I don't listen to any news or watch TV and I don't use social media. Now that I don't consume any of it, I don't feel any of the fear or anger that the media talks about. I can't remember when I was last at peace as much as I am now. If everyone else would unplug from the hate-tainment machines they'd probably calm down too.
I don't see an ACTUAL (declared) civil war happening. None of the participants actually could I think, nor would they benefit from taking anything.
Would Texas try to actually take Washington DC? Nah. Could they? No chance.
Would the Feds do anything but setup sanctions/blockades and wait for Texas to beg to come back if they tried to leave? Nah. They might arrest a few key leaders or 'leak' a bunch of embarrassing intel too, of course.
Simmering 'fuck yous' and 'civil disobedience' I see building though, with the occasional unhinged terrorist, and a lot of folks haven't deal with conflict enough to see the difference between that and civil war.
Well, the incorrect part of you analysis is implying that right leaning states would start the war here.
Given the current state of upcoming election polls, local politics, and the supreme court, the right leaning states are going to get most of what they want.
They have no reason to secede, when they are winning the current politics battles, and are likely to win future elections in the next few years.
The talk of secession is from the right leaning states. If, say, Texas were to secede, I wouldn’t be totally surprised if the US were to invade, after all that’s how the last civil war started. On the other hand, maybe they would do nothing.
> The talk of secession is from the right leaning states.
There has been rhetoric from right leaning people, for decades on this,yes.
But the point is, that from the actual on the ground political reality, the right is winning.
They are winning in the courts, local/state power, and based on current voting polls, they are going to win in the upcoming federal elections.
There is no need to secede if you simply control all the levers of government. And the recent facts are that the right is only going to get more power.
Therefore, despite the rhetoric, right leaning places have no need to secede, when they can instead just take over the government the regular way.
I never said they would start the war, I’d say neither “side” seems to have any actual need or desire to start an actual shooting civil war, since there is no ground in dispute (or that it would help to dispute), or major economic/resource dispute. If someone ‘captures’ Washington DC, for instance, it would not help them one bit. No one seems to be in any position to try to leave either, usefully.
There is a lot of complaining and grumbling, and ideological disagreements. Maybe there could be a ‘crusade’, but doesn’t seem likely right now.
If we’re talking elections, that’s the opposite of civil war.
Right now it just seems like an old bitter married couple bitching about each other and talking about how they want to split. Far cry from actually doing it, let alone paying the legal bills.
I wonder if this perspective is colored by the American Civil War experience. Run-of-the-mill civil war has nothing to do with traditional military objectives. Rather, it is a messy business where various factions viciously fight over turf, often times eliminating populations with (perceived) allegiances to other faction(s) from the territory they control. See Lebanon, Yugoslavia, ISIS, etc.
> Would the Feds do anything but setup sanctions/blockades and wait for Texas to beg to come back if they tried to leave? Nah.
Texas represents two trillion dollars in revenue, billions of dollars in taxes, a big chunk of American agricultural, manufacturing and tech infrastructure, miles of coastline and ports and military assets like Fort Hood. The premise that the US would just let that go is laughable.
> Simmering 'fuck yous' and 'civil disobedience' I see building though, with the occasional unhinged terrorist
this has been happening since i've been old enough to remember though. "unhinged terrorist" = unibomber, the OK city bombings, the list goes on. Fuck yous and civil disobedience are basically constant with some ebs and flows around election time and current events.
> more than 40% agreed that ″having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy″ and that ″in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.″
and
> Among 6,768 respondents who considered violence to be at least sometimes justified to achieve 1 or more specific political objectives, 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″
Here's most of the rest of the abstract:
> Design, Setting, Participants: Cross-sectional nationwide survey conducted May 13 to June 2, 2022; participants were adult members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel.
> Main Outcomes and Measures: Weighted, population-representative proportions endorsing an array of beliefs about American democracy and society and the use of violence, including political violence, and extrapolations to the US adult population.
> Results: The analytic sample included 8,620 respondents; 50.6% (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 49.4%, 51.7%) were female; mean (SD) age was 48.4 (18.0) years. Two-thirds of respondents (67.2%, 95% CI 66.1%, 68.4%) perceived ″a serious threat to our democracy,″ but more than 40% agreed that ″having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy″ and that ″in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.″ Half (50.1%) agreed that ″in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.″ Among 6,768 respondents who considered violence to be at least sometimes justified to achieve 1 or more specific political objectives, 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″ Among all respondents, 18.5% thought it at least somewhat likely that within the next few years, in a situation where they believed political violence was justified, ″I will be armed with a gun″, and 4.0% thought it at least somewhat likely that ″I will shoot someone with a gun.″
"agreed" in this paper, though, includes all responses above "do not agree" -- they gave four possible answers: "do not agree", "somewhat agree", "strongly agree", and "very strongly agree". Many people will choose "somewhat agree" to mean "well, I mean, it could happen".
(Normally, you wouldn't want to so heavily skew your responses towards "agree" by having two "strongly agrees" but zero "strongly disagrees")
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?
People will almost murder people wearing the opposite sports team attire in america. The police have shown they wont protect you and are under no obligation to as well. So when things keep going sideways, rent, food, energy, and inflation soars, the division will keep growing until we get a breaking point. Look at the LA riots, and tell me you can't see that playing out again, only this time with social media, cell phones, and many more guns.
> 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 something that could spark it, the current hot topic of abortion access: the often-disregarded side sees abortion as killing babies, not even close to how the other side sees it. With that viewpoint and tensions rising in general, how long do you expect such a huge number of people to simply endure?
> 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 internet surveys have been in the past year, I don't take singular polls all that seriously. These polls seem to end up extremely skewed toward subjects who overestimate small probabilities.
For a reality check, consider that 1/8th of respondents said they would be willing to commit political violence themselves and 7.1% of respondents said they'd be willing to kill someone over politics.
> 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″
And to cap it off, 4% of respondents were pretty sure they were going to kill someone soon:
> and 4.0% thought it at least somewhat likely that ″I will shoot someone with a gun.″
Yeah, I don't think so. This feels like a survey of people who consume too much news and social media and have become increasingly disconnected from the reality on the ground.
I wonder if that's in the context of a civil war. As in was the question something like: "In the event of a civil war, would you...?" Because than it makes more sense to me.
It's one thing to be willing to fight in a civil war, which involves all of the things you just mentioned, and another thing entirely to want to instigate those things.
Sadly, even a small, concerted group of violent actors can terrorize a society. I don't think the paramilitary core of the Nazis were a particularly large part of German Society, for example. That doesn't mean that an outright civil war would break out, but it does mean that all it takes is an organized group to upset the political balance, and disturb long respected norms.
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 like the former.
I'm pretty sure that if a mob pressures the Senate into accepting a slate of "alternate electors", and that swings the Electoral College vote, there will be a very short period of time in which this could be shut down short of a civil war.
For some lesser cause? Another murder of an unarmed black person, even by police, seems unlikely to cause it. Economic inequality? Doesn't look like it. Illegal aliens? Again, probably not. Climate change? Also no.
> mob pressures the Senate into accepting a slate of "alternate electors"
That would have to be one hell of a mob. How would they exert pressure? Unless their "pressure" is lawful then they'd just be arrested like the Jan 6 people.
The mob of January 6 was close to enough. If an equivalent mob brought weapons (or was willing to use the weapons they had), and if the authorties' response was equally ineffective and delayed, that sized mob might be enough. Ten times that size would almost certainly be enough.
How many Senators are willing to die for the Electoral College vote? How many are willing to do so after they just saw several other Senators shot dead in front of them?
I'm not sure on the downvotes, I'm speaking about the potential for social unrest and how easily it can be realized not the reasons behind them which everyone is free to agree or disagree with
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".
One thing that gives me comfort is that there is a difference between what they say on a poll, and what they actually do.
Plenty of people are willing to say "I am willing to commit violence" on social media. My gut feeling is that if 4% say they will shoot someone, < 0.4% will actually do it.
Can you lay out the conditions under which you'll accept references? I've had a lot of issues before where I provide this sort of evidence and the counterparty relentlessly and tediously explains why every single source is either wrong or doesn't meet their arbitrary standards, so I want to be sure this won't be turned into one of those situations.
I'm genuinely interested in how that perspective came to be since it is, to my world view, a shocking and hard to believe claim. But, my surprise isn't worth anything. I'm unable to find search term that gives something relevant, so anything would help.
But, I think it's a bit unfair to make, what appears to be, a very bold assertion, without explaining it or allowing criticism. I have no interest (or qualification) to criticize your sources, but I would hope that someone would criticize mine.
I've only heard of evidence against, that interviews of US soldiers post WWII found only 1/4 had shot to kill. I've never really looked into it; the claim is somewhat disputed, I think.
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)
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.
> For a reality check, consider that 1/8th of respondents said they would be willing to commit political violence themselves and 7.1% of respondents said they'd be willing to kill someone over politics.
God help us. It's almost impressive how biased this sample is. I'm dying to know what else the "Ipsos KnowledgePanel" thinks. Will report back with any eye rollers.
> 7.1% of respondents said they'd be willing to kill someone over politics.
I can only assume it's that low because people tend not to think very hard about poll questions, so are considering only some narrower-than-the-actual-question version of it that they've replaced it with in their heads. Or else a whole lot of people are very honest and don't think they'd be able to actually do it—should, yes, but would? Doubtful enough that they'd answer "no" to the question.
I suspect it's the former because I doubt that many people would be open and introspective enough to admit they don't think they'd have the stomach to do things they think they should do. Try another angle with some extreme but plausible hypothetical scenarios rather than such a general question, and I bet that number shoots way up.
Hasn't 60% of the population of Texas expected a civil war soon for the last 100 years? And what are those rebel flags all about? It's posturing. Just like all of those surveys that say 50% of tech workers anticipate quitting this year.
Nearly all the places that talk about secession are the same states that generate less federal tax revenue than they spend. Which is both why it would be a terrible idea, and why people get upset about it. Few people who know they are getting a handout enjoy having everybody else know it, and it makes them bristly.
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).
While the USA was once a true federation of sovereign states that really hasn't been the case since at least the Civil War, over 150 years ago. States depend heavily on the federal government for assistance, standardization, and regulation, and even depend on their neighbors for logistical support in various industries as well as energy and water.
For all its touted net-contribution to the federal budget California would not survive on its own, as it depends on electricity from other states and water from the Colorado River (a shared resource between several states). To be sure, California puts these shared resources to extremely productive use and pays back the value to its neighbors, but this kind of interdependence probably would not exist if California went rebel.
I haven't heard much talk of Californians dreaming of becoming independent, but maybe I'm traveling in the wrong circles. What I have heard is people talking smack about kicking California out, and taking 10% of the US GDP with it. Which would be dumb for the rest of us.
The fact that all of the different economic regions in CA have to answer to one shitty state government is absolutely mind boggling. Imaging the Boston-DC corridor being one state and how dysfunctional that would be.
It's an attitude I've encountered with some Californians. I wouldn't call it a common one, since most Californians seem to be aware of their dependence on their neighbors for energy and water. But as for "kicking out" California, I'm not sure any such mechanism even exists in the Constitution. While the USA might not be a proper federation of states anymore, vestigial bits of the federation still exist, particularly when it comes to representation and self determination of states.
If a civil war or rebellion did break out I don't think it'd happen along state lines. The kind of power the states now wield actually depends on the existence of the union, so I don't see them wanting to destroy that relationship.
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.
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 importation of goods would take a hit if those roads degraded, let alone if someone put Czech hedgehogs and foxholes at the state line because your stupid ass didn't look at the logistics of secession.
If you think Brexit was stupid, imagine Idaho deciding it didn't want food from out of state anymore.
There's a huge divide between the way cities vote and rural communities. If farmers do receive more tax breaks, it's to support a system that makes them unprofitable, so that they don't quit. Give you an example, getting tax breaks to grow corn for ethanol. Having more ethanol in their gasoline, is not something any farmer wants, its more of a want of politicians that live in cities.
>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,
How is this any different than when some rich techie on HN says "I know it's not good for me personally but I want higher taxes because that's the right thing to do"?
> 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.
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.)
I don't know of any state that gets less then it gives. Most articles that claim such ignore tons of things like food stamp, section 8, or military spending in that state.
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.
The Civil War saw a US Army General, Robert E. Lee, defect to a cause he did not truly believe in, because he refused to fight against his home state. You might also want to consider how many veterans there are in the USA, that is, people with military service experience now living as civilians. Last census poll put that number at over 18 million, across all branches of service. Some might re-enlist to fight for the government, but you wouldn't even need 10% of them to go rebel to have a multi-million man rebel force with military experience and contacts within every branch to possible sympathizers. Absolute nightmare.
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.
Does not seem to be a democratic way of handling secession.
Makes me wonder why Hong Kong should be free in the view of most westeners, but not Texas...
