how long until the next US civil war?

populace too complacent

I don't know if it'll count as a civil war, but survivalist militia types will probably try to stir shit up if/when their pwecious wifles are ever banned.

A state-based civil war would only result from one or more states, or else one branch of the federal government, intransigently refusing to accept one or more policies that they cannot deflect through conventional constitutional/political methods. Since Americans tend to fight their internecine battles politically, this seems like a remote but definite possibility. But atm I don't see any political issues that would drive whole branches of government to embrace a civil war.

More likely in my view would be a mass political movement that failed to capture the government through elections, who feel strong enough and frustrated enough to attempt an armed overthrow of government, so as to impose their views. This seems more likely to me, but not exactly immanent. The current political dynamic is being driven by conservatism, but the conservatives have so far succeeded in capturing government.

The underlying problem is that, in order to keep power, the conservatives continue to whip their followers to further extremes, which then must become the rallying point for future victories over the opposition, so that there is a large minority (aka "the base") who are kept in a constant state of fervent dissatisfaction with the status quo and whose demands are becoming more and more extreme. They are already being fed the idea of a civil war, because, frankly, that is the logical end game for this dynamic.

So, I vote Rwanda, not the Confederacy Redux.

If the Supreme Court overturn Roe vs Wade I predict a revolt.

xp i am inclined to agree with you, aimless

fred not sure what you mean by a revolt

A civil war at this point would almost be welcomed. Where's the fighting spirit? So not gonna happen.

the conservatives continue to whip their followers to further extremes, which then must become the rallying point for future victories over the opposition, so that there is a large minority (aka "the base") who are kept in a constant state of fervent dissatisfaction with the status quo and whose demands are becoming more and more extreme. They are already being fed the idea of a civil war, because, frankly, that is the logical end game for this dynamic.

this is happening on the left too but i guess doesn't count bc they're too pussy to actually fight for anything they believe in?

xp otm

um well that sounds like it makes sense because it feeds into stereotypes about liberals but it's not like "the right" is out there "actually fighting" for something they believe in

i don't think this country will manage the end of its global military dominance and the adjustments of climate change well. i said 20-50

well they're certainly arming themselves to do... something. i don't think they're all just trying to shoot up schools, ymmv. xp

think of all the Facebook Live coverage

xp i get that right wingers are buying a lot of guns but are they actually organizing to use them, or are they just sitting in their basement stroking their gun collections? so far i wager much more of the latter.

The revolution will not be facebook live’d

xxxp anyway the point of the thread is to discuss whether there will be a civil war, not to see who can neg "the left" the hardest

it's me, i can. lol. anyway yeah voted no. status quo in this country, despite everything said, is way too comfy.

you're more likely to see an increase in sporadic acts of political violence than a full-blown civil war. i doubt anyone wants to do much beyond post angry memes. the extremes rarely meet anywhere but the internet, that's the battlefield.

otm. 'political action' by the general public in this country is basically attending a ball game; make a sign, wear a silly hat, bring yr kids. we're protesting """""oppression"""" fun day out for the whole family!

20 to 50 years, driven by resource/utility shortages + climate change.

cities (relatively efficient resource footprint, elites, liberal) vs rural (more resource dependent, poor public transportation, far right, guns)

when i saw that Cillizza piece yesterday w/the headline "this is how gun control dies" or whatever, it was so perfect. the internet left getting exasperated at the right for winning again while the actual activist kids on the left are in the field making progress, so the left takes the gun from the right and shoots itself in the foot again (sorry!!!)

don't think this country will manage the end of its global military dominance and the adjustments of climate change well. i said 20-50

― goole, Wednesday, February 28, 2018 2:57 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this seems more likely to me than some kind of left/right ideological conflict. I was just reading about Omar El Akkad's "American War" yesterday--have you seen that tlg?

on present course think it's more likely to (continue to) become a place of constant multidirectional violence, more like iraq than like other antecedents itt, while still nominally hanging together. what remains of civil society will be privately administered-- including/especially in those cities that end up occupied and governed by security services, which will contract. inequality will revert to and beyond feudal levels and between that and a collapsing ecosystem goole is otm, something will eventually happen; but i doubt the country will be all that recognizable anyway (to ilxors) by the time it does.

there are def ways out imo but it would be as john brown sez "vainly flattering" ourselves to imagine they will not be bloody too

i don't think it would be state vs. state because nobody really identifies with their state to the extent that ppl did in the 19th century, plus the national guard is no match for the federally controlled US military. i think we'd have to see a second great depression before ppl got worked up enough to go neighbor vs. neighbor. imo an outright military coup is more plausible than either of these.

