People keep saying this and I personally don’t really believe it, I think there could be a couple riots, but not like a full on civil war. What does everyone think?
I think that the US is primed to have a civil war. Ever since Reagan fucked the fairness doctrine in 1987, we’ve been getting more and more divided. Gonna sound like an old fogey here, but it used to be that everybody tuned into the same news, and watched the same anchors deliver the same updates about the same world events. We had differing opinions on world events, but we all agreed on what was and what was not reality.
We don’t have that now. It’s like two completely separate universes occupy the same physical space. In one universe, climate change is fueled by anthropogenic forces and is causing more and more catastrophic damage, viruses are real and vaccines are effective tools to combat them, and thousands of traitors tried to overthrow the government because their cult leader lost an election. In the other? Climate change isn’t real, and also the Democrats have secret hurricane machines that they are using to punish Florida for being a red state, COVID isn’t real, and also it’s a super virus concocted in a lab in Wuhan at the request of Hillary Clinton, vaccines don’t work, and also vaccines are secretly a government tool to kill people, and Jan 6th was a peaceful protest of patriots, and also it was a violent insurrection by Antifa.
We don’t share the same reality with each other. In one reality, Democrats are basically similar to milquetoast conservatives from any other first world nation, and they care much more about maintaining the status quo than they do about making progress. In the other reality? Democrats are evil incarnate, and they’re waging an active campaign to round up all of the patriots and send them to concentration camps, and they’re also pedophiles and Marxists. In that reality, it’s far more preferable to vote for a dead pimp than it is to vote for a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat.
And it’s not just the whole two-realities thing. Ever since Obama became president, the brains of a huge chunk of people in this country just broke. Some of the nicest-seeming people you’d ever met instantly turned into vile, hate-spewing racists, and started mass subscribing to every single conspiracy theory feed out there. That was 16 years ago. Their rhetoric has been getting more violent every year since. That’s to say nothing of the huge increase in terrorist incidents since then - according to the CSIS:
The number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined
So yeah. I think that this country is primed for organized, mass violence. At this point, all that it’s lacking is the organization. Thankfully, Donald Trump is an incredibly stupid man. I don’t think he’d be capable of organizing people to that level. He can stoke their hatred, for sure. He can inspire the craziest among them to firebomb a mosque or shoot up a Democrat’s office… but he ain’t built to lead people. If someone who had even 1/10th of his prowess as a cult leader, but who was actually intelligent and had a tactical mind came along… hoo boy.
That is what I try to communicate to folks who are freaking out about Trump. You have to worry about the next guy, and the next guy, and the next guy. You can’t just keep voting Democrat, you actually have to get organized if you want to stop fascism, because Trump isn’t the font that fascism springs from, he is an inept conman who is riding the wave.
True, but have you looked at the “intelligentsia” of the Republican party? They’ve got nobody. Just grifters and sycophants. It’s one more small mercy. Obviously, this situation can’t be counted on to continue indefinitely, but once Trump is gone, the only thing ready to take his place is Trump-based nostalgia, and people looking to profit off same.
The “intelligentsia” of the Republican Party are dyed-in-the-wool fascist complete monsters like Roger Stone and Steven Miller. They are cunning, dangerous and should not be underestimated.
I’m more worried about democrats having triangulated into fascism in the medium term tbh. Like competent diet fascism vs incompetent blood and soil fascism
I’m less worried about that, not because there aren’t evil people among the Democrats, but because the Democrats are positioning themselves as the anti-fascist party at the moment. Starting up a fascist movement of their own at the moment would be bad business.
Long term, though? 100% agree. Can’t trust none of these fucks. Hopefully, the Interstate Popular Vote Compact kicks off before that happens, and we can do away with the EC. Won’t completely solve the problem, but it will help.
I’m less worried about that, not because there aren’t evil people among the Democrats, but because the Democrats are positioning themselves as the anti-fascist party at the moment. Starting up a fascist movement of their own at the moment would be bad business.
Their rhetoric sure is, but if you look at their actual policies they’re continuing and escalating some of the worst things Trump did. Migrant concentration camps, massive police funding increases, worsening security and surveillance laws, the whole nine yards.
Also, fascism is the reassertion of the dominance of financial capital over the system and the democrats take money from the banks just as much as the Republicans.
No and you should not listen to people who think it could.