Nope - the pact introduced the "one country, two systems", and that is still in place. Also HK citizens themselves aren't exactly opposed to the new situation: https://research.hktdc.com/en/article/NTY0NDU0NDI3.
Except the South, presumably Texas sympathizers, are way over represented in the military. The next largest region of over-representation are your flyover states, which political lean red.
You assumption that Texas would have to go toe to toe with the US Marines is a big assumption when many Marines are from Texas or would be politically sympathetic. If it came to it, the US Military would likely face a large breakdown and crisis within itself.
even if they were politically sympathetic they would have to abandon their oath to the constitution and turn and fight the rest of the Marines. Also, there's a lot more to the party than just Marines. I doubt there would be as much hesitation by drone operators sitting in office buildings firing on any armed citizen in any city in Texas. Let alone AI feeding targets of opportunity to a queue where operators just click the "approve" button...
I just don't think the secession people have thought about the level of violence required to actually secede. And even then what happens next? A blockade and sanctions then the entire state slowly starves to death or submission. Maybe Texas could form an alliance with Mexico.. ok now the United States declares war on Mexico. I don't think Mexico would want that.
the whole secession story just falls apart after 10 minutes of thought.
The Constitution is strong because of the robustness of the structure it specifies via checks and balances, not because people pledge an oath. I also don't think it's obvious that the US would go to war to preserve the union.
What i meant by "oath to the constitution" is the US military doesn't pledge allegiance to an administration or ideology or region. Its only purpose is to uphold the constitution of the United States of America. That's why the military operates the same no matter which political party is in power. At the end of the day, its only purpose is to defend the constitution.
If the US didn't goto war to preserve the union then the US, as defined the US constitution, ceases to exist. There is no provision in the constitution laying out the right (or even the method) for secession.
> There is no provision in the constitution laying out
Sure there is. It is called the amendment process, and requires a supermajority vote.
Unless, you are going to claim that using the amendment process, officially, as laid out in the constitution is some treasonous act, that the military would stop.
(Funnily enough, I have see people make this silly argument! That it is unconstitutional to use the official constitutional amendment process, and is treason!)
I mean the tenth amendment would imply the decision to secede is up to the states. There's no prohibition on secession in the constitution and I think it was evidence to the states when they formed a union that their union was voluntary, not coerced. IMO the decision to block secession was a treasonous and seditious act by Lincoln, and he has a lot of blood on his hands.
> Except the South, presumably Texas sympathizers, are way over represented in the military. The next largest region of over-representation are your flyover states, which political lean red.
That's not true. The overrepresented regions are basically the South and the West. The Midwest “flyover states” and Northeast are the most underrepresented areas.
And while the South is overrepresented, (Also, military recruitment isn't necessarily politically representative of the states it is drawn from; sure, the Deep South is overrepresented, but that's also a big part of the reason the Blacks are super-overrepresented in the military (making up nearly triple the share of the military as of the country at large.) And Southern Blacks politically don't look the same as “the South” more broadly.
Not true according to my citation and others in the past. Looking at the Western states that over-represent, the Idaho, Arizona, and even Oregon have more in common with Texas than California/D.C. The PNW themselves deal with a vocal secession movement.
Having grown up in TX and having gone through the required Texas propaganda (only state flag allowed to fly at same height as US flag etc) history courses in school, I can understand the fantasy of a by-gone era. A few people really take it to heart though.
Texas has a bit of a unique history compared to other states, it was it's own country at one point and they made sure that we learned it, even in US history courses. Part of what makes the idea realistic is that the state could support itself, if it had too. There are major air & sea ports/trade, energy, food, defense, medical, technology, research, etc. While it seceded from the union, it really didnt do much in the civil war - but the most telling is that it still went with being a part of other states instead of becoming a Republic again. The idea of being an independent country is more of having this mental place to escape too when things are not going their (currently republican) way. The 180 the state did from its heighten Independents/secession rhetoric during Obama to going full-on Trumpism kowtowing is dizzying.
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, as we have seen with people in other nations that our military has tried to subdue (ie Hearts and Minds). Modern communication has created and maintained rebel organizations over great distances with little investment and minimal effort. What's worse is modern warfare usually empowers the targets of that military effort. eg Running some tanks over to Texas is basically agreeing to destroy those tanks when they are inevitably captured or left behind, because it's too vulnerable and expensive to bring them back from the front lines (which would be everywhere), as the Russians have learned.
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.
Prior to the 17th amendment, the way to "dissolve", neuter, or do away with the Union was for state legislatures to stop electing Senators. Once enough states stopped electing and sending Senators then a quorum would cease to exist and nothing (lack of bills and budgets) would get done grinding everything to a halt...
The entire weight of the US military couldn't defeat goatherders in caves with rusty AK-47's and they had 20 years to do it. I don't think you understand how insurgencies work.
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)
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%.
> 8,620 respondents, but I don't see how they were recruited
This is from the PDF listed on the page that you linked:
To establish a nationally representative panel, members are recruited on
an ongoing basis through address-based probability sampling using data
from the US Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File. Recruited adults in
households without internet access are provided a web-enabled device and
free internet service. A probability-proportional-to-size procedure was
used to select a study-specific sample. All panel members who were aged
18 years and older were eligible for selection. Invitations were sent by
e-mail; automatic reminders were delivered to non-respondents by e-mail
and telephone beginning 3 days later.
A final survey weight variable provided by Ipsos adjusted for the
initial probability of selection into KnowledgePanel and for
survey-specific nonresponse and over- or under-coverage using design
weights with post-stratification raking ratio adjustments. With
weighting, the sample is designed to be statistically representative of
the noninstitutionalized adult population of the US as reflected in the
2021 March supplement of the Current Population Survey.
The article itself espouses similar doubts from one of its subjects:
>Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was also not involved in the study, agrees. But she suspects the survey responses overrepresent the number of Americans who would be willing to turn to violence because, she says, surveys tend to overstate what people actually think. “The numbers always tend to be shocking, but in essence, are probably not true.”
Hardly sensational to lead with "all this is probably BS" but that probably wouldn't get as many clicks. For sure the alarmist title got me to read it, only to wind up feeling I wasted my time.
These panel surveys are reasonably good. The better pollsters (like Ipsos MORI) spend a decent amount of effort recruiting a broad sample of people for their panels, and results are statistically adjusted for non-response bias etc. That said, the usual problem with political polling (that you can only poll people willing to answer pollsters' questions) applies extra here, as all respondents have agreed to be part of a panel and be repeatedly surveyed. As most panels are done through the Internet, it's at least possible that the participants are more terminally online than the average American.
That said, I don't think the results are crazy, on their face (though I don't myself expect a civil war). There are a number of groups openly proposing political violence, increased partisan polarisation, and a breakdown in the normal political processes (Congress has been essentially non-functional for a while, the Supreme Court have taken a decidedly activist turn, state legislatures are actively discussing subverting the next Presidential election, and trust in politicians of all parties is at historical lows). It's not clear how these will be resolved, and a further increase in political violence is certainly a possibility. Will that amount to civil war? Not close, in my view, but we live in unusual political times.
One can find instances of corruption in any party that has sufficient power. Key members of the Republican Party tried to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021 so from my perspective the Republican Party is the one more deserving of ire.
It is clear the Supreme Court is taking an activist stance. One member of the court has pretty much stated he is in favor of overturning previous rulings that granted sexual rights. The Court is now erring on the side of taking rights away rather than on increasing them or keeping the status quo in place.
I'll assume you're non-partisan and merely naive. An overthrow either looks like a military coup or a color revolution. The color revolutions were run against Trump. If you missed this very obvious fact, you were paying attention at the wrong level.
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 people actively harming the United States, and never spoken about in those terms.
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 to the Democrats for the last 20 years.
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.
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 cowboys" were useful idiots meant to make the whole thing seem like a clumsy farce.
>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.
Nobody takes the hearings seriously since they're political theatre. But if what you say is true, I definitely look forward to those people in government and the secret service to be charged with treason or sedition. It's been 18 months, so when should we expect that to happen?
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?
That sounds like they have a model of population demographics and try to “correct” their sample for various biases that effect likelihood of reaching and getting a response from people by reweighting the actual sample to match the expected demographics.
If actual views on the target issues are predicted well by demographics and independent of the response biases beyond their correlation with the demographics, this should work well.
If they aren't, though, this potentially magnifies the impact on the overall result of subsamples that are potentially most unreliable because of small size.
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 begin with a high profile assassination, then the extreme right will use the protests that will follow as justification for escalating violence, similar to the BLM protests. More violence. Maybe another high profile killing (on either side). Tit-for-tat murders begin, as they have in various government collapses around the world, especially in the 20th century.
The extreme left will undoubtedly respond in various ways beyond protests as tensions grow and the right will use whatever happens as propaganda to enrage their already agitated base. Whacko conspiracy theories and disinformation will make Trump’s term seem like the golden age of truth. Moderate conservatives, moderate liberals and disengaged independents won't know what to believe.
Meanwhile, in Congress, the conservatives who gain control in 2022 will grind the federal government to a halt with hearings and procedural moves. Then they’ll shut down the government with the budget. For months.
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, similar what happens with Kyle Rittenhouse's actions. The state’s governor and local law enforcement will make minimal effort to prevent it and results in no prosecutions, and the fed response will be slow, as usual, and ineffective despite presidential condemnation.
This inspires other big events – full on Nuremberg style rallies – all over the country with similar results. Soon there will be skirmishes in the streets of major cities. The propaganda will be out of control, with front page stories, prime time videos and millions of social media posts filled with dead children and other atrocities, real or imagined.
Then it will really hit the fan when a group of black or Latino protestors attack a group of random white people who they associate with the right-wing. This causes irrational fear among the white population, and seemingly overnight, every other white “liberal” across the country will become suspicious or outright fearful of anyone of color. Mothers will pull their children from schools, or insist on “temporary” segregation for their child’s safety. Who knows what those children of color might do. The violence ramps up as POC communities are targeted, with the justification of “proactive self-defense” Law enforcement does nothing beyond platitudes and Uvalde like responses to shootings. They may even be at the forefront of the effort.
Fast forward and the 2024 election is fucking chaos. The entire right-wing will now accept nothing less than a win in literally every race, and it will be a presidential landslide anyways, because the Republicans are “pro law enforcement”, which, by this time means enforcement targeting mostly people of color and other “potentially dangerous leftists”. Americans have shown the memory of a goldfish and are easily scared. With violence spreading across the country, they’ll react by voting conservative, similar to after 9/11.
Then the right will have full control of all branches of government and start to pass all the laws they want. In addition to their current agenda, they will pass laws which essentially allows legalized vigilantism and an Amendment which cancels presidential term limits and other restrictions. Trump is pardoned.
California and other blue states respond, but the...
> Republican extremists don’t just say that Democrats are wrong, but that they are evil.
It's not something unique to only one side.
If you go to reddit.com/r/all you'll find lots of user accounts saying the same about Republicans; not that they're wrong, but that they're evil.
(I don't identify as either side, but I've had to block nearly 100 subreddits from showing up in r/all because of the constant hate, and even then there will be random subreddits that make to the front page of r/all because it's about hating another group. I want to see interesting things, not witness an echochamber.)
First, I am talking about actual Republicans - party members either in office or currently running. Reddit is filled with bots and people venting and has no bearing on reality. If you can point out any Democrat who has publicly threatened Republicans by name - either directly or through innuendo - such as the examples below, I will accept your argument. Otherwise you're just repeating "both-sides" nonsense.
> the extreme right-wing is building themselves up to begin politicide.
One can only hope; though it might have terrible consequences, like the republican's mask slipping more than it already has, leading to more violence.
> the conservatives who gain control in 2022 will grind the federal government to a halt with hearings and procedural moves
that's why I'm hoping the Jan 6th folks actually get Trump in prison, to get us back to some believable "hey your actions actually DO have consequences" normality. Listen, I can dream, right?
Not sure from your comment if you understood that policide is like homicide or infanticide, not suicide. It's a wonk term about destroying a political party or system.
Politicide is like genocide, except you target only members of a specific party, like how the Trotskyists were killed by Stalin, or what Pinochet did to Allende's party in Chile. I haven't read this anywhere, but I assume that one usually follows the other.
I may have actually mixed them up in my original comment now that I look at it. Serves me right for spending too much time on Wikipedia.
I understood it as self-inflicted, self-attacking policide, i.e. the (beginning of the) end of the conservative party in the US? If so, yay! .. well, yay-ish, cos what comes after? A party less inclined to be the "party of no"? A party less inclined to be the poster child of "the cruelty is the point"?
No, my point is that the rhetoric from Republican office holders and candidates such as calling Democrats "pedophiles", "groomers", "satanists", "animals", etc. are a form of dehumanization in preparation for suppressing and then killing Democrats in large numbers. For real. They've even posted anime videos of killing other members of Congress [1]. This is common in all authoritarian takeovers.