how precisely do you see this going? rural gun owners invade urban areas?

i think the issue is that the country is so large, resource rich, and geographically blessed w/ chill neighbors. things will likely remain in stasis here until glob

guys what does stasis mean? why does it mean stability and also apparently instability? and both usages are really old?

tbh Trump is the first president where i'm not sure an election loss would be enough of a reason for him to vacate office.

i strongly disagree i think he'll be thrilled to be done with it

otm, like buchanan level.

also, he'd need the armed forces to back him up and they wouldn't

i hope he is! i have little doubt that's the case. but i have a tiny bit of doubt...

i'm not saying he'd be successful either, that tiny tiny part of me just thinks he'd go out kicking and screaming.

I was just reading about Omar El Akkad's "American War" yesterday--have you seen that tlg?

― rob

no, do tell

not gonna happen as long as the internet/tv is up. take down all communication in the country and things would change pretty fast.

i dont see a rural/city divide because there is still a huge difference between southern cities and northern cities. i don't see Macon siding with New York City against their country brothers

trump hates losing more than he hates being president

i agree that trump is probably desperately awaiting the end of his term so that he can go back to his previous lifestyle. however, i also think that no matter how much he loses by, he will claim to have been swindled. if he loses by 10 million votes, than he'll say 15 million votes were stolen. many of his supporters will go on the rest of their lives believing it was stolen. that's going to be suuuuper annoying

xp
well, I haven't read it myself, but basically it's speculative fiction about an American civil war in, iirc, about a hundred years from now. i.e., long enough so that sea level rise is a very serious problem; there's also racial hatred, bioterrorism, etc. Sounded very grim but possibly good?

here's the NYT review: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/books/review-american-war-omar-el-akkad.html

i dont see a rural/city divide because there is still a huge difference between southern cities and northern cities. i don't see Macon siding with New York City against their country brothers

there can a rural/city divide without all of the cities banding together as one. factions of allied cities might be a possibility. or other more stable countries stepping in to provide supplies and occupy the land. another possibility is that i've played too much europa universalis 4

or other more stable countries stepping in to provide supplies and occupy the land

like the chinese?

i should say "the PRC", not "the chinese"

the refugee flows from 2-3 small civil wars have spurred a strong movement toward fascist reaction across the_west. the movement of many more hundreds of millions of people that will happen as certain latitudes become uninhabitable will be unimaginable

idk climate change scares the shit out of me, i don't have much optimism about it, especially looking at the american political system.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

nah

Eventually, after complete economic and ecological collapse. The way our military is dispersed and not allied to to any given region will stall things even after that for a bit but we'll break up into a half dozen warlord states.

Also it probably ends in nuclear annihilation.

Is it not more likely that ye just split amicably into more reasonably sized units first?

Or god forbid get another few parties?

otoh, the North Korean model of governance is likely to prove extremely durable in the face of economic and ecological collapse, especially if their nuclear capability expands to a size that commands complete respect for its borders.

i dont see a rural/city divide because there is still a huge difference between southern cities and northern cities. i don't see Macon siding with New York City against their country brothers

lol this is not exactly a one-to-one comparison considering Macon's population is 1/60 that of NYC

Is it not more likely that ye just split amicably into more reasonably sized units first?

Or god forbid get another few parties?

The latter is even more unlikely than the former.

amicable split would certainly be preferable to civil war but somehow i don’t see the red states going for it

Just let them have all the guns and nuclear weapons that would do it

pretty sure that in any civil war Hispanics, blacks, and the poor will suffer most, but y'all keep spitballing

Red states already have all the nukes. No missile silos in the five boroughs iirc.

that's what you think you know

i don't think it will look like either of the civil wars cited tbh, more like the fall of rome

i think i see a global oligarchy sharing power and controlling / driving atomized violence among the powerless, or more of the same i guess? but worse. and making old nation-state identities worthless except as virtual death machines.

i think some kind of nuclear episode / messy world war is more likely than an american civil war at this point.

taking sides: US civil war 2, world war 3, or US civil war 2 DURING world war 3?