A civil war is large scale armed conflict between groups vying for the levers of power. In the case of the American civil war it was over slavery and came to war because there was no mechanism to integrate the south’s elites into the power structures of the north’s or vice versa and the material bases of those two groups power structures were in opposition.
What two groups would fight an American civil war nowadays? Democrats and republicans? They serve the same masters. We are witnessing propaganda bent to the ends of integrating members of one group into another.
Separatist militias? Not only would that not be a civil war, we saw how the fbi handled them in the 90s.
Corporations? Why would they do that? Government already does the unprofitable things they want and does them how they want them.
Separatist states? It’s against the economic interests of the very people who would make up the elite class of the new nation of Texas to submit their borders to taxes and tariffs.
Workers? That’s a revolution, not a civil war.
If someone wants you to fear modern civil war they’re trying to control you.
If someone makes art about a modern civil war they’re trying to tell you about something else on the sly, like with zombies.
In Florida, I have heard it from way too many people to feel comfortable. Republicans will say how they are ready if Trump loses. They say it’s because there is no way he can lose unless it’s all rigged. They believe this will happen. The worst I heard was a guy saying he will shoot anybody he suspects is not on his team. Others were not quite as ready, but definitely as angry and ignorant with the means. Some of the more intellectual I talk to are quick to point out the flaws of Democrats and how that said is more violent because of all the riots.
Living here is scary. It would be a war of ignorance, frustration, and hate against a false enemy. It will be a passionate group of clueless rebels without an enemy based in reality. Anyone could become a casualty in the chaos. These people are anti-intellectual, basing everything on what they call “common sense.” What that actually mean is whatever reinforces their anger in the moment is the truth no matter how ignorant or hypocritical.
It feels too real that citizens will be taking up arms. The worst part is not knowing who they will attack since the enemy is all in their heads.
That’s not a civil war though, that’s stoichastic terrorism at least and militia violence at most. I, uh, was just in a disaster in the us where militias were said to have been run off by the national guard and local law enforcement.
It’s still scary, but it’s not civil war.
To give you an idea of how common what you’re describing used to be, when 9/11 happened people who hadn’t already gotten the word from the federal government were blaming it on domestic terrorist organizations and individuals. We had just come off of a decade of federal law enforcement torching Waco, sniping ruby ridge, package bombs, federal building bombs (including wtc!) and school shootings there at the end.
The harmless nut job was such a common idea that the Feds had to really struggle against it when they bungled Waco and ruby ridge.
There’s been thirty years of domestic counter terror training to deal with just this type of situation. Fifty if you count the bender mienhoff group in Europe as the start.
You may see Waco 2.0 but you won’t see a civil war.
It is still not civil war, it is just plain old fascism. The politicians that endorse “vigilantes” to uphold “democracy”, “freedom” or whatever bullshit they can make up, are just exerting regular political violence from the old fascist playbook.
Making you feel scared is the point.
I think the drug addiction crisis that they have is somehow preventing/delaying this to happen. But the elements for a civil war are there: access to weapons, ideological intolerance, economical imbalance, ever-differing state and federal law and policies, corruption in government and the probable rise of a political group that lost the presidency causing the Capitol Attack out of resentment, between others.
Democracy in the USA feels like holding with pins. I see the country as conservative to far-right with very few space for other political ideologies.
Alternate question…
What the fuck is a ‘battleground’ state, and why does the media even have the nerve to use that term? I mean I know what it basically means, they should stick with ‘swing’ state, instead of putting the word ‘battle’ into nutjob’s heads just before an election.
I don’t care what people’s political opinions are, but we already have enough gun nuts out there, and at least a couple attempts on the former president’s life.
You can’t even feel safe sending your kids to school in numerous areas, and can’t even always feel safe in a Walmart these days.
Are you sure we’re not already in a civil war?
Our culture phrases damn near everything in metaphors of war. The war on drugs. The battle of the bands. Bob lost his battle with cancer. It’s absolutely pervasive, to the point it’s almost as invisible as the air.
You do have a point, though in terms of common everyday language, that’s a bit disappointing.
I guess if we’re going to keep using war and conflict terms you could say we’re in a cold civil war.