> Not sure from your comment if you understood that policide is like homicide or infanticide, not suicide. It’s a wonk term about destroying a political party or system.
“Policide” (and, confusingly for the distinction you are drawing, with near-equal frequency “politicide”) is used to refer to the analogy of “genocide” as understood in internation law where the target, rather than a people as a people is a political entity (almost exclusively in the examples I can find a polity, whether a sovereign state or some less polity, not a political faction or party.)
> Politicide is like genocide, except you target only members of a specific party
This is confusing (even leaving aside the problem that “politicide” is also a synonym for “policide” and is also used as a portmanteau of “political suicide”, giving it three distinct definitions in the same general domain) because you are using “genocide” in the sense of the frequently encountered mistakenly-narrow definition, and not the sense in which it is used in international law, to wit, to mean extermination of the members of a people rather than attempts to destroy the people as a people. But, yes, politicide has this sense with regard to extermination of members of a political faction, but it is not particular analogous to genocide.
> I haven’t read this anywhere, but I assume that one usually follows the other.
“Policide” doesn’t seem to generally be used when the target is a political faction, but if it were, politicide (in the relevant sense) would be an extreme method of policide, not something that follows it (a successful policide would make politicide superfluous, as there would be no one to target, the group no longer existing as a group and thus not having members to exterminate.)
One would imagine that the usual course would be escalation to politicide when other means of policide failed, though there are certainly instances where its pretty much zero to politicide.
(As far as the GOP goes, I think policide/politicide of a particular opposing faction isn’t necessarily wrong as a description of part of what they are headed toward, but misses the point. What I think they are headed for, unless saner heads within the party or defeat and replacement of it as a major party change the course, is an Christian Right American quasi-capitalist corporatist version of the Cultural Revolution, suppressing, violently where necessary, anything seen as ideological dissent from a particular authoritarian ideological vision.)
You're right, it's confusing. I think I probably shouldn't have used either word, as it's sort of besides the point. I think we can both agree that killing people because of their politics is a bad thing.
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.
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.
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:
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?
LOL. Was your whinging to dang about the thread (twice) some sort of attempt to get it or me cancelled because the comments hurt your feelings?? Awesome. Here's a hint: The only way someone could be insulted by pure hypotheticals is if it actually applies to themselves.
You've called me a nutball and whackjob (directly or by innuendo), which as I'm sure you are well aware, is against HN rules of civility. I actually accidentally break this rule all the time, but in this instance I really don't need to worry, as I'm sure you already know exactly what I think of you, so I don't need to elaborate.
I don't think this entire discussion has proven informative or useful here on HN, ergo my request to Dang. I'm not singling you out, I'm saying that the entire set of posts on this topic is a waste of our time and the topic should be shut down.
You're taking this discussion personally. Don't!
I don't intend to "cancel" anyone and think the whole idea is a breach of rationality, ethics and etiquette. Just some good manners is necessary. Even a heated discussion with overreach is good. Discussion w/o emotional motivation/expression is rarely productive.
And remember, in any discussion, it is clear that you should not care (beyond etiquette and the law) what anyone else thinks of you. Otherwise you will censor your own true thoughts and others will fail to get your message. Then we all lose. That is part of free speech (an old idea, but a good one, perhaps not commonly in
use currently).
>> Yeah, I don't think so. This feels like a survey of people who consume too much news and social media and have become increasingly disconnected from the reality on the ground.
This says it all. The talk is there, social media (or any one who will listen) seems to be a popular public journal for people to vent feelings and use it as therapy. I even have friends that txt their anxiety about the political situation and when it reaches peek anxiety, the words civil war get thrown in there. But, it's clearly just a way to release the temporary anxiety they are feeling after having spent too much time consuming click-bait media - most people are too comfortable and self-serving in their lives to engage in long term life and death violence.
People here really did not do well, mentally or physically, when they were told they could not gather at bars or restaurants for months. And they really didnt like the disruptions to the sports seasons. The majority are not the extremist (be its very definition) that would actually be willing to give up football on Sunday to cosplay civil war 2.0.
Also, the logistics are not there - not that I can see anyway. Many people would defend their home and cities, but wont be motivated to march thousands of miles into unfamiliar neighborhoods to get shot at by g'ma and a 8 y/o. I think people, even other Americans, underestimate the actual patriotism of people in this country.
News are in crisis and try to make more and more sensation articles like this.
If creating parallel world is new normal for journalists then loosing trust of public in news is natural.
I hope that manipulation and government propaganda pushed in news will be naturally eliminated. The question is, how far they will go to keep our attention.
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.
Fortunately there is no need to start a war over federal vs state power, given that the current supreme court is ruling in favor of state power, in recent court cases.
The civil war happened because the abolition of slavery threatened the wealth and power of Southern elites. It was about wealth. I just don't see a similar situation right now.
The flight of capital to the most productive and/or cosmopolitan locations (domestically and globally) and the increase in immigrant representation in positions of influence threatens the cultural centrality of the part of society that has traditionally occupied it, and they would like to have that status restored any way possible.
Does that outweigh the tremendous destruction (and loss to everyone) that would ensue? Perhaps not. Depends what enough people think they have to lose.
I reject this notion. The civil war happened because the North didn't accept the peaceful right to secession. I do not think there would have been a war at all had the nation simply allowed the south to secede.
Sure. I guess the war wouldn't have happened if the North said, sure, see you later, bye. But then, again, the South wouldn't have seceded without Southern elites being frightened that the North would take away the foundation of their wealth. So, exactly what does it mean to "reject this notion"?
And what would have happened when the Confederacy demanded that the United States return escaped slaves, and the United States refused? How long before Southerners decided that the North was an existential threat?
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 will get even worse if the Supreme Court overturns gay marriage and sodomy law precedents.
All of this will create even further division. One of the harbingers of a coming civil war will be internal refugees and increased internal migration. If people start fleeing the red states in noticeable numbers, then that's the time to start getting worried. Especially if some of those fleeing make their moves suddenly. If you start seeing hundreds, or even thousands, who leave their homes in the middle of the night to escape, then you know something bad is coming.
There's already a trickle of such people. A few in Texas did just that. Parents of trans kids who wanted to get away from a situation where the state posed a threat. And they felt like they had to leave immediately with no notice to anyone. We'll start to see more of this if some states decide to ramp up prosecutions of women and investigations into miscarriages.
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.
Perhaps this is because I think there is a difference between a civil war and a revolt. A revolt can become a civil war, but only as soon as both sides are embraced by institutional leaders, i.e. elites.
The Southern elites probably felt strongly they would "win" early. The sheer incompetence of the Union army in the early battles suggest to me that there were some sympathies in the Union leadership and this was probably common knowledge.
They probably intended this to be a little tussle to show everyone they were serious.
Oh definitely they thought they would win early and easily. They were a bit delusional. They thought solely of heroic battles winning everything through sheer courage, cleverness, and grit. And didn't think about what it meant for a largely agrarian society to go up against a highly industrialized one.
But it's interesting how they lost control of the situation over time. Not just in the battlefield defeats and the industrial machine crushing them. But also in other ways. The Confederate government was short of everything and turned towards a centralized economy to produce what it needed. The elites found themselves constrained by the wartime needs.
By 1865, they were planning on arming black men to fight in the Confederate forces. Had this plan succeeded, it would have meant the end of slavery in the Confederacy. The very reason why the war was started by the elites in the first place.
A regional separatist movement (which the first ACW was, but not all civil wars are) generally is top-down organized, with a specific conscious elite decision to break away, but civil wars more generally don't need to be, at least to get started.
EDIT: In general, the discourse around both revolutions and civil wars in America tends to be full of misconceptions driven by the fact that both the American Revolution and the American Civil War we're elite-driven regional separatist movements, which are not the norm for things labelled as either “revolutions” or “civil wars”.
The last one was for States' rights to indefinitely expand the right to keep slaves. The Southern states (slaveholders) feared violent slave rebellions.
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, list goes on…
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 incest. A ten-year-old girl in Ohio had to cross state lines to get an abortion after being impregnated via rape since their state's 6-week ban does not have an exception for rape. Some hospitals and pharmacists are refusing to fulfill methotrexate prescriptions for lupus because it could be used to abort an ectopic pregnancy (which is definitionally not viable). Women are being denied mifepristone and misoprostol prescriptions to evacuate miscarriages because they could be used to induce an abortion and are instead being forced to carry necrotizing flesh inside their wombs until they hopefully expel it. Cancer patients are being denied chemotherapy because no oncologist will give chemo to a pregnant woman and the doctors in their area are afraid to give these women abortions until their vital signs literally start falling because the so-called exceptions for the life of the mother are so narrow as to open them up to prosecution by a zealous force-birth DA.
And this hasn't even touched on the ground-shaking effect this is going to have on women's ability to participate fully and equally in society.
While I agree that harsh restrictions on reproductive healthcare are very bad policy in part for the reasons you mention, pointing this out doesn't seem like a very effective counter-argument to the idea that things are better today than in the past. Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision, which came just 60 years ago, abortion was illegal in all circumstances in all states. Cancer survival rates have significantly increased thanks to advances in medical treatment.
There are certainly issues currently, and the state laws against abortion are part of that, but I think the 21st century is overall better than past time periods.
I guess you all in how you define the past versus today. Compared to just a year ago, it's worse. Compared to five ago, it's worse. Compared to twenty ago, it's worse. Compared to fourty ago, it's worse.
But I guess if you compare it to when we were all hanging out in trees, it's better.
20 years ago - 2001 end of the Internet bubble, many people lost their jobs. 2003 the US was waisting a lot of government money on an unjustified war in Irak blaming them for 9-11. Bush unnecessarily destroyed a positive government budget for a war that solved nothing.
And 40 years ago a much larger part of the world still lived in poverty, communism was still a big thing ruining the lives of many, and don’t forget the stress of the Cold War. Also pollution in big cities like London or New York was a much bigger problem than today, and overall safety in US large cities was worse than today, lots of crime.
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.
I could see Christian Nationalists making waves, but those are 1% of society? Secular Progressives are non violent by creed(small joke), so I just don't see that happening.
Poor vs rich? I see poor on all sides of the issue, hard to see that happening.
I second this.
Progressives wouldn't fight. Some small radical groups people would, but they aren't large enough or organised enough, who/what can they do other than spot violence/terrorism?
I don't think the US can have a proper "civil war" there are too many disparate groups.
But then again, Germany was very divided before WW2, so maybe one of these charismatic cult leaders could to come along.
> 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).
If you think that Democrats don't own guns, you'd be dangerously mistaken. As for owning most of the land, shrug. Who cares. In a war, property deeds aren't worth the paper they're written on.
It's not about property rights--it's about control of land and resources. Look at this map and tell me how you defend the blue areas against the red ones:
A civil war isn't "every Republican vs. every Democrat." It'd be rural areas vs. urban ones, and it wouldn't really be a fight. One side has substantially less land, guns, and fighters than the other. It'd be unwinnable.
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.
Isn’t one side significantly larger than the other? It seems to me that while there’s clearly two “sides” in the US, one is vastly overrepresented, due to how the US democracy is structured.
That’s not to say it wouldn’t be dangerous, both to the US and the stability to the rest of the world. So please wait until Germany have rebuilt it’s army, otherwise the UK is going to get very busy, covering for an absent US.
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.
It would be a civil war as long as there is a part of the country that's controlled by one side and another part that is controlled by the other side. Doesn't have to align with current state borders.
It doesn't have to align with state borders, but a lack of alignment with state borders make the organizational start of a civil war complicated because it can't utilize any existing governmental structures. Thus the conflict is much less likely to be one between armies, but between vigilante terrorist groups.
> 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.
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.
that's a good point, all the strife is really online. It would be hard to translate that into widespread physical violence because people would have to put their phones down, go outside, and do it IRL.
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 prevent you from having any ability to even change the system by using the system.
If everything is "ok", then people just ignore the political system. Buuuut... when people get scared (reasonably, or not), and the system is fundamentally unfair, their only option is violence.
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.
Fair voting systems need to be both fair theoretically, but also "obviously fair" to those voting. The vast majority of the electorate is poorly educated on how election system game theory works. (Which should not be surprising.)
I plan to start rolling out fair systems locally (my water district) so that people can familiar with both how easy they're to use; and, more importantly, how they're obviously fair. Right now, we're looking at proportional random selection.
I dont think the 'system' is designed to be unfair, but instead our two political parties have corrupted the voting process through gerrymandering. Then again, it's not as bad as some people seem to imply it is - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-new-national-congre.... We are talking about a net gain of a seat or two in either direction. If the two parties weren't so dominant this problem wouldn't be nearly as bad either. Given most Americans are independents, it would be great to see more candidates breakthrough without party alignment.
