If we did have this "civil war"...

[progressive85]

I think we're in a cold one, but still... how does one of our sides win this "cold civil war"?  Do we tear down a wall in a red state or a blue state?  Seriously, I just don't get it. 

I believe that we've all pretty much had it with each other - the right and the left absolutely cannot stand the other and we want the other to fail and basically rot in hell.  30% of America REALLY HATES another 30% of America and it's mutual.

I just don't understand what the outcome would be.  What's the point of anything?

Politics has become more about who you hate and who you can tear down than anything else.  It was always corrupt, but now it's just pointlessly hateful.

Snowflakes, triggering, owning, "cruelty is the point"... issues are not being discussed rationally.   

And I'm sorry, but Trump lost 2020.  He just lost the ing election.  He can't get over it - but how come 70% of Republicans believe it was "stolen"?  Like who came along and stole it?  The Tooth Fairy?  Santa Claus?

This dude Trump is the biggest asshole in the history of the world - I really believe that.  He's a jerk.  A total and complete piece of s**t...  to spread this lie like this...

It's a lie.  Even the smartest conservative must know it's one big fat lie. 

Biden won.  He's a lousy president, but he won fair and square.  It wasn't even that close of an election - not like 1960 when you could really claim that Kennedy stole it....


i just can't anymore.  So if we're going to have another insurrection at the Capitol, then I say let's just dissolve the "United" States and become 50 separate countries and do a European Union kind of thing where we have international coalitions.

[progressive85]

The separation doesn't even have to hurt...

Has anyone studied the idea of us splitting apart - why do we have to exist as all 50 states in the same country?

Couldn't we have basically like regional alliances and cooperations and treaties?

And don't states really have more power than the federal government?  Nothing gets done in the Congress anymore... so why not just stop wasting all that money in Washington...

It sounds stupid, but maybe having so many different states, with this ideological divide that we have, in one country isn't a long-term strategy that works... idk.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

We're not fifty Red or Blue states. We're a bunch of shades-of-purple states where the Red Party or the Blue Party has big enough edge to control the government. Splitting up means leaving people we agree with to be oppressed by "the other guys" without any federal government to ameliorate the whims of the ruling faction.  And why stop at state lines? Why not let counties leave?

And our fifty states aren't all equal. Only a tiny handful "pull their weight" financially in the national budget. Who's going to foot the bills currently paid by California, New York and New Jersey (via DC) in Mississippi or Kentucky? Not that it's all one-sided, even if a handful of Blue states are the net contributors. As just one example, California doesn't just get its water from the ocean - what happens to water compacts if the US dissolves? 

And what makes you think Republicans will stop being lying, death-worshiping jerks just because they live in a newly independent state? You really think they're going to shoulder the blame for their failures because there's no federal government to blame? You think they're not going to point fingers at their neighbors and scream, just like they do now? All we're buying with a breakup of the US is a different sort of conflict, not a solution.

But hey, I don't want to just pick on Republicans (although I think they deserve everything I can heap on them, and more besides). A breakup of the US isn't going to magically solve all the very real societal problems Clinton and Obama ignored, starting with the regulatory capture of our government and the gross wealth inequality that the Democrats pay lip service to but never seem willing or able to do anything about.

And speaking of that, isn't it nice and convenient for the billionaire-class (and their lackeys) that half the activists in the country are busy hating the other half of the activists? Good thing Trump came along to polarize everyone, and that the flames keep getting fanned on massive issues like CRT, election chicanery and trans people, otherwise a whole lot of angry people might look to DC and start asking our elected representatives why can't the United States function like a first world country?

[Ferguson97]

We're not going to have a true Civil War like we did in the 1860s for a variety of reasons:

The reason that the American Civil War was able to occur the way it did was because the South was dependent on slavery (economically and culturally) in a way that the North was not. And state borders made it very clear which side you were on, due to the fact that different states could set their own laws.

Contrast this to modern America, where red state vs blue state isn't as clear cut. Our political divisions are still based in geography, but it's urban vs rural. Someone in Cincinatti is more likely to share cultural and political values with someone in Boston than someone in a rural part of his own state.

So what would happen when Republican Georgia and the Capital's mayor and city council disagree on whether to side with Biden or Trump?  What happens when the police forces in New Jersey's conservative municipalities refuse to side with the Democratic Governor? Even if you got everyone to agree with it and redraw state borders, how do you logistically unite Philadelphia and Pittsburgh under the same government when everything in-between is technically a foreign country?

There's also the fact that America is a very RICH country. Yes, our income inequality is a disaster and many people live paycheck to paycheck. But from a global and historical perspective, we're rich. We are simply nowhere even close to the material conditions required for a civil war to occur. We'd have to be going on weeks without the majority of the country having access to clean water or electricity.

Despite our political divisions, people simply have way too much to lose by going to war with each other.

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Can we not have doomer civil war threads for once?

[progressive85]

Can we not have doomer civil war threads for once?

When our Generals make these "civil war" assertions, I wanna know the details.  I've seen the national headlines of those claiming they truly believe that's where we're headed.  I was simply asking a question that's been posed by several people with insider knowledge. 

And no we will not have a "hot Civil War"... not at least anytime soon.  A cold one, we're in already, but you could say that about the 1960s I guess too.

[Hammy]

Can we not have doomer civil war threads for once?

When our Generals make these "civil war" assertions, I wanna know the details.  I've seen the national headlines of those claiming they truly believe that's where we're headed.  I was simply asking a question that's been posed by several people with insider knowledge. 

And no we will not have a "hot Civil War"... not at least anytime soon.  A cold one, we're in already, but you could say that about the 1960s I guess too.

They're not exactly impartial sources. They, like former elected officials, are out of work politicians desperate for attention they once had.

[Person Man]

What we could be likely heading towards is a situation where armed protesters try to prevent the collection of taxes or the enforcement of unpopular laws. Maybe they engage the National Guard or local police militarily whenever they can with the goal of turning places like rural Virginia or the entire Dallas metro area into "No Go" zones....or at least make it a bit of a challenge for the state government to enforce their laws. Perhaps the local police start to rely more and more on local armed counter protesters. I can definitely see this as almost likely in any "Bad Case" scenario in the 2020s and 2030s.

It all eventually ends on one side giving up for at least a while and things "returning to 'normalcy'" or the gloves come off and we get an ad hoc dictatorship-style situation where the country becomes either an Iran-style situation like in Upon a Cross of Globalism where there are still elections, but where the Electoral College basically de facto rules the country or a situation where things are much blurrier and where power is generally transferred militarily.

It could actually be very similar to how things were in the Gilded Age when unions were illegal and a lot of labor relations were conducted violently.