We might as well call schools “sporadic shooting galleries” the way we’ve been treating the issue… It’s absolutely absurd :(
No. Like you say, riots, and of course the ongoing epidemic of stochastic terrorism, possibly with more violence directed against politicians and the government, but it’s definitely not going to look like tanks shooting at tanks, and it’s also not going to look like people crawling through tunnels a la Vietnam. What American simultaneously cares enough about politics to risk their life over it, while also being willing to go live in a trench without their phone for a month? No, as long as it’s an option to live a normal life where you can return to your couch and watch or read the news while feeling righteously indignant and engage with social media however you like, that’s what people will do. Look at the January 6’ers, for example, who fully expected to return home and be able to post all about the exciting event all over social media.
Now, that all goes out the window if some lunatic decides to start WWIII with China and institutes a draft (assuming we don’t all just die in nuclear hellfire). You tell people they’ll have to give up their phones and go live in a trench anyway and maybe some decide they’d rather fight the people making them do that. Americans generally love war, but a lot of that comes from being completely and totally separated from any real life consequences from it. And of course, no insurgency would stand any chance of defeating the US government without foreign support.
Well said
Haha no.
A lot of people don’t realise how shit a war can be, even when you’re hundreds of miles away from it. Your local economy fucking TANKS, jobs disappear, workers disappear on the next plane out, and you’re left with a population that’s struggling on all fronts, trying to make a brave face.
America is full of crazy disparity, but war doesn’t care. The one benefit is that the billionaire class would get fucking rinsed by the locals for every shiny trinket they have when suddenly food costs a fortune because your last shipment got shot up.
Something I talked about earlier in political discussions was that the Usa has a problem of neighborhoods not being as social as they used to be.
Fewer bars, ymca, gatherings. Neighbors stay inside more. Children do not play in the street so much. Very few adults walk in the streets ( compared to Europe). Religious attendance is down .
That makes grassroots and revolutionary fever hard except on the internet. And the internet is showing it sort of sucks doing that, getting people outdoors, regardless of their creed, religious or political beliefs.
All that show up are usually elites , and some people in cities.
If you look at any modern revolution, there are healthy neighborhood dynamics driving it allowing a parallel bottom up growth
In the USA, People will probably have heated comments on social media, except in some small areas of cities, with only a few casualties
It’s crazy how literally every problem in the US is, at its root, a zoning problem.
I agree that zoning can really improve things.
Which can be helped by changes in local government. But today there is little involvement in city and town government.
Probably this lack of participation is because most people of the USA moved and changed careers multiple times in the last two generations. A greater percentage did this than in the first Industrial Revolution.
And it happened while changes in family structures and long distance communication changed. A perfect recipe for lack of civic involvement .
Nah… Americans may hate each other, but ultimately, unless there’s a major irreconciliable internal struggle between two major social movements on
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economic system and material conditions
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foreign policy
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Stability of gov’t to maintain liberal rule
and its resulting instability…
I don’t think there’s gonna be another one
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To think it can never happen here is American Exceptionalism. We are just another country. Nothing special here.
Nah, people are way too lazy and complacent.
Inshallah
We’re not going to survive global warming if there isn’t one.
Any country can experience civil war but it requires certain material developments. The US would require a substantial breakdown in shared interests for that to happen. Not just partisan frustrations, there would need to be a fundamental economic split so severe that it pitted states or regions against one another and they could actually act on that. This would almost certainly have to coincide with a weakening of the federal government as well, where the states/regions in question need to push against the federal in order to go in their own direction, for their own interests.
The US Civil War had a material basis like this. The South of course sought to maintain slavery and this was the primary issue, but why was it such a sticking point and conflict in the first place? One clue is to look at what happened to production after the South lost (hell yeah): their plantations were bought up by Northern capitalists and run at a profit. The landless poor, which included basically every freed slave, were forced to work there for very little pay while now needing to pay their new landlords for housing. They became the most abused of the proletariat and racism was kept alive for their marginalization in this market. The ascendant northern capitalists had been doing this kind of thing in bits and pieces and by supporting the halt in any new slave states. The Southern planter ruling class knew their days were numbered and, seeing existential crisis, attempted to carve out a country for themselves to prevent that extinction.
You can imagine that sort of thing developing again during prolonged crisis. Some states and regions may develop very different economies and their ruling class interests may become so at odds that it leads to land grabs, assertions of independence, etc. But that would be a prolonged crisis that changed fundamental regional economics and national economics. It’s not necessarily unlikely but it would take decades.
No, not in a North vs South sense. If anything it’s just going to be in the form of terrorism like we saw during his presidency. Just more bold.
“War is only a few meals away” -idk
Just based off how comfortable Americans are, no.