The problem isn't global representation; it's local fairness. (The 538 analysis is correct in that sense.) The problem is that for any given district, the probability of overturning the gerrymander is, in practice, impossible.
In states with legislatively controlled redistricting (the bulk of them) without controls on the redistricting process, the disenfranchisement is global to everyone — even if you're a blue voter in a blue district, or a red voter in a red district. The person who wins is the incumbent.
For instance, based on ACS and latest CVAP, my district is ~65/35. More importantly, my representative explicitly drew several GOP contenders out of his district to seal his re-election chances. I know he did this, because he had this conversation with Abbot (Governor of Tx) while I was standing a few feet away from them.
The point of a gerrymander is to maintain power, not to have some sort of ideological, or political stance.
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 controversial, because it's the only (supposedly) democratic political system in the world where the opposition party has to consent to any law. This effectively disenfranchises everyone, and is the root cause for the comically over-powerful judiciary and executive (because the legislature is structurally incapable of properly doing its job, the other state organs have to take its place lest the country be completely ungovernable).
For some reason people really don't talk about this issue enough, and continue acting as though the legislature operates as it does in normal democracies, and then getting confused by its behavior. For example, lots of people ask "why doesn't the US ban guns" or "why doesn't the US legalize" abortion, and often just chalk this up to some moral failing of American culture and ideology, rather than recognizing the root cause of the issue: the US can't pass laws, at all, even broadly popular ones!
Given this issue, I feel like the US is best considered a hybrid regime like Hong Kong than an actual democracy. Although at least in Hong Kong, someone is in charge...
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.
The US is already way overburdened with "checks on populism" relative to other democracies: the bicameral legislature, the state/federal power sharing, the strong, independent judiciary interpreting a written constitution...
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.
I agree with you: that's another extremely serious flaw in the US political system that I didn't even mention because I spent so much space ranting about the filibuster.
How would Vermont have any say in political affairs if their political power was limited purely by their population?! Its clear why there is a Senate and a House: it was a good idea then and it remains a good idea for the USA.
And here's a big "Howdy!" from Texas to all of you in the great state of Vermont!
Citizens of Vermont would have just as much power as every other citizen… I understand that the founding fathers we’re forced into a system that empowers small states to the detriment of large wrongs. It was wrong then, just as it’s wrong now.
Why is it intrinsically a good idea that "Vermont" be an entity that has some say in political affairs? "Vermont" isn't a person, nor is it even a collection of people with a similar culture or ideology (by far the biggest divide is rural vs. suburban vs. urban; the second biggest is race/ethnicity; any state-by-state divide is much less significant than those two).
Because we are a union of states. States should have more power, not less. Each state has very different problems, and local politicians care far more about local people than DC politicians. It's more interesting anyway, the more freedom states have to do what they want.
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.
Good question. It’s not clear why the US being a federation is important or valuable — it seems to be true for purely legacy reasons: that the states were already pseudo-independent colonies prior to 1776.
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.
On other hand the election fraud that lead to election of Biden might not have been possible with stronger central government. Just think of same rules through the country. No postal voting. Mandator IDs from central database, updated live based on movement of citizenry.
This is also why we're drifting towards an "Imperial Presidency", where the president, as the only power center that can come to a decision, unilaterally dictates more and more of US policy.
> prevent you from having any ability to even change the system
But the best solution to that is to just invert the system so that the federal government has the least impact, the states the second least, and the local municipalities the most. Which was what the last civil war was fought over.
That's a very expensive solution, most likely, in terms of harm to the economy & international competitiveness. And we already have a huge problem with race-to-the-bottom dynamics when states or cities race to see who can bend over fastest in hopes of to receiving a few scraps from megacorporations. Start putting things the federal government controls in the hands of states and cities, and corporations will definitely gain more power to dictate things like environmental laws, corporate taxation, consumer protection, et c.
I don't think this idea is compatible with a decent-to-live-in, modern economy and state, as nice as it may seem in the abstract.
This is the reason California has a housing crisis. Hyper local power just leads to people in desirable areas voting themselves a handout at the expense of people who move there.
You don't want to fix/improve the society to suit your preferences through existing democratic and legal mechanisms, so you decide destroying the opposition via violence/intimidation is easier.
I would argue that today, the median partisan of both political colors is of the belief that Democracy is at risk, today, because their opposition color is ignoring the rules, not playing fairly, and generally wants bad things to happen to people of their political color.
I've seen an awful lot of posts by both flavors of political partisans that "we're already in a war, we're just losing because we refuse to fight back"
I didn't make a partisan distinction, only described the thought process for how someone justifies the use of political violence instead of the legal and democratic process.
A critically flawed vote tallying mechanism entrenching a catastrophically polarized two party machine.
A rise of fascism and a rural urban divide. A lack of trust in fundamental roles of government. A federal judiciary that abdicated their role to check legislatures against undemocratic structure. A potential ruling in Moore v. Harper that would allow state legislatures to literally, blatantly and without any check on power dispose of a representative government.
I don't want a civil war, I want radical reforms at every level of government which put faith back into the function of government and the will of the people. I'm ready for cities in fascist states like my home state of Texas to blatantly disregard immoral state regulations and become city-states. And in the face of right wing extremist protests and feckless law enforcement, I think the left wing should arm themselves.
A civil war doesn't need to be between two regions (like in the American Civil war). I think most people (including myself) envision a "Handmaid's Tale" style coup from by an extremest group / government faction with an ensuing rebellion.
I would like to think it could never happen. But I also wouldn't have ever expected to see the halls of Congress violently trespassed by a bunch of rednecks with confederate flags.
Just imagine if the Jan 6 insurrectionists we're organized and not completely inept at accomplishing their goal.
It hinges entirely on who the military and police decide to listen to. Hanging Pence wasn't the only, or first, option that day—getting him to maybe, kinda, technically, if you tilt your head and squint legally overturn the election was one attempted strategy. That's far more dangerous, and there sure seem to be chess pieces lining up to take similar sorta-maybe-technically-legal shots at the principles of democracy in the next election or two.
How the military and cops will react to orders coming from someone who plainly stole an election according to every norm we have about how our government is supposed to work, and who sure looks like they're sending us toward single-party dictatorship on fast-forward, but maybe is kinda, sorta, technically doing all this legally, or at least has sown enough confusion that you're not sure whether they're legitimate or not, is anyone's guess.
Would love to see what percentage of Americans would be willing to fight in a civil war. My guess is it's a whole lot lower. 3 way civil war between left extremists vs right extremists vs the federal government?
I would be interested in seeing of who would be willing to fight in a civil war how many of them are physically able to fight in a war.
Also, how many are capable of organizing a civil war. How many are willing to take orders that would send them off to die for the cause. How many are willing to take orders at all.
Final test would be how many people are willing to just sit outside in August heat for an hour with no internet.
Simply reframe the question so that it's more accurate to what would actually happen in a civil war: "Who wants to enlist as an E-1 and lug jerry cans around for 14 hours a day only to die from a drone strike in the middle of the night?"
Remind me also how many believe in astrology and young earth creationism?
Also, to even entertain this idea, where would the battle lines be drawn? Political differences aren't even blue state/red state anymore, let alone North vs. South: it's more like urban vs. a spectrum of less urban.
The great majority of that 50 percent belong to one political party, that is fond of carrying around gallows, encouraging people to be locked up after being chained, etc.
They're willing things to happen, as Q predications let them down.
Usually one side of the political spectrum gets progressively reactionary (no pun intended) and extreme, while the rest of the political spectrum reacts mildly to that extremism.
The media then creates a bizarre narrative that there are in fact two warring political factions, both equally extreme, one the mirror image of the other. That is almost always a strange fantasy. There is really just one radical side in most countries right now, the rest are just trying to keep things sane.
I have thought about this and the whole right to bear arms that seems to be rampant in those circles (I live in a more rural community and work in Ag Automation).
On a careful reading of the lengthy 2nd amendment ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."), I realized that ownership or property is not actually enumerated here. But when I visit with my peers, what is emphasized is gun ownership. "My" guns, is the important piece that is shared with me. The ability to exchange wealth/property for a mechanism that can assert violence helps gun owners file safe, strong, secure, even if it comes at some risk to self. The gamble seems to be that they're more willing to pay this price for this comfort.
So the thought experiment I walk them through goes something like this: "You know, you're right! Guns are good! This 2nd amendment thing is awesome. Power to the people, ya know? I think everyone should have a gun" (and this is where the expression starts to shift from glee to suspicion) "I support funding that provides everyone with guns. Everyone gets a machine gun. And a days worth of ammo. The Canadians will definitely think twice before invading then." At this point, there's a look of horror on their face as they begin to ponder a world where the threat of violence is equalized throughout the entire country. There's a weak laugh as the satire I'm pushing dons on them.
Suggest that everyone own a current and power weapon, and you'll see the suggested legislations to limit who participates start flying.
I'm heavily pro 2A and I heavily support every free person having a machine gun. Quite a bit of people wouldn't give you a weird look at all if you suggested that.
Re: funding that would actually be pretty easy. An AR-15 from PSA is like $400-500 and the manufacturing cost between a semi-auto and auto is negligible. There's about 258 million adults in the US, so that puts the cost at roughly 125B, or under 3% of the federal budget and well below what was spent on COVID relief. With every citizen armed with a a machine gun, and by ending unnecessary foreign military operations I'd say we could easily shrink the military budget enough to make up the difference. Bonus points if the Department of Labor, department of Education, department of energy, medicaid/medicare, food stamps, ATF, DEA, CIA, and other costs were slashed to make way for supporting arming the citizenry.
Q was a deep state run operation, everything they did was to misdirect public opinion about election fraud. They would plant stories about voting machines being hacked, and other such nonsense. They basically disappeared after the election was settled. I don't see how you think they helped the populist movement.
They don't ask about party, but I don't think that's true. I am one of those who anticipate it, and I'm definitely not of that party.
I think they'll be instrumental in starting it. I think they'll get huffy when an election doesn't go the way they want, declare it a crisis, and governors will activate the National Guard to try to enforce it.
I wouldn't say it's probable, no more than say a 10% likelihood. But a 10% likelihood of a truly awful thing is too much to ignore.
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 agree". A further 2.1% did not respond. So, only 13.7% gave one of the top half of the answers ("Strongly agree" or "Very strongly agree").
This paper was just posted to medrxiv today, but I've seen this list of survey questions elsewhere (perhaps this was posted elsewhere a month or two ago?). It's not a great paper -- many of the survey questions are pretty slanted (though this civil war-related one is not), and they're slanted exactly the way you would expect given the conflicts-of-interest disclosure in the paper that every author on the paper is a member of multiple left-wing anti-gun political organizations.
Somewhat interesting that they don't provide the standard "breakdown" of responses by gender, age, political affiliation, etc. Perhaps those breakdowns would be ... troubling?
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]
That certainly has happened more than once in recent history, but I thought it was interesting when I learned that many mass shooters are actually committing suicide [1].
> POLITICO: You’ve written about how mass shootings are always acts of violent suicide. Do people realize this is what’s happening in mass shootings?
> Peterson: I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed.
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 like shipping and food production.
The police and the military all have a noticeable conservative bend at least at the lower levels.
This wouldn't be a north vs south situation where each side would be roughly equally matched.
In a true right vs left civil war, at least as the politics line up right now, the right faction would win by simply isolating and choking off the cities.
Respectfully, this totally ignores that the funding for most things in this country comes right out of the cities. To use your terminology, "left leaning" places are ~70% of GDP.
Also, just because some guys in rural areas collect guns compulsively doesn't mean they are remotely capable of becoming an organized militia.
The money is in the cities/suburbs. Any attempts to choke them off will inevitably hit everyone hard. At least those in cities will be close to aid delivery. Modern rural life is completely non-viable without copious amounts of gasoline.
Plus, there's a lot that happens between farm to table in modern agriculture.
COVID showed us just how sensitive our lifestyle is to disruptions.
Rural areas also tend to be at least as dependent on domestic shipping as cities, and not a lot of rural dwellers are growing enough of their own food to avoid starvation if that's disrupted. Not like back when a really high percentage were farmers who grew both cash crops and varied crops & small animals for their own consumption. If all the crops for a 50 mile radius are soy beans and feed-corn, and there are no processing plants for either nearby, and you're not close to a large port... you're gonna have a bad time if the trains stop running and gas gets scarce. It's not like any but a small percentage of rural folks would be sitting back well-fed while the cities starved. The best-off of all might well be the coastal cities, in fact. The notion that mostly-empty red counties can just deliberately starve out the cities and win seems extremely far-fetched to me, in this our modern economy.
> In a true right vs left civil war, at least as the politics line up right now, the right faction would win by simply isolating and choking off the cities.
I don't think it makes sense to draw up a hypothetical war this way based on how interconnected and interdependent the economy is.
