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

science.org

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

#81

Post by colinmhayes »

thechao wrote: post #42
jonnycomputer wrote: post #7

Civil war, for what? Every time I see this mentioned, I think, "for what?"

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…

I agree that this is by far the biggest problem, but I don’t see it leading to a large scale conflict for one reason. The system favors the current political elite. Notice that neither party every really talks about legitimate electoral reform. They talk about voting reform, but not the way our elections actually work. No one is talking about removing fptp, or the electoral college/senate, or moving to a proportional representation system. Without politicians to rally the masses it’s hard to see enough support.

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

#83

Post by bombcar »

codefreeordie wrote: post #27

mmmmmmmmmmm, the science.org writeup of the actual study somewhat exaggerates the findings. The survey was not primarily about this question, but here's how it was worded: "In the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States." The allowed responses were: "Do not agree", "Somewhat agree", "Strongly agree", "Very Strongly agree" 47.8% said that they "Do not agree" and a further 36.4% responded "Somewhat…

Somewhat interesting that they don't provide the standard "breakdown" of responses by gender, age, political affiliation, etc. Perhaps those breakdowns would be ... troubling?

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

#85

Post by reaperducer »

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Source is apparently a preprint (that is, not peer-reviewed) uploaded here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.22277693v...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

Given how weird some of the internet surveys have been in the past year, I don't take singular polls all that seriously.

While you're right that polling that has traditionally been spot-on, or very close in the past has occasionally been way off in the last five to ten years.

However, isn't Ipsos a fairly well-respected organization in its field? The kind with enough experience and resources to account for any kind of biases?

I'd like to see another big polling organization as the same questions and see if the results are the same.

4% of respondents were pretty sure they were going to kill someone soon

So, if there's a 4% margin of error, it's could be either 8%, or 0%.

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

#86

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

jasonjayr wrote: post #28
jonnycomputer wrote: post #7

Civil war, for what? Every time I see this mentioned, I think, "for what?"

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.

> Groups are not seeing eye to eye on the fundamental role of government

I wish it were that. Having differing opinions on the fundamental role of government would be a good thing in a normal, functioning political environment.

What's going on now is that each side fundamentally believes the other side is rigging the system against them. Trump-siding conservatives believe (provably false, I might add) that the voting system is "rigged". Those on the left believe (but, this is actually provably true) that the voting system is also "rigged", albeit that "rigged" here is exactly how the Constitution intends (e.g. a voter in a small state has a vote worth ~50x a voter in a large state in the Senate, and that the winner of the presidential popular vote has twice in the last six elections lost in the electoral college).

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

#87

Post by glogla »

shkkmo wrote: post #34
jonnycomputer wrote: post #7

Civil war, for what? Every time I see this mentioned, I think, "for what?"

And between where? Every state has strong red and blue regions. A second "civil war" is more likely to be terrorist campaigns like the IRA conducted rather than a war like the one the that northern states fought against southern states a century and a half ago.

> A second "civil war" is more likely to be terrorist campaigns like the IRA conducted rather than a war like the one the that northern states fought against southern states a century and a half ago.

Given the number of mass shootings and who is usually behind them, you could say this has been already happening for years.

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

#88

Post by tsol »

jacooper wrote: post #51

Honstly I got so tired of american drama and american doom and irrelevant news, I cleaned all my socials from american news, and started following more international ones. It gives a more global perspective and only covers things that are important, also I follow tech websites like the absolutely awesome "The Register". Now all I hear about the US is someone got shot or there is a new school shooting, which is actual…

I somewhat follow news, but try to just stick to science and medical news. I was in cancun recently and a employee at the hotel said she was sad to hear about the shooting. I didn't even know there was a shooting-- there are too many to even follow sometimes. It was a weird feeling

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

#89

Post by codefreeordie »

havblue wrote: post #36
jonnycomputer wrote: post #7

Civil war, for what? Every time I see this mentioned, I think, "for what?"

Yeah. I guess it's supposed to imply a red vs blue state conflict. Proud Boys versus Antifa fighting in the streets! MSNBC fans firing tear gas at Tucker Carlson viewers! Reylo shippers versus original trilogy fans, hitting each other with plastic lightsabers! What's supposed to happen? Texas is going to invade California?

By far the most likely actual kind of conflict is just an expansion of what we've already seen in the last decade or two: states or municipalities of one color refusing to comply with the other color's legal mandates, and states forming color alliances against each other.

For example, California has prohibited any official or municipality in the State doing any business or sending any representatives to the red States. None of the red States have done exactly that thing, but, for example, red border States are exploring programs that, for example, bus illegal migrants into blue States.

This sort of behavior will probably escalate.

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

#90

Post by hopevillian »

joe_the_user wrote: post #65
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…

Several of the recent shooting involved white supremacists targeting minorities, so it's not entirely untargeted.

sounds like you really havent done much investigation besides being told that.
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