yes why choose when you can have both

considering the first civil war was over the liberation of people from bondage which was america's economic lifeblood and preserver of social hierarchy, im not seeing a civil war anytime soon

so we’ve ruled out state to state war

what about internecine conflict like rwanda or yugoslavia

probably not; the left is not armed

right ... doesn’t that make it even more likely

wars usually involve two armed sides iirc

not gonna happen in foreseeable future, too diffused

this is my impression of americans posting on this thread who earnestly believe there will be a civil war

*pulls a half-eaten chicken drumstick out from folds of ass* ah reckon there be a civil war in the coming years ah do *takes a bite of the drumstick*

Chicken lickin

i dont see a rural/city divide because there is still a huge difference between southern cities and northern cities. i don't see Macon siding with New York City against their country brothers

I don’t know Macon, but yr larger Southern cities are bluer and bluer.

But my answer to the OP is that the first Civil War never exactly ended.

I think that I don't worry about another war between the states as much roving bands of Republicans going full ISIS. Rounding up liberals and broadcasting our executions on liveleaks or whatever.

probably not; the left is not armed

― NBA YoungBoy named Rocky Raccoon (m bison), Tuesday, March 6, 2018 5:31 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What do you mean by "the left" and does it include the government?

But my answer to the OP is that the first Civil War never exactly ended.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, March 6, 2018 1:52 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right. We've arguably been in a Cold War of sorts excepting periods of overseas war, hot or cold, or other prompts to national unity, since reconstruction.

flopson otm

So, I've thought a lot about this topic because I'm crazy. There are two main factors to figure in when talking about civil war: The history of the region in question, and the technologically mediated shape of civil war over history.

For the first topic, we should of course look at the previous American Civil War. This was a very long time ago, and America was in many respects a different country then, but one can still see some strong parallels.

The previous Civil War was on the issue of slavery, and right here the analogy breaks down because the split among Americans, while real and present, is not based around one overriding issue the way the current split is.

What we see in the case of the American Civil War is a period of about 40 years, beginning with the Era of Good Feelings, in which the notion of America as "one nation" thoroughly breaks down.

My current feeling is that the cultural split isn't as thorough or complete as it was in 1860, that the majority of Americans simply are not ready for a civil war, but this may not be necessary or expected. Ready or not, it may happen at any point, and probably will happen at some point, given the nonexistence of an alternate path which would allow peaceful coexistence.

The other thing to take from this is that opponents of Trump will not start a civil war. The notion of women en masse taking up arms to protest Roe V Wade is frankly ludicrous. What one might see is a violent left-wing act - something along the lines of John Brown's attack. This person is likely to be hailed as a "hero" by wide swaths of progressive America, which will tend to exacerbate existing tensions. Again, this depends upon the nature of the act - there was a left-winger who tried to shoot a Republican leader fairly recently and he was either denounced or - this is key to the narrative today - accused of being a "false flag" actor. You didn't, as far as I know, have that notion in the 1850s.

Given all this, I think the most likely time for a civil war to start will be subsequent to the Presidential election of 2020, should the Republican candidate lose. A certain group already exists who will proclaim any such outcome as "illegitimate", a certain subset of those will find a pretext to take up arms (as in 1860, it is likely they will do this pre-emptively, before any concrete action can be taken against them), and people who find themselves culturally affiliated with that group will feel duty-bound to support them.

As for what any of this will look like in practice, I think we do need to look towards more recent civil wars, particularly the situation in Syria. There's certainly the potential for the multilateral chaos of recent wars. The notion that alignments will occur strictly along state boundaries... well, it's questionable to argue that happened in the 1860s, and very unlikely today. A "war" is, given the nature of the instigators, likely to take the form of a lengthy series of what we would term today "terrorist attacks". A thousand Oklahoma City bombings. An unknown factor will be the role of drones in this conflict. Today it's common to condemn drones on privacy grounds, but if they become the only practical defense against heavily-armed crazies shooting up high schools, they're more likely to become accepted. The ultimate outcome will probably wind up looking like Dick Cheney's wet dream - a totalitarian yet ultimately ineffective "security state".

In case you missed it at the beginning, I'm crazy, so please don't take any of the preceding too seriously.