Firstly, a tremendous amount of American food is imported and threatening the food supply would draw the ire of Federal forces, which would be counter-productive to a militarized movement. Secondly, raw food ingredients tend to travel very far distances in order to be processed for consumption. If supply chains were disrupted this way, you'd have a lot of raw food going to waste that can't be consumed on its own (most commercially produced corn in the US cannot be eaten on its own because it's designed to be converted into corn syrup). Third, global shipping hubs and large airports tend to be in urban areas, not rural. Rural shipping centers tend to be secondary or tertiary.
> 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.
No truth to it at all really. I'm pretty much a full-on socialist and I own firearms. In fact, I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't own a firearm.
There are more firearms in the US than there are people, so what kind of fool honestly believes they are all in the hands of less than one half of the population?
> so what kind of fool honestly believes they are all in the hands of less than one half of the population
Seeing as how only 30% of Americans own guns [0], all the guns are literally in the hands of less than one half. So it’s not foolish to believe that. But it’s true whether I believe it or not.
Even that source has half as many democrat-identifying people owning firearms as republican-identifying people, which is very far from "one side collects all the guns".
But yes it would appear that "less than half the population" is actually correct.
> 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.
If enlisted soldiers revolt against the officers, I don't see that working out the way you're describing. If loyalty fractures along party lines, there will be two chains of command, and I don't think it would be remotely difficult for the two structures to reorganize themselves. The police do have a strong and unified party preference, even in the most left-leaning cities.
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 remember that survey science simply tells us what people say on surveys, not what is actually the truth.
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.
Subtract all women and children, and all men over about age 30 or unfit for some reason. That doesn't get you to 3%, but that's the maximum number who would be involved.
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.
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.
The core research that "On Killing" was based on (S.L.A. Marshall’s "ratio of fire") was probably fabricated[1]. I'd treat any claims in the book with a lot of skepticism.
> His surviving field notebooks show no signs of statistical compilations that would have been necessary to deduce a ratio as precise as Marshall reported later in "Men Against Fire".
Grossman devotes almost an entire page to the history of controversy over Marshall's results in the Notes of "On Killing"*, p. 336 (Section 1: Killing and the Existence of Resistance") . IOW Grossman clearly acknowledges the debate and welcomes more research.
So out of 400 pages, Grossman only devotes part of one page to the fact that the entire basis of the book is probably fraudulent? That doesn’t seem very reassuring.
Dave Grossman is the guy who goes around giving police departments seminars on the warrior mindset, including telling them that they'll have the best sex of their life immediately after they kill someone in the line of duty.
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?
I don't think most civil wars involve a high percentage of the population as combatants. Victims, maybe, but not combatants. So I don't think it's necessary that anywhere near half the population engage in fighting, for us to have one.
Consider a scenario where the government is increasingly turned into a mexican standoff between completely entrenched branches of government. Supreme court is completely doing its own thing, the president starts abusing emergency powers to circumvent a ceaselessly filibustering congress and senate. Nothing gets done, and the country starts suffering from neglect and mismanagement.
It wouldn't be unheard of for a military coup to occur in such circumstances, in fact, it's a rough parallel to Julius Caesar's coup d'etat, which resulted in a civil war because some people didn't like the idea of having Caesar as a dictator and wanted to remain a republic, even if it was incredibly corrupt and dysfunctional.
Whether that is realistic today in the united states is another thing.
I find the parallels to Caesar in a different way. Caesar took his army into Rome because he had been ordered to return to Rome without his army, at which point his political enemies would have destroyed him.
Trump is talking about running in 2024 because it's the only way he can escape being destroyed by January 6 and various related legal problems.
Now, Trump isn't a general of an army. Yes, he was commander in chief, but the army would (I presume) not have followed him to the extent of obeying illegal orders. But if Trump wins and gets increasingly legally cornered, he's going to try to find a way out, no matter what laws it breaks, and some of those ways are going to tear the country apart.
- This entire discussion is fruitless b/c no two of us have the same definition (or even a clear conception) of the term "civil war". And we have for reference only past civil wars (especially the USA's war between the states).
- We could speculate loosely using and poor surveys unleashed on the great unwashed masses (and us) by surveyors interested less in their agenda than in raw screen-clicks. Instead why not pass by this article, leaving it to dry up and blow away in the dessicating winds of e-space?
I don't think there is a super well defined criteria for what's a civil war and what's a military coup and so on. Military coups can turn into civil wars (Caesar's coup is an example). Doesn't always happen, sometimes they fail (or succeed) so spectacularly that there isn't much of a war to follow.
I do agree that speculation is sort of pointless. I think circumstances may increase or decrease the likelihood of such an event, and circumstances look like they are more conducive to one now than in 1992, but I don't think you can say that when such-and-such happens, civil war is almost inevitable.
Why this is so remains contested; Marshall argued that even with their own lives at risk, the resistance of the average individual “...toward killing a fellow man" was such that "he will not...take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility and at the vital point, he becomes a conscientious objector".[2] Others argue so-called 'low fire' is a function of training and discipline, and is a positive attribute.[3] These debates continue since understanding is crucial to overcoming them through training, as well as dealing with actual or potential combat-stress disorder.
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.
> 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.
First, civil wars in fact happen despite the above. Second, badly trained soldiers go to wars and then commit horrible atrocities there.
> 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.
I feel after January 6th it's definitely possible. I don't want it, and I wouldn't do anything to start it, but I could see it happening. And that honestly scares me the most. So maybe I'm one of those half.
Did we have clear reasons for Iraq or Afghanistan? It's better if you have clear reasons, America (as a republic and democracy) is probably the weakest it's been in 50 years
This is why people that have experienced war roll their eyes at these headlines.
A civil war means you will kill other people and also volunteer to die over something that was irreconcilable through *all* other means. It also means being able to distinguish in a crude and unsophisticated what team everyone is fighting on.
Well, presidential systems like the US has mostly don't remain democratic for that long, we were lucky to have the spoils system moderating ideological conflict for most of our history and a period of unusually low polarization in the time since it ended. We've been seeing round of constitutional hardball like regular use of filibusters on every bill by the opposition that would have been unthinkable in 2000. But on the other hand we don't have senators seriously trying to kill each other on the senate floor like we did before the actual Civil War so as pessimistic as I am I'd be very surprised if things got as far as a civil war within the next decade. I wouldn't rule out a serious constitutional crisis though.
EDIT: I'd highly recommend How Democracies Die, The Revolt of the Public, and Why We're Polarized for understanding the current circumstances.
The Civil War was preceded by a constitutional issue divided geographically. The question of slavery in new states was forced by pro-slavery presidents, congressman, and justices. They sought to erase all middle ground, the tenuous bridge maintaining the union. Once it came to blows, the geography of slavery allowed the slavery states to band together.
The upshot is that not all of these factors seem possible at once today.
Further on this... Free states refused to honor slaves states' "property rights." If a slave were to make it to a free state, they could get away and the authorities wouldn't do anything about it. If someone owned (I hate this language) a slave and traveled through a free state they could potentially lose "their property" with no recourse.
I don't know which states have actual fighting forces that makes a civil war like situation possible, there is the whole mob mentality thing where maybe a group of really angry citizens would start to take actions on their own. Something else to consider is that the bluest of states still have a fairly large red contingent (north of 30%) and the same is true for the reddest states. I think that dilutes the mob. There might be places like rural Montana and Idaho where things could light up but I couldn't see Texas taking up arms against New Mexico. I think there would be a lot of obvious build ups.
The abortion laws create a lot of interesting inter-state problems. If we were willing to have a shooting war because of "property," it doesn't seem far fetched that there could be one if one state supports the "murdering" of "killing" of lives from another state that tries to protect them.
No, fugitive slave laws required return of slaves from free states to slave states. Free states activists resented it, because it imported slavery.
This was by Supreme Court decision by the way. Also, the judges making decisions in runaway slave cases were financially motivated to rule that "this person is ex slave", so kidnappings of free black people were common. (Man, children, women were kidnapped in free states and sold in slave states.)
The slave states had slave patrols - armed men looking for escaped slaves. They would also check people on trains and borders, whether no one is escaping. It just so happen that slavery don't hold itself - it requires a lot of effort, arms and violence to keep slaves.
Geography will always matter to a certain extent, but you elide the economic component of the Civil War. The business interests in the South were economically dependent on the existence of a slave-based economy. Northern states either moved to a different economic model or avoided it altogether. As such, the moral issues were much more front-and-center in the North, whereas Southerners were whipped around because of the economic aspect. As the quote goes, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I do think that differences between the urban and rural workforce are creating divergence, especially when you consider the increased population density and service-based economies we have today.
Generally, the coastal states have significantly diverged from the rest of the country, at least politically. As such, they tend to house and draw people with similar values. Value-based migration is not inherently problematic, as the population shift will increase competition between states and force reevaluation of certain policies, both among states losing and gaining different population segments. Real issues may start if a governor decides (and the associated governing apparatus then complies) that certain federal laws and judicial rulings will be ignored. We may be moving in that direction right now (see the NY governor's views on constitutional carry), and I hope we turn back.
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 actually important although its a bit ridiculous that its like a daily occurrence at this point.
In general, the US is so divided, its starting to look something will happen, maybe a bigger jan 6.
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
eh...America is way too big (territorially) for civil war.
I mean, how would you even organise it?
There's not two sides which could cohere into organised military forces. Worst scenario will be an increase in temperature to what we already have now - anti-federalists who might engage in intimidation, street fights with rival groups and perhaps acts of sabotage and terrorism. In the grand scheme of things, fairly low wattage stuff
yes, a reasonable analogue. Even so, I don't think anywhere near - US is far more intermixed, not as clear divisions between the two ideological tribes. There'll be vicious conflict alright but mainly online and under pseudonyms, punctuated periodically with an offline incident by some guy who takes it too far
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 that we might not see a conventional civil war.
As an example: gun owners largely fear getting raided in the night and a violent standoff like Ruby Ridge. I suspect much more likely, they will get a call from CPS notifying their children are being held until investigators can confirm the reports of firearms in the house -- or perhaps credit cards and finances being shut down. Why go for a risky confrontation when you can bring someone to their knees with a button push?
If there is a cold civil war, I expect it will be waged asymmetrically instead of conventionally.
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.
It's bizarre that anybody takes it seriously. After 10 seconds it is blatantly obvious they are shoveling insulting flamebait. You don't even have to pick a side- just look at the emotionally charged language.
Hilarious this was voted down. Go look at Foxnews.com at this very moment, the entire front page dedicated to smearing everything Democrat. It's shameless.
I play a game when reading Google news and avoid reading the byline when scanning headlines. If a headline is making wild accusations or pumps up an irrelevant trifle it's most likely from Fox News. I'm right most of the time.
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 along the line of the "The Troubles" that happened in Northern Ireland than anything approximating what happened in the 1860s.
I think you're right, and I'd go one step further to suggest that it's already happening. The path to radicalization for young American males is well known and straightforward and already delivers stochastic terrorism (not isolated events) on behalf of specific interests.
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.
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 right. So this is a both sides issue.)
Americans just don't seem to want to get along and understand on any side of the aisle. I can't talk politics to my family since they're all charged on their views and if I differ we just argue.
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.
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 inciting and organizing violent riots"[1]
I am not say that violence is not perpetrated by those on the right but your statement is a gross misrepresentation.
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.
The point is not that it is coming from one side or the other but rather to blame one side is to loose site of what is happening. My post was simply to show there is violence all along the spectrum. The post following my post regarding Anti-Communist mass executions is a good example of bringing balance to the conversation with evidence/sources.
If you are to "stand by" your statement then provide some evidence.
>Communists are not getting votes
I feel the Communist Party USA would like to differ. [0]
Furthermore, marxist/communist voters since "1988 to present: Voters urged to support the Democratic Party"[1]
Therefore, your statement about fascist ( not sure your intended meaning ) can be said about marxists/communists. Event the communist party wants you to vote for Democrats.
Ah, yes, both sides have tried resorting to violence.
One side has tried resorting to violence in order to prevent the other side from voting, enshrine one religion as the law of the land, guarantee one "race" its supremacy, and literally overthrow the legitimately elected government.
The other side has tried resorting to violence when the first side asserted control over half of their bodies, murdered them in the streets while under the supposed motto of "serve and protect", and tried to take away their right to vote and literally overthrow the elected government.
Yes, I can see that "both sides" are clearly equally bad. After all, if someone stabs you in the gut, and you punch him in the face, you're just as bad as he is, right?
So on the one hand, you have vandalism and arson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane%27s_Revenge), and on the other multiple mass shootings with deaths (just one of the many, from this year which is from a right winger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Buffalo_shooting). I do not excuse this "Jane's Revenge" group, but that is some really weak both sides stuff. Especially because a lot of right wing church groups act violently towards abortion clinics! Which is a real glass houses moment.
