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?
Could it happen? Yes. There is a lot of anger in America. Will it happen in the near (10-15 years) future? No. Why? Watch any and all of the January 6th 2021 videos of the Capitol Riots. That looked like a bunch of alcoholic, mentally ill tailgate partiers tried to take over a nation. It got out of hand and went very, very bad. The only reason they did as much damage as they did, was because actual law enforcement reinforcements were not called in on time. They are just violent idiots who are old, out of shape, delusional about their abilities, and they did not have an actual plan. Civil war is not the immediate threat we face in the USA, it’s the fascism of christianity from within our government that needs to be destroyed. We need a return back to sanity, back to a secular government.
The only reason they did as much damage as they did, was because actual law enforcement reinforcements were not called in on time.
Let’s be clear about this: law enforcement was minimal to begin with, and reinforcements were deliberately refused, because the people in charge of them were trying to help the coup succeed.
I heard he was too busy watching television news coverage to be bothered with all that.
Let’s be realistic. If it had been a coup attempt, they would have brought weapons.
To suggest that was an attempted coup, when nobody brought any weapons, is ridiculous.
You do know they had guns right? The FBI tracked at least 2 shipments crossing the river by white supremacist groups.
All I’ve heard about is some pistols found in a car parked nearby.
Mostly agreed, but this is naive.
who are old, out of shape, delusional about their abilities
I’ll spare you all the anecdotes, but I’ve been around these people and most of them are no joke. They’re neither fat nor lazy nor stupid nor untrained. You only see the fat slobs in their Amazon gear because that’s who we like to make fun of.
That’s actually how you know they weren’t trying to take over: they didn’t bring guns.
Of course it could happen. Do I think it will happen in the next two months as we get through election season? Nah.
I also don’t think a civil war in modern days would look anything like it did in the 1860s. Aside from the obvious advance in weapons and tactics, there’s no convenient clear line between one half and the other like there was with North/South. It would look more like civil wars do in other countries in the 21st century.
Modern civil war happens when a domestic terrorist group starts to act agains the government.
For a full on civil war the army would habe to break apart in factions too, and I don’t thinl that’s probable in the us
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 Wuhang 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.
Having two different realities is not good. I’m not sure what is to be done about it though. Some people will always choose to believe the easy lie over the difficult truth.
Ignoring Fox and the crazies for a moment, how often have mainstream networks given equal time to climate change deniers and actual scientists, pretending there was a debate where there wasn’t one.
I want to push back a little on “we all agreed on what was and what was not reality.” When there were three TV stations, did any of them highlight police brutality? Overincarceration? The military industrial complex? Anything that would hurt their sponsor’s bottom lines?
The news networks we have today are all owned by large media conglomerates. They range from pro-corporate to pro-fascist. I’m glad that there are enough independent voices that we can hear from people who don’t profit off of the status quo. It’s unfortunate that right wing media is so prevalent and well funded, but if there is an answer to that, it’s not going back to the days when Walter Cronkite, CBS, and Gulf+Western would tell us “That’s the way it is”.
When there were three TV stations, did any of them highlight police brutality? Overincarceration? The military industrial complex?
This is a very fair point. True, having very limited news options didn’t allow for a lot of deviation in agreement on observable reality, but to your point, it could also easily paper over a lot of very ugly parts of the actual reality. Chomsky writes quite a lot about this in his book “Manufacturing Consent”, which basically is a dive into how media organizations can be used as the propaganda arm of the government. Everything from choosing what you show to choosing how you talk about things goes towards bolstering an underlying narrative that you want to project.
I’m not sure what a solution would look like, if one is even possible. But solution or no, the narrative divergence in this country has primed us to detest each other, which is the first crucial step towards mass violence.
So I talked to a PhD who’s work covered civil wars across the world, and asked about this. Turns out there are several signs you need to see which makes a civil war more likely. Most of which we haven’t even gotten close to, because many of them are economic related and right now the US is still the single largest economy in the world where peoples standard of living is still very comfortable.
I asked ChatGPT to describe this and these are the highlights, in order of historical priority?
- Political instability and weak governance are present.
- There are deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian tensions.
- The economy is declining with high inequality.
- Persistent social unrest and widespread protests occur.
- External powers are interfering or supporting different factions.
- There is significant resource scarcity and competition.
- Militarization and proliferation of arms increase.
- Systematic human rights violations and repression take place.
