their fellow Americans?"I don't know any conservatives who are threatening anyone. But I'm talking to you and so I ask that you tone it down and quit promoting paranoid BS. If your news stream frightens you, then I suggest you take Joe Biden's advice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-mztxHgYQo

(pretty good song, eh!8-))

The URL you posted

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

mentions no particular killings. The article states that threats are being made from the right. It fails to mention threats and real violence from the left(e.g., BLM rioting, etc.). The article is a slightly better-written continuation of the river of bullshit being posted on this HN topic today.

Also, consider your source: nytimes is shifting further and further left each month.

Dang needs to step into this gusher of BS and cap off the well. Why is this topic not yet closed? It is clearly not useful to a rational person (yes, yes, I have ceased to follow it), it being little more than a venting of anger on all sides, esp. the liberal side.

Or maybe this HN topic is a honeytrap intended to lure out whackjobs from all sides, so our friends in 3-letter agencies can practice using the Internet tools that Snowden et al gave away?

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

#425

Post by lazide » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

fatherzine wrote: post #371

lazide wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective is more based on what faction would fight over someone else’s turf here? No one seems interested, in a physical space way, at least so far. Would the feds fight Texas over texas? Doesn’t seem like it. Would texas go to the Feds, or New York, or whatever, to fight to take it? Doesn’t seem like it. Seems more like everyone wants to lob angry messages at each other from over the border.

The classics: ethnic rifts, religious rifts, ideological rifts. A good old fashioned economic shock is all it takes.

Typically you’d need opposing groups to be in a shared physical space without enough room to stay away from each other comfortably though.

Cities, for sure, and there were low level versions of this kind of unrest, though nothing that got too widespread.

But where would the ‘civil war’ happen in this scenario now?

Online? If so, hard to cause much actual blood here.

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

#426

Post by drewcoo » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

> To reduce the threat of political violence, Braddock says, the first step is to call out the disinformation online and in right-wing media

Well, that's some blatant bias.

> Regulating social media to avoid “incendiary” misinformation from spreading could also help

Widespread censorship? Liberals used to be against that. I guess we all just need to burn the "right" books.

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

#427

Post by banannaise » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

johnny35 wrote: post #58

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…

On Killing by Dave Grossman explores the research backing up your friend's assertion in depth. I highly recommend that book to anyone whose interest is piqued by your comment.

Dave Grossman? The fucking Killology guy? The guy who tells cops that the day they kill someone will be the day they have the best sex of their life? That Dave Grossman?

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

#428

Post by laverya » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #165

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).

That's the most fucked up thing here. The regions with the highest concentration of people upset about paying taxes overlaps almost exactly with the places that get the most excess benefit of taxes, typically in the range of 1.1:1 (which means many other places are seeing about 15% less benefit per capita). A lot of that money goes to roads and infrastructure, so it's a little more dramatic than it sounds, but import…

> That's the most fucked up thing here. The regions with the highest concentration of people upset about paying taxes overlaps almost exactly with the places that get the most excess benefit of taxes, typically in the range of 1.1:1 (which means many other places are seeing about 15% less benefit per capita).

An explanation I've heard for this is that the people upset with overpaying taxes aren't the people getting welfare benefits, but they see those people and think that the benefits are not deserved.

And medicare/medicaid/social security total to ~half of all Federal spending in the US, so that's not nothing.

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

#429

Post by jonnycomputer » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #316

mywittyname wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue, IMHO, is the fact the senate holds all this power, yet Vermont and Texas have the same level of representation in it. The House, for all it's flaws in being capped so low, at least has the advantage of being more representative of the population, having a clearer majority, and being large enough to support factions within the parties.

If that isn't wanted, why even bother with having separate states in first place? Just place everything directly under federal government. You could even get rid of all other levels.

I think it is an important question: what are states for. I don't mean the historical sequence of circumstances that led us to have the system we do, but why we might or might not want them. Why not just designated administrative districts of a federal government.

One thing that Trump's presidency has taught me however, is that, despite the shenangigans of some of the election apparatus in individual states, it was much much harder for Trump to subvert the election process than it would have been had everyone worked for him.

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

#430

Post by ASalazarMX » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 5:04 PM UTC

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…

> more than half of americans are unfit for a bar fight let alone a war

Seeing the kind of insurrectionists that tried to take over the Capitol in 2021, I'll say the bar is very low. If there's a civil war, it will probably be an astroturfed takeover so the worst people can hold even more power.