444 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 309 ms ] threadThat said, in the '70s it was probably 80%+
I don't see an ACTUAL (declared) civil war happening. None of the participants actually could I think, nor would they benefit from taking anything.
Would Texas try to actually take Washington DC? Nah. Could they? No chance.
Would the Feds do anything but setup sanctions/blockades and wait for Texas to beg to come back if they tried to leave? Nah. They might arrest a few key leaders or 'leak' a bunch of embarrassing intel too, of course.
Simmering 'fuck yous' and 'civil disobedience' I see building though, with the occasional unhinged terrorist, and a lot of folks haven't deal with conflict enough to see the difference between that and civil war.
Given the current state of upcoming election polls, local politics, and the supreme court, the right leaning states are going to get most of what they want.
They have no reason to secede, when they are winning the current politics battles, and are likely to win future elections in the next few years.
There has been rhetoric from right leaning people, for decades on this,yes.
But the point is, that from the actual on the ground political reality, the right is winning.
They are winning in the courts, local/state power, and based on current voting polls, they are going to win in the upcoming federal elections.
There is no need to secede if you simply control all the levers of government. And the recent facts are that the right is only going to get more power.
Therefore, despite the rhetoric, right leaning places have no need to secede, when they can instead just take over the government the regular way.
There is a lot of complaining and grumbling, and ideological disagreements. Maybe there could be a ‘crusade’, but doesn’t seem likely right now.
If we’re talking elections, that’s the opposite of civil war.
Right now it just seems like an old bitter married couple bitching about each other and talking about how they want to split. Far cry from actually doing it, let alone paying the legal bills.
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.
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.
Texas represents two trillion dollars in revenue, billions of dollars in taxes, a big chunk of American agricultural, manufacturing and tech infrastructure, miles of coastline and ports and military assets like Fort Hood. The premise that the US would just let that go is laughable.
I’m not saying they’d let it go. I’d saying, they wouldn’t need to cross the border to make the impact felt of trying to leave.
this has been happening since i've been old enough to remember though. "unhinged terrorist" = unibomber, the OK city bombings, the list goes on. Fuck yous and civil disobedience are basically constant with some ebs and flows around election time and current events.
I found this interesting:
> more than 40% agreed that ″having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy″ and that ″in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.″
and
> Among 6,768 respondents who considered violence to be at least sometimes justified to achieve 1 or more specific political objectives, 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″
Here's most of the rest of the abstract:
> Design, Setting, Participants: Cross-sectional nationwide survey conducted May 13 to June 2, 2022; participants were adult members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel.
> Main Outcomes and Measures: Weighted, population-representative proportions endorsing an array of beliefs about American democracy and society and the use of violence, including political violence, and extrapolations to the US adult population.
> Results: The analytic sample included 8,620 respondents; 50.6% (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 49.4%, 51.7%) were female; mean (SD) age was 48.4 (18.0) years. Two-thirds of respondents (67.2%, 95% CI 66.1%, 68.4%) perceived ″a serious threat to our democracy,″ but more than 40% agreed that ″having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy″ and that ″in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.″ Half (50.1%) agreed that ″in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.″ Among 6,768 respondents who considered violence to be at least sometimes justified to achieve 1 or more specific political objectives, 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″ Among all respondents, 18.5% thought it at least somewhat likely that within the next few years, in a situation where they believed political violence was justified, ″I will be armed with a gun″, and 4.0% thought it at least somewhat likely that ″I will shoot someone with a gun.″
(Normally, you wouldn't want to so heavily skew your responses towards "agree" by having two "strongly agrees" but zero "strongly disagrees")
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 something that could spark it, the current hot topic of abortion access: the often-disregarded side sees abortion as killing babies, not even close to how the other side sees it. With that viewpoint and tensions rising in general, how long do you expect such a huge number of people to simply endure?
> 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 internet surveys have been in the past year, I don't take singular polls all that seriously. These polls seem to end up extremely skewed toward subjects who overestimate small probabilities.
For a reality check, consider that 1/8th of respondents said they would be willing to commit political violence themselves and 7.1% of respondents said they'd be willing to kill someone over politics.
> 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″
And to cap it off, 4% of respondents were pretty sure they were going to kill someone soon:
> and 4.0% thought it at least somewhat likely that ″I will shoot someone with a gun.″
Yeah, I don't think so. This feels like a survey of people who consume too much news and social media and have become increasingly disconnected from the reality on the ground.
It's one thing to be willing to fight in a civil war, which involves all of the things you just mentioned, and another thing entirely to want to instigate those things.
For some lesser cause? Another murder of an unarmed black person, even by police, seems unlikely to cause it. Economic inequality? Doesn't look like it. Illegal aliens? Again, probably not. Climate change? Also no.
That would have to be one hell of a mob. How would they exert pressure? Unless their "pressure" is lawful then they'd just be arrested like the Jan 6 people.
How many Senators are willing to die for the Electoral College vote? How many are willing to do so after they just saw several other Senators shot dead in front of them?
Virtually no political polling is. I know of no political polling agency/company that submits their polls to peer-reviewed journals.
Plenty of people are willing to say "I am willing to commit violence" on social media. My gut feeling is that if 4% say they will shoot someone, < 0.4% will actually do it.
But, I think it's a bit unfair to make, what appears to be, a very bold assertion, without explaining it or allowing criticism. I have no interest (or qualification) to criticize your sources, but I would hope that someone would criticize mine.
The two commonly cited books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Killing
r/AskHistorians doubts it: https://redd.it/22o24j https://redd.it/2od6eg
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.
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.
gestures broadly at the entire history section of the library
God help us. It's almost impressive how biased this sample is. I'm dying to know what else the "Ipsos KnowledgePanel" thinks. Will report back with any eye rollers.
I can only assume it's that low because people tend not to think very hard about poll questions, so are considering only some narrower-than-the-actual-question version of it that they've replaced it with in their heads. Or else a whole lot of people are very honest and don't think they'd be able to actually do it—should, yes, but would? Doubtful enough that they'd answer "no" to the question.
I suspect it's the former because I doubt that many people would be open and introspective enough to admit they don't think they'd have the stomach to do things they think they should do. Try another angle with some extreme but plausible hypothetical scenarios rather than such a general question, and I bet that number shoots way up.
Nearly all the places that talk about secession are the same states that generate less federal tax revenue than they spend. Which is both why it would be a terrible idea, and why people get upset about it. Few people who know they are getting a handout enjoy having everybody else know it, and it makes them bristly.
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).
For all its touted net-contribution to the federal budget California would not survive on its own, as it depends on electricity from other states and water from the Colorado River (a shared resource between several states). To be sure, California puts these shared resources to extremely productive use and pays back the value to its neighbors, but this kind of interdependence probably would not exist if California went rebel.
but they want to secede from existing states, not from the union
If a civil war or rebellion did break out I don't think it'd happen along state lines. The kind of power the states now wield actually depends on the existence of the union, so I don't see them wanting to destroy that relationship.
Now, of course, if you were at war, such dependency would hurt, for sure. But on the long term, country borders don't mean that much to capitalism.
A lot of that money goes to roads and infrastructure, so it's a little more dramatic than it sounds, but importation of goods would take a hit if those roads degraded, let alone if someone put Czech hedgehogs and foxholes at the state line because your stupid ass didn't look at the logistics of secession.
If you think Brexit was stupid, imagine Idaho deciding it didn't want food from out of state anymore.
How is this any different than when some rich techie on HN says "I know it's not good for me personally but I want higher taxes because that's the right thing to do"?
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.
(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.)
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.
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.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/costs/soc...
You assumption that Texas would have to go toe to toe with the US Marines is a big assumption when many Marines are from Texas or would be politically sympathetic. If it came to it, the US Military would likely face a large breakdown and crisis within itself.
I just don't think the secession people have thought about the level of violence required to actually secede. And even then what happens next? A blockade and sanctions then the entire state slowly starves to death or submission. Maybe Texas could form an alliance with Mexico.. ok now the United States declares war on Mexico. I don't think Mexico would want that.
the whole secession story just falls apart after 10 minutes of thought.
If the US didn't goto war to preserve the union then the US, as defined the US constitution, ceases to exist. There is no provision in the constitution laying out the right (or even the method) for secession.
Sure there is. It is called the amendment process, and requires a supermajority vote.
Unless, you are going to claim that using the amendment process, officially, as laid out in the constitution is some treasonous act, that the military would stop.
(Funnily enough, I have see people make this silly argument! That it is unconstitutional to use the official constitutional amendment process, and is treason!)
That's not true. The overrepresented regions are basically the South and the West. The Midwest “flyover states” and Northeast are the most underrepresented areas.
And while the South is overrepresented, (Also, military recruitment isn't necessarily politically representative of the states it is drawn from; sure, the Deep South is overrepresented, but that's also a big part of the reason the Blacks are super-overrepresented in the military (making up nearly triple the share of the military as of the country at large.) And Southern Blacks politically don't look the same as “the South” more broadly.
Texas has a bit of a unique history compared to other states, it was it's own country at one point and they made sure that we learned it, even in US history courses. Part of what makes the idea realistic is that the state could support itself, if it had too. There are major air & sea ports/trade, energy, food, defense, medical, technology, research, etc. While it seceded from the union, it really didnt do much in the civil war - but the most telling is that it still went with being a part of other states instead of becoming a Republic again. The idea of being an independent country is more of having this mental place to escape too when things are not going their (currently republican) way. The 180 the state did from its heighten Independents/secession rhetoric during Obama to going full-on Trumpism kowtowing is dizzying.
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, as we have seen with people in other nations that our military has tried to subdue (ie Hearts and Minds). Modern communication has created and maintained rebel organizations over great distances with little investment and minimal effort. What's worse is modern warfare usually empowers the targets of that military effort. eg Running some tanks over to Texas is basically agreeing to destroy those tanks when they are inevitably captured or left behind, because it's too vulnerable and expensive to bring them back from the front lines (which would be everywhere), as the Russians have learned.
Obviously a lot has changed since 1861 but it seems odd to act like it's totally inconceivable
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.
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)
> the same states that generate less federal tax revenue than they spend
False.
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%.
This is from the PDF listed on the page that you linked:
>Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was also not involved in the study, agrees. But she suspects the survey responses overrepresent the number of Americans who would be willing to turn to violence because, she says, surveys tend to overstate what people actually think. “The numbers always tend to be shocking, but in essence, are probably not true.”
Hardly sensational to lead with "all this is probably BS" but that probably wouldn't get as many clicks. For sure the alarmist title got me to read it, only to wind up feeling I wasted my time.
That said, I don't think the results are crazy, on their face (though I don't myself expect a civil war). There are a number of groups openly proposing political violence, increased partisan polarisation, and a breakdown in the normal political processes (Congress has been essentially non-functional for a while, the Supreme Court have taken a decidedly activist turn, state legislatures are actively discussing subverting the next Presidential election, and trust in politicians of all parties is at historical lows). It's not clear how these will be resolved, and a further increase in political violence is certainly a possibility. Will that amount to civil war? Not close, in my view, but we live in unusual political times.
It is clear the Supreme Court is taking an activist stance. One member of the court has pretty much stated he is in favor of overturning previous rulings that granted sexual rights. The Court is now erring on the side of taking rights away rather than on increasing them or keeping the status quo in place.
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 people actively harming the United States, and never spoken about in those terms.
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 cowboys" were useful idiots meant to make the whole thing seem like a clumsy farce.
Nobody takes the hearings seriously since they're political theatre. But if what you say is true, I definitely look forward to those people in government and the secret service to be charged with treason or sedition. It's been 18 months, so when should we expect that to happen?
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?
...Can you explain this?
My brain translates that to "We fudge the numbers because we know dome portion of them are being deceptive."
I'm pretty sure that isn't what that's supposed to mean is it?
If actual views on the target issues are predicted well by demographics and independent of the response biases beyond their correlation with the demographics, this should work well.
If they aren't, though, this potentially magnifies the impact on the overall result of subsamples that are potentially most unreliable because of small size.
Having just read about the Spanish Civil War, I can see how this will potentially play out.
It will begin with a high profile assassination, then the extreme right will use the protests that will follow as justification for escalating violence, similar to the BLM protests. More violence. Maybe another high profile killing (on either side). Tit-for-tat murders begin, as they have in various government collapses around the world, especially in the 20th century.
The extreme left will undoubtedly respond in various ways beyond protests as tensions grow and the right will use whatever happens as propaganda to enrage their already agitated base. Whacko conspiracy theories and disinformation will make Trump’s term seem like the golden age of truth. Moderate conservatives, moderate liberals and disengaged independents won't know what to believe.
Meanwhile, in Congress, the conservatives who gain control in 2022 will grind the federal government to a halt with hearings and procedural moves. Then they’ll shut down the government with the budget. For months.
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, similar what happens with Kyle Rittenhouse's actions. The state’s governor and local law enforcement will make minimal effort to prevent it and results in no prosecutions, and the fed response will be slow, as usual, and ineffective despite presidential condemnation.