- Society experiences strong ideological polarization.
- Demographic pressures such as rapid population growth or urbanization exist.
- The rule of law and justice systems are breaking down.
- Historical grievances and unresolved conflicts resurface.
Note that the US does have some of these, but not to the evident level that you saw in Rwanda, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Syria, Burundi, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Myanmar, Haiti, and others. In short, if you look at the indicators, although the US is indeed troubled, it’s not troubled enough for people to hot the streets with more than riotous intent.
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Every person is three meals away from being radicalized. Not my quote, not sure who it’s attributed to, but I’ve seen it on the internet over the years.
I agree, shit will really hit the fan when people can’t find food/water anymore, or at least have it not be readily available. Personally, I think it’s coming sooner than people are expecting just because climate change will compound on itself year over year, and we’re doing damn near nothing to mitigate any damage (still pumping ground water up like it’s an instantly renewable resource to water golf courses in the dessert, for example).
But radical people tend to be desperate for change, and most people get desperate when they start to actually get hungry.
Let’s go point by point:
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Political instability and weak governance are present.
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No
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There are deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian tensions.
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Yes
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The economy is declining with high inequality.
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Economy: not declining - Inequality: high
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Persistent social unrest and widespread protests occur.
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Might happen if Trump loses or steals the presidency
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External powers are interfering or supporting different factions.
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Yes, big time
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There is significant resource scarcity and competition.
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Not yet, but global warming might make this happen
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Militarization and proliferation of arms increase.
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Well, it’s the USA
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Systematic human rights violations and repression take place.
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Might happen under Trump
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Society experiences strong ideological polarization.
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Yes
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Demographic pressures such as rapid population growth or urbanization exist.
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No
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The rule of law and justice systems are breaking down.
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No
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Historical grievances and unresolved conflicts resurface.
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No
Good fill-in on that. i think I’d add some context to each which is worth discussing.
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Political instability and weak governance are present.
- No, there are some arguably elements, but when you compare to the issues you see in the countries who’ve had them “No” is good a simple distilled answer.
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There are deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian tensions.
- Yes, with the caveat that we are seeing low level tensions as compared to the direct violent and organic engage issues you might see in Syria, Haiti, Yugoslavia, etc. There is racism with violence and tension, but not at the widespread near genocidal level which are the signs which is considered. I admit this is arguably, but worth discussing as it’s a framing issue about gun violence, police use of force, structural violence, etc.
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The economy is declining with high inequality.
- Economy: not declining - Inequality: high, this in particular is going to be a hard sign to trip, given how widespread the middle class is in the US vs other examples. It’s just a much much larger base that needs to get squeezed so much more before you’ll likely see French like protests about the wage disparity, corruption, or other inequality challenges. It’s very relevant, but just unlikely to get a significant population to say it’s not fair enough to act on it… When they can still go out to eat, watch movies, have disposable income, and more.
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Persistent social unrest and widespread protests occur.
- Might happen if Trump loses or steals the presidency, this I’m just going to avoid given the continuing discussion.
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External powers are interfering or supporting different factions.
- Yes, big time, substantiated from a foreign power stand point. I’d point out that this should also describe multinational companies as much as foreign powers.
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There is significant resource scarcity and competition.
- Not yet, but global warming might make this happen, agree. Starting to see some changes due to some globalization, pandemic, and your point of climate change.
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Militarization and proliferation of arms increase.
- Well, it’s the USA, agreed… But we are not seeing this based on strictly ethic lines in a way.
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Systematic human rights violations and repression take place.
- Might happen under Trump
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Society experiences strong ideological polarization.
- Yes, I’d caveat this with the reality that although it’s perceived as half the country that is polling well for Trump, it’s closer to a third or less. Not that the ideology divide isn’t pertinent, but just that there are about 80 million people who don’t vote in the US, so voter participation in presidential election is about 60%. So perception is that we have huge divide, but it’s driven by less and more extreme voices then the masses.
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Demographic pressures such as rapid population growth or urbanization exist.
- No, I would actually argue this might be yes. The housing crunch is driven by a rural to urban migration, which has exacerbated the housing shortage. This in addition to the US being an outlier that has kept it’s population growth rate higher than other developed countries has continued to increase the US population, which is only recently beginning to slow. This is not at the same level as other collapsed countries, but is what gives people the perception that the US is struggling.
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The rule of law and justice systems are breaking down.