This inspires other big events – full on Nuremberg style rallies – all over the country with similar results. Soon there will be skirmishes in the streets of major cities. The propaganda will be out of control, with front page stories, prime time videos and millions of social media posts filled with dead children and other atrocities, real or imagined.
Then it will really hit the fan when a group of black or Latino protestors attack a group of random white people who they associate with the right-wing. This causes irrational fear among the white population, and seemingly overnight, every other white “liberal” across the country will become suspicious or outright fearful of anyone of color. Mothers will pull their children from schools, or insist on “temporary” segregation for their child’s safety. Who knows what those children of color might do. The violence ramps up as POC communities are targeted, with the justification of “proactive self-defense” Law enforcement does nothing beyond platitudes and Uvalde like responses to shootings. They may even be at the forefront of the effort.
Fast forward and the 2024 election is fucking chaos. The entire right-wing will now accept nothing less than a win in literally every race, and it will be a presidential landslide anyways, because the Republicans are “pro law enforcement”, which, by this time means enforcement targeting mostly people of color and other “potentially dangerous leftists”. Americans have shown the memory of a goldfish and are easily scared. With violence spreading across the country, they’ll react by voting conservative, similar to after 9/11.
Then the right will have full control of all branches of government and start to pass all the laws they want. In addition to their current agenda, they will pass laws which essentially allows legalized vigilantism and an Amendment which cancels presidential term limits and other restrictions. Trump is pardoned.
California and other blue states respond, but the...
It won't be like that. It'll be exactly what you described....this isn't new - it's the way it always plays out in authoritian regimes....
It's not something unique to only one side.
If you go to reddit.com/r/all you'll find lots of user accounts saying the same about Republicans; not that they're wrong, but that they're evil.
(I don't identify as either side, but I've had to block nearly 100 subreddits from showing up in r/all because of the constant hate, and even then there will be random subreddits that make to the front page of r/all because it's about hating another group. I want to see interesting things, not witness an echochamber.)
https://nypost.com/2022/07/06/house-candidate-jerone-davison...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/marjorie-taylor-gree...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/us/politics/gosar-violent...
One can only hope; though it might have terrible consequences, like the republican's mask slipping more than it already has, leading to more violence.
> the conservatives who gain control in 2022 will grind the federal government to a halt with hearings and procedural moves
that's why I'm hoping the Jan 6th folks actually get Trump in prison, to get us back to some believable "hey your actions actually DO have consequences" normality. Listen, I can dream, right?
Politicide is like genocide, except you target only members of a specific party, like how the Trotskyists were killed by Stalin, or what Pinochet did to Allende's party in Chile. I haven't read this anywhere, but I assume that one usually follows the other.
I may have actually mixed them up in my original comment now that I look at it. Serves me right for spending too much time on Wikipedia.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/us/politics/gosar-violent...
“Policide” (and, confusingly for the distinction you are drawing, with near-equal frequency “politicide”) is used to refer to the analogy of “genocide” as understood in internation law where the target, rather than a people as a people is a political entity (almost exclusively in the examples I can find a polity, whether a sovereign state or some less polity, not a political faction or party.)
> Politicide is like genocide, except you target only members of a specific party
This is confusing (even leaving aside the problem that “politicide” is also a synonym for “policide” and is also used as a portmanteau of “political suicide”, giving it three distinct definitions in the same general domain) because you are using “genocide” in the sense of the frequently encountered mistakenly-narrow definition, and not the sense in which it is used in international law, to wit, to mean extermination of the members of a people rather than attempts to destroy the people as a people. But, yes, politicide has this sense with regard to extermination of members of a political faction, but it is not particular analogous to genocide.
> I haven’t read this anywhere, but I assume that one usually follows the other.
“Policide” doesn’t seem to generally be used when the target is a political faction, but if it were, politicide (in the relevant sense) would be an extreme method of policide, not something that follows it (a successful policide would make politicide superfluous, as there would be no one to target, the group no longer existing as a group and thus not having members to exterminate.)
One would imagine that the usual course would be escalation to politicide when other means of policide failed, though there are certainly instances where its pretty much zero to politicide.
(As far as the GOP goes, I think policide/politicide of a particular opposing faction isn’t necessarily wrong as a description of part of what they are headed toward, but misses the point. What I think they are headed for, unless saner heads within the party or defeat and replacement of it as a major party change the course, is an Christian Right American quasi-capitalist corporatist version of the Cultural Revolution, suppressing, violently where necessary, anything seen as ideological dissent from a particular authoritarian ideological vision.)
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.
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...
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?
You've called me a nutball and whackjob (directly or by innuendo), which as I'm sure you are well aware, is against HN rules of civility. I actually accidentally break this rule all the time, but in this instance I really don't need to worry, as I'm sure you already know exactly what I think of you, so I don't need to elaborate.
You're taking this discussion personally. Don't!
I don't intend to "cancel" anyone and think the whole idea is a breach of rationality, ethics and etiquette. Just some good manners is necessary. Even a heated discussion with overreach is good. Discussion w/o emotional motivation/expression is rarely productive.
And remember, in any discussion, it is clear that you should not care (beyond etiquette and the law) what anyone else thinks of you. Otherwise you will censor your own true thoughts and others will fail to get your message. Then we all lose. That is part of free speech (an old idea, but a good one, perhaps not commonly in use currently).
This says it all. The talk is there, social media (or any one who will listen) seems to be a popular public journal for people to vent feelings and use it as therapy. I even have friends that txt their anxiety about the political situation and when it reaches peek anxiety, the words civil war get thrown in there. But, it's clearly just a way to release the temporary anxiety they are feeling after having spent too much time consuming click-bait media - most people are too comfortable and self-serving in their lives to engage in long term life and death violence.
People here really did not do well, mentally or physically, when they were told they could not gather at bars or restaurants for months. And they really didnt like the disruptions to the sports seasons. The majority are not the extremist (be its very definition) that would actually be willing to give up football on Sunday to cosplay civil war 2.0.
Also, the logistics are not there - not that I can see anyway. Many people would defend their home and cities, but wont be motivated to march thousands of miles into unfamiliar neighborhoods to get shot at by g'ma and a 8 y/o. I think people, even other Americans, underestimate the actual patriotism of people in this country.
Whether you believe he was an actual time traveler (or more precisely, a multi-verse traveler), is a whole different story…
If creating parallel world is new normal for journalists then loosing trust of public in news is natural.
I hope that manipulation and government propaganda pushed in news will be naturally eliminated. The question is, how far they will go to keep our attention.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
The flight of capital to the most productive and/or cosmopolitan locations (domestically and globally) and the increase in immigrant representation in positions of influence threatens the cultural centrality of the part of society that has traditionally occupied it, and they would like to have that status restored any way possible.
Does that outweigh the tremendous destruction (and loss to everyone) that would ensue? Perhaps not. Depends what enough people think they have to lose.
And what would have happened when the Confederacy demanded that the United States return escaped slaves, and the United States refused? How long before Southerners decided that the North was an existential threat?
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 will get even worse if the Supreme Court overturns gay marriage and sodomy law precedents.
All of this will create even further division. One of the harbingers of a coming civil war will be internal refugees and increased internal migration. If people start fleeing the red states in noticeable numbers, then that's the time to start getting worried. Especially if some of those fleeing make their moves suddenly. If you start seeing hundreds, or even thousands, who leave their homes in the middle of the night to escape, then you know something bad is coming.
There's already a trickle of such people. A few in Texas did just that. Parents of trans kids who wanted to get away from a situation where the state posed a threat. And they felt like they had to leave immediately with no notice to anyone. We'll start to see more of this if some states decide to ramp up prosecutions of women and investigations into miscarriages.
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.
They probably intended this to be a little tussle to show everyone they were serious.
But it's interesting how they lost control of the situation over time. Not just in the battlefield defeats and the industrial machine crushing them. But also in other ways. The Confederate government was short of everything and turned towards a centralized economy to produce what it needed. The elites found themselves constrained by the wartime needs.
By 1865, they were planning on arming black men to fight in the Confederate forces. Had this plan succeeded, it would have meant the end of slavery in the Confederacy. The very reason why the war was started by the elites in the first place.
No, it doesn't.
A regional separatist movement (which the first ACW was, but not all civil wars are) generally is top-down organized, with a specific conscious elite decision to break away, but civil wars more generally don't need to be, at least to get started.
EDIT: In general, the discourse around both revolutions and civil wars in America tends to be full of misconceptions driven by the fact that both the American Revolution and the American Civil War we're elite-driven regional separatist movements, which are not the norm for things labelled as either “revolutions” or “civil wars”.
Doesn’t mean that today is perfect, lots of problems to address: housing, income, healthcare, global warming, destruction of the ecosystem, list goes on…
And this hasn't even touched on the ground-shaking effect this is going to have on women's ability to participate fully and equally in society.
There are certainly issues currently, and the state laws against abortion are part of that, but I think the 21st century is overall better than past time periods.
But I guess if you compare it to when we were all hanging out in trees, it's better.
20 years ago - 2001 end of the Internet bubble, many people lost their jobs. 2003 the US was waisting a lot of government money on an unjustified war in Irak blaming them for 9-11. Bush unnecessarily destroyed a positive government budget for a war that solved nothing.
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.
My observation so far is that neither is correct about Fascism.
Groups are not seeing eye to eye on the fundamental role of government, and lines in the sand are being drawn.
I don't think the US can have a proper "civil war" there are too many disparate groups.
But then again, Germany was very divided before WW2, so maybe one of these charismatic cult leaders could to come along.
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).
https://brilliantmaps.com/2020-county-election-map/
A civil war isn't "every Republican vs. every Democrat." It'd be rural areas vs. urban ones, and it wouldn't really be a fight. One side has substantially less land, guns, and fighters than the other. It'd be unwinnable.
That’s not to say it wouldn’t be dangerous, both to the US and the stability to the rest of the world. So please wait until Germany have rebuilt it’s army, otherwise the UK is going to get very busy, covering for an absent US.
Given the number of mass shootings and who is usually behind them, you could say this has been already happening for years.
What's supposed to happen? Texas is going to invade California?
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.
Twitter doesn't count!
Being disenfranchised sucks. The system is designed to prevent you from having any ability to even change the system by using the system.
If everything is "ok", then people just ignore the political system. Buuuut... when people get scared (reasonably, or not), and the system is fundamentally unfair, their only option is violence.
I plan to start rolling out fair systems locally (my water district) so that people can familiar with both how easy they're to use; and, more importantly, how they're obviously fair. Right now, we're looking at proportional random selection.
In states with legislatively controlled redistricting (the bulk of them) without controls on the redistricting process, the disenfranchisement is global to everyone — even if you're a blue voter in a blue district, or a red voter in a red district. The person who wins is the incumbent.
For instance, based on ACS and latest CVAP, my district is ~65/35. More importantly, my representative explicitly drew several GOP contenders out of his district to seal his re-election chances. I know he did this, because he had this conversation with Abbot (Governor of Tx) while I was standing a few feet away from them.
The point of a gerrymander is to maintain power, not to have some sort of ideological, or political stance.
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 controversial, because it's the only (supposedly) democratic political system in the world where the opposition party has to consent to any law. This effectively disenfranchises everyone, and is the root cause for the comically over-powerful judiciary and executive (because the legislature is structurally incapable of properly doing its job, the other state organs have to take its place lest the country be completely ungovernable).
For some reason people really don't talk about this issue enough, and continue acting as though the legislature operates as it does in normal democracies, and then getting confused by its behavior. For example, lots of people ask "why doesn't the US ban guns" or "why doesn't the US legalize" abortion, and often just chalk this up to some moral failing of American culture and ideology, rather than recognizing the root cause of the issue: the US can't pass laws, at all, even broadly popular ones!
Given this issue, I feel like the US is best considered a hybrid regime like Hong Kong than an actual democracy. Although at least in Hong Kong, someone is in charge...
Why?
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.
And here's a big "Howdy!" from Texas to all of you in the great state of Vermont!
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.
FWIW it wouldn’t be called the federal government in that case, since the country wouldn’t be a federation. It’d just be “the government”.
But the best solution to that is to just invert the system so that the federal government has the least impact, the states the second least, and the local municipalities the most. Which was what the last civil war was fought over.
I don't think this idea is compatible with a decent-to-live-in, modern economy and state, as nice as it may seem in the abstract.
I've seen an awful lot of posts by both flavors of political partisans that "we're already in a war, we're just losing because we refuse to fight back"
A rise of fascism and a rural urban divide. A lack of trust in fundamental roles of government. A federal judiciary that abdicated their role to check legislatures against undemocratic structure. A potential ruling in Moore v. Harper that would allow state legislatures to literally, blatantly and without any check on power dispose of a representative government.