- No, agreed although the judge choices and decisions of late leave much to be desired.
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Historical grievances and unresolved conflicts resurface.
- No, agreed with the caveat that racial tension are at play and perceptions focus this to include immigrants.
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How is there not political instability and weak governance?
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Short answer: yes
Longer answer: I would argue we’ve already had a few civil wars since the “War Between the States” in the 1860s. Reconstruction was arguably another civil war. The labor rights war of the early twentieth century included federal troops attacking organizing coal miners and federal agents along with private security forces attacking striking workers elsewhere. The violence of the civil rights movement (remember: the president had to call in the national guard to enforce integration) would also qualify as a civil war by some standards.
Listen to the first limited series of the podcast It Could Happen Here for an idea of how a more involved civil war could start. The idea is that there would not be clear battle lines drawn up because our divide now is more urban vs rural, and people in rural areas have opportunities to attack infrastructure that would have significant impacts on urban areas.
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 :(
Can? Yes. Contrary to common belief history is not over and white people are not exempt. Will? Maaaybe.
I can’t see the US system self-correcting, but a deeply established democracy like the US coming apart is a new thing (all the past ones were much more ephemeral AFAIK). It could just as easily slide into one dictatorship, like Wiemar Germany, or undergo some sort of slow death as states become more and more independent of the broken national system. It’s also hard to say what the timeline is.
There isn’t really two (or more) sides to go to war at this point. There’s only one military, and while the will to fight may exist on the Republican side they aren’t really organised for it. That could all change if the crisis goes on for many years, though.
Why do you believe what you believe?
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.
Republicans will say how they are ready if Trump loses.
99% of people who profess revolutionary politics are full of shit, for what it’s worth. It’s cheap to talk tough, and not so cheap to actually be in the line of fire, or in jail.
Actual uprisings have a structure to motivate fighters in other ways, be it by greed, ego or coercion. There is no paramilitary branch of the Republican party so far.
While I agree civil war is unlikely, there are paramilitary groups in the republican party, which Frontline investigated.
I could see a more minor version of The Troubles taking place.
Groups “in” and groups “of” are two very different things. The militias that exist are pretty wimpy, and pretty fractured. I’d guess 90% of militiamen are also full of shit, but with more merchandise.
If there was a power vacuum they’d get bigger, but that seems unlikely with so many various established authorities in the mix. I could see them getting coopted into whatever hypothetical faction, though, or just doing terrorist attacks.
Unfortunately, I can’t actually see that video.
How do you define the destinction? I assume you’re only counting ‘in’ as officially recognized by the republican party, the political entity?
There’s no way those guys vote Democrat, so it’s fair to say they’re “in” the Republican party, but they’re not a paramilitary “of” the Republican party, because none of the organisation and centralisation which makes the Republican party a force crosses over. They’re totally separate, and very unofficial - if a pastor or a local politician supports a militia group, they’re going to be doing that quietly on their own time. As a result, they all have a kind of “startup” thing going, and don’t really have logistics the way a viable insurgency would.
Sorry, I should have expanded a bit more there. Brevity vs. clarity is always a tough balance.
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.
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
I don’t think people who say it will happen really understand how inconvenient war is. And I use that wording to be laughable, because these are people who couldn’t wear a mask because they needed haircuts. They are quite literally the people who would starve to death if they were cut off from Walmart, who are fully dependent on oil to move their cars. They are so attached to American society they wouldn’t be able to maintain actual efforts for more than a couple of weeks.
Who i actually worry about are the few (I’ll call them) cells who could hold out for longer, who really do think it’s war. It wouldnt be full scale, but those unhinged lunatics who hoard weapons just are frothing at the mouth to hurt people.
From an ML perspective… what is to be done?
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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.
So your belief is that it can’t happen because it would suck?
Not the original commenter but I’d wager similarly that yes, the vast majority of the American people are far too comfortable to venture into the “inconvenience” of an actual war. Gripe about it from our couches? Yep. Lift a finger to bring about actual change (and no, signing an online petition doesn’t count) in the face of real, actual, severe consequence? …nah.
I think it would be very wise to just vote for the normal person so we don’t even have to entertain the possibility of an authoritarian government and a resulting civil war. Once we are no longer a democracy, or are a managed democracy like Russia, it will be extremely difficult to unring that bell.
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.
To think it can never happen here is American Exceptionalism. We are just another country. Nothing special here.