I don't want a civil war, I want radical reforms at every level of government which put faith back into the function of government and the will of the people. I'm ready for cities in fascist states like my home state of Texas to blatantly disregard immoral state regulations and become city-states. And in the face of right wing extremist protests and feckless law enforcement, I think the left wing should arm themselves.
I would like to think it could never happen. But I also wouldn't have ever expected to see the halls of Congress violently trespassed by a bunch of rednecks with confederate flags.
Just imagine if the Jan 6 insurrectionists we're organized and not completely inept at accomplishing their goal.
How the military and cops will react to orders coming from someone who plainly stole an election according to every norm we have about how our government is supposed to work, and who sure looks like they're sending us toward single-party dictatorship on fast-forward, but maybe is kinda, sorta, technically doing all this legally, or at least has sown enough confusion that you're not sure whether they're legitimate or not, is anyone's guess.
Also, how many are capable of organizing a civil war. How many are willing to take orders that would send them off to die for the cause. How many are willing to take orders at all.
Final test would be how many people are willing to just sit outside in August heat for an hour with no internet.
Also, to even entertain this idea, where would the battle lines be drawn? Political differences aren't even blue state/red state anymore, let alone North vs. South: it's more like urban vs. a spectrum of less urban.
I don't wish for a civil war, either. That doesn't mean I don't expect one to happen given the current conditions.
They're willing things to happen, as Q predications let them down.
Usually one side of the political spectrum gets progressively reactionary (no pun intended) and extreme, while the rest of the political spectrum reacts mildly to that extremism.
The media then creates a bizarre narrative that there are in fact two warring political factions, both equally extreme, one the mirror image of the other. That is almost always a strange fantasy. There is really just one radical side in most countries right now, the rest are just trying to keep things sane.
On a careful reading of the lengthy 2nd amendment ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."), I realized that ownership or property is not actually enumerated here. But when I visit with my peers, what is emphasized is gun ownership. "My" guns, is the important piece that is shared with me. The ability to exchange wealth/property for a mechanism that can assert violence helps gun owners file safe, strong, secure, even if it comes at some risk to self. The gamble seems to be that they're more willing to pay this price for this comfort.
So the thought experiment I walk them through goes something like this: "You know, you're right! Guns are good! This 2nd amendment thing is awesome. Power to the people, ya know? I think everyone should have a gun" (and this is where the expression starts to shift from glee to suspicion) "I support funding that provides everyone with guns. Everyone gets a machine gun. And a days worth of ammo. The Canadians will definitely think twice before invading then." At this point, there's a look of horror on their face as they begin to ponder a world where the threat of violence is equalized throughout the entire country. There's a weak laugh as the satire I'm pushing dons on them.
Suggest that everyone own a current and power weapon, and you'll see the suggested legislations to limit who participates start flying.
Sometimes More is Less
Re: funding that would actually be pretty easy. An AR-15 from PSA is like $400-500 and the manufacturing cost between a semi-auto and auto is negligible. There's about 258 million adults in the US, so that puts the cost at roughly 125B, or under 3% of the federal budget and well below what was spent on COVID relief. With every citizen armed with a a machine gun, and by ending unnecessary foreign military operations I'd say we could easily shrink the military budget enough to make up the difference. Bonus points if the Department of Labor, department of Education, department of energy, medicaid/medicare, food stamps, ATF, DEA, CIA, and other costs were slashed to make way for supporting arming the citizenry.
I think they'll be instrumental in starting it. I think they'll get huffy when an election doesn't go the way they want, declare it a crisis, and governors will activate the National Guard to try to enforce it.
I wouldn't say it's probable, no more than say a 10% likelihood. But a 10% likelihood of a truly awful thing is too much to ignore.
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 agree". A further 2.1% did not respond. So, only 13.7% gave one of the top half of the answers ("Strongly agree" or "Very strongly agree").
This paper was just posted to medrxiv today, but I've seen this list of survey questions elsewhere (perhaps this was posted elsewhere a month or two ago?). It's not a great paper -- many of the survey questions are pretty slanted (though this civil war-related one is not), and they're slanted exactly the way you would expect given the conflicts-of-interest disclosure in the paper that every author on the paper is a member of multiple left-wing anti-gun political organizations.
Still, have a look at the actual survey questions and responses. They're somewhat interesting despite the study's problems: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.22277693v...
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]
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles
> POLITICO: You’ve written about how mass shootings are always acts of violent suicide. Do people realize this is what’s happening in mass shootings?
> Peterson: I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed.
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-m...
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 like shipping and food production.
The police and the military all have a noticeable conservative bend at least at the lower levels.
This wouldn't be a north vs south situation where each side would be roughly equally matched.
In a true right vs left civil war, at least as the politics line up right now, the right faction would win by simply isolating and choking off the cities.
Also, just because some guys in rural areas collect guns compulsively doesn't mean they are remotely capable of becoming an organized militia.
Plus, there's a lot that happens between farm to table in modern agriculture.
COVID showed us just how sensitive our lifestyle is to disruptions.
I don't think it makes sense to draw up a hypothetical war this way based on how interconnected and interdependent the economy is.
Firstly, a tremendous amount of American food is imported and threatening the food supply would draw the ire of Federal forces, which would be counter-productive to a militarized movement. Secondly, raw food ingredients tend to travel very far distances in order to be processed for consumption. If supply chains were disrupted this way, you'd have a lot of raw food going to waste that can't be consumed on its own (most commercially produced corn in the US cannot be eaten on its own because it's designed to be converted into corn syrup). Third, global shipping hubs and large airports tend to be in urban areas, not rural. Rural shipping centers tend to be secondary or tertiary.
> That's obviously an unfair shot but there's some truth to it.
No truth to it at all really. I'm pretty much a full-on socialist and I own firearms. In fact, I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't own a firearm.
There are more firearms in the US than there are people, so what kind of fool honestly believes they are all in the hands of less than one half of the population?
Seeing as how only 30% of Americans own guns [0], all the guns are literally in the hands of less than one half. So it’s not foolish to believe that. But it’s true whether I believe it or not.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem...
But yes it would appear that "less than half the population" is actually correct.
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.
I always try to remember that survey science simply tells us what people say on surveys, not what is actually the truth.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/killing-does-not-com...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Percenters
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...
[1] From https://www.gwern.net/docs/history/s-l-a-marshall/1988-spill...:
> His surviving field notebooks show no signs of statistical compilations that would have been necessary to deduce a ratio as precise as Marshall reported later in "Men Against Fire".
For those still reading, the controversial aspects that grandmczeb speaks of (and which Grossman has addressed) is discussed here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall#Controversies
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall#Research_metho...
Consider a scenario where the government is increasingly turned into a mexican standoff between completely entrenched branches of government. Supreme court is completely doing its own thing, the president starts abusing emergency powers to circumvent a ceaselessly filibustering congress and senate. Nothing gets done, and the country starts suffering from neglect and mismanagement.
It wouldn't be unheard of for a military coup to occur in such circumstances, in fact, it's a rough parallel to Julius Caesar's coup d'etat, which resulted in a civil war because some people didn't like the idea of having Caesar as a dictator and wanted to remain a republic, even if it was incredibly corrupt and dysfunctional.
Whether that is realistic today in the united states is another thing.
I didnt think a land war in Europe was a realistic thing in today's world, but here we are.
Trump is talking about running in 2024 because it's the only way he can escape being destroyed by January 6 and various related legal problems.
Now, Trump isn't a general of an army. Yes, he was commander in chief, but the army would (I presume) not have followed him to the extent of obeying illegal orders. But if Trump wins and gets increasingly legally cornered, he's going to try to find a way out, no matter what laws it breaks, and some of those ways are going to tear the country apart.
- is your proposed "military coup" a "civil war"?
- This entire discussion is fruitless b/c no two of us have the same definition (or even a clear conception) of the term "civil war". And we have for reference only past civil wars (especially the USA's war between the states).
- We could speculate loosely using and poor surveys unleashed on the great unwashed masses (and us) by surveyors interested less in their agenda than in raw screen-clicks. Instead why not pass by this article, leaving it to dry up and blow away in the dessicating winds of e-space?
I do agree that speculation is sort of pointless. I think circumstances may increase or decrease the likelihood of such an event, and circumstances look like they are more conducive to one now than in 1992, but I don't think you can say that when such-and-such happens, civil war is almost inevitable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall
First, civil wars in fact happen despite the above. Second, badly trained soldiers go to wars and then commit horrible atrocities there.
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.
A civil war means you will kill other people and also volunteer to die over something that was irreconcilable through *all* other means. It also means being able to distinguish in a crude and unsophisticated what team everyone is fighting on.
EDIT: I'd highly recommend How Democracies Die, The Revolt of the Public, and Why We're Polarized for understanding the current circumstances.
The upshot is that not all of these factors seem possible at once today.
I don't know which states have actual fighting forces that makes a civil war like situation possible, there is the whole mob mentality thing where maybe a group of really angry citizens would start to take actions on their own. Something else to consider is that the bluest of states still have a fairly large red contingent (north of 30%) and the same is true for the reddest states. I think that dilutes the mob. There might be places like rural Montana and Idaho where things could light up but I couldn't see Texas taking up arms against New Mexico. I think there would be a lot of obvious build ups.
The abortion laws create a lot of interesting inter-state problems. If we were willing to have a shooting war because of "property," it doesn't seem far fetched that there could be one if one state supports the "murdering" of "killing" of lives from another state that tries to protect them.
This was by Supreme Court decision by the way. Also, the judges making decisions in runaway slave cases were financially motivated to rule that "this person is ex slave", so kidnappings of free black people were common. (Man, children, women were kidnapped in free states and sold in slave states.)
The slave states had slave patrols - armed men looking for escaped slaves. They would also check people on trains and borders, whether no one is escaping. It just so happen that slavery don't hold itself - it requires a lot of effort, arms and violence to keep slaves.
Generally, the coastal states have significantly diverged from the rest of the country, at least politically. As such, they tend to house and draw people with similar values. Value-based migration is not inherently problematic, as the population shift will increase competition between states and force reevaluation of certain policies, both among states losing and gaining different population segments. Real issues may start if a governor decides (and the associated governing apparatus then complies) that certain federal laws and judicial rulings will be ignored. We may be moving in that direction right now (see the NY governor's views on constitutional carry), and I hope we turn back.
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 actually important although its a bit ridiculous that its like a daily occurrence at this point.
In general, the US is so divided, its starting to look something will happen, maybe a bigger jan 6.
I mean, how would you even organise it?
There's not two sides which could cohere into organised military forces. Worst scenario will be an increase in temperature to what we already have now - anti-federalists who might engage in intimidation, street fights with rival groups and perhaps acts of sabotage and terrorism. In the grand scheme of things, fairly low wattage stuff
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 that we might not see a conventional civil war.
As an example: gun owners largely fear getting raided in the night and a violent standoff like Ruby Ridge. I suspect much more likely, they will get a call from CPS notifying their children are being held until investigators can confirm the reports of firearms in the house -- or perhaps credit cards and finances being shut down. Why go for a risky confrontation when you can bring someone to their knees with a button push?
If there is a cold civil war, I expect it will be waged asymmetrically instead of conventionally.
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-...
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 along the line of the "The Troubles" that happened in Northern Ireland than anything approximating what happened in the 1860s.
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.
Americans just don't seem to want to get along and understand on any side of the aisle. I can't talk politics to my family since they're all charged on their views and if I differ we just argue.
Why, I wonder.
/s
That's... quite a bold assertion.
But also, overturn of RoW is long term work of evangelicals.
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 inciting and organizing violent riots"[1]
I am not say that violence is not perpetrated by those on the right but your statement is a gross misrepresentation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur...
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.
The point is not that it is coming from one side or the other but rather to blame one side is to loose site of what is happening. My post was simply to show there is violence all along the spectrum. The post following my post regarding Anti-Communist mass executions is a good example of bringing balance to the conversation with evidence/sources.
If you are to "stand by" your statement then provide some evidence.
>Communists are not getting votes I feel the Communist Party USA would like to differ. [0]
Furthermore, marxist/communist voters since "1988 to present: Voters urged to support the Democratic Party"[1]
Therefore, your statement about fascist ( not sure your intended meaning ) can be said about marxists/communists. Event the communist party wants you to vote for Democrats.
[0]https://www.cpusa.org
[1]https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/government/elections/pr...
One side has tried resorting to violence in order to prevent the other side from voting, enshrine one religion as the law of the land, guarantee one "race" its supremacy, and literally overthrow the legitimately elected government.
The other side has tried resorting to violence when the first side asserted control over half of their bodies, murdered them in the streets while under the supposed motto of "serve and protect", and tried to take away their right to vote and literally overthrow the elected government.
Yes, I can see that "both sides" are clearly equally bad. After all, if someone stabs you in the gut, and you punch him in the face, you're just as bad as he is, right?