But my answer to the OP is that the first Civil War never exactly ended.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

black iron plantation

people who find themselves culturally affiliated with that group will feel duty-bound to support them

as an ignorant outsider it seems more likely to me that swathes of the GOP and its supporters will heave a massive sigh of relief if Trump doesn't win an election in 2020

well, i guess a lot depends on if the democrats run another doughface in 2020.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

initially looks reassuring

BUT a bit of arithmetic shows it’s 28-23 predicting civil war vs no civil war

not the reassurance i was hoping for

more or less even split between optimism and pessimism i guess

> 100 years 3

who are these three nostradami

a european buddy was telling me how the west (usa/europe) has had peace for a long time now and that it is time for war (he doesn't think the usa has been in actual "war wars" since vietnam apparently)

and he seems to have this backward idea that war will occur the same way it did in the 1900s, like country A attacks country B with tanks, missiles, etc

ya, no

war will come about in new and unique ways, ways that will force us to reconsider the meaning of war and that are specific to our new brave world, a world that heavily relies on technology and psychology

if you don't think mass shootings is a form of war, may the lord have mercy on you

if you don't think the apps on our little handheld devices isn't some type of mind control, bless your innocent heart

if you don't think overcrowded major cities and high cost of living is just going to get worse, i'll be waving goodbye when you move to some small town inland

if you don't think there will be fewer jobs, and robots will take lower-skilled and easy-to-automate jobs, good luck to your future career

if you don't think the high cost of education, and the lack of trades and skilled workers is just out of pure laziness, get your head out of your latte

if you don't think the opioid crisis is being pushed by big pharma and the gov't to kill off the weakest people, hi superman

stop and think about it for a second

we *are* at war

wait jk lol

~ Bob Marley

https://www.caprishop.com/images/poster_61x92cm_bob_marley_smoke_big.jpg

i voted for 20-50. but a vote for >100 years makes much more sense than "so not gonna happen". do the "so not gonna happen" voters think the united states will remain a strife-free country until the end of the world, or do they think that the country will at some point be absorbed by another country or bloc without any internal conflict over the matter? in the long term a civil war happening sometime between 100 years from now and infinity seems much more likely than none, ever.

history has not ended

if you don't think the opioid crisis is being pushed by big pharma and the gov't to kill off the weakest people, hi superman

stop and think about it for a second

we *are* at war

wait jk lol

― F# A# (∞)

Keep going bro, I'm a student right now

I miss my childhood, when history looked like it was over for a decade or so

Ugh yeah and it “didn’t matter” if bush won because he wuz a ceo president

if you don't think the apps on our little handheld devices isn't some type of mind control, bless your innocent heart

what does this have to do with war

ever heard of the war on your mind?

or clash of clans? download now

ever heard of the war on your mind?

― flappy bird

swamp dogg, right? good jam

"if you don't think the opioid crisis is being pushed by big pharma and the gov't to kill off the weakest people, hi superman"

most of your post is arguable/defensible as actions that have a strong, oft-unacknowledged political component, but this is some flat-out infowars bullshit here, and spouting it undermines the truths you have already spoken

The work has rather turned here chaps

Worm ffs

insert the old joke about the guy with a flat tire at the mental asylum here

we jammin

guys it's like b movies u can't just TRY to make a trenchant post

"mean world syndrome"
has me reaching for a beer, not a bayonet.
there's a well fed person next to me
with exceptionally white teeth
masturbating to their own righteous indignation

I miss my childhood, when history looked like it was over for a decade or so

― valorous wokelord (silby), Wednesday, March 7, 2018 6:01 AM (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i kinda miss being mad at progress happening too slowly

I hope it's a civil war, a rude war is terrible.

Bumping for the inevitable next week.

the inevitable rehashing of these fears? there's a very high likelihood of manufactured chaos, but armed conflict on a mass scale is way down my list of worries for next week.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n10/james-meek/what-are-you-willing-to-do

“What are you willing to do? On the case for civil war”

(Not to encourage piracy but in the absence of other options, Reader view is one way to take a look over the paywall.)

One of the strange things about the reaction to the invasion of the Capitol was how few of those dismayed by it speculated that they might one day long for just such an assault to succeed. Might a different mob storm into Congress to save democracy, rather than attack it? If an autocrat who has stolen an election is about to have his trashing of American democracy hallowed by Congress, all other recourse having failed, shouldn’t Democrats – or democrats, at least – take direct action? Liberal opinion in North America and Western Europe has tended to be gung-ho about pro-democracy protesters storming ruling institutions in other countries, notably Ukraine in 2014. But it’s one thing to imagine, as Walter encourages her readers to do, the gradual spread of white supremacist, anti-government terrorism across America against a democratic framework, until one day the progressive left, and the people of colour she suggests are likely to be targets of violence, arm and organise for self-protection. It’s another to wake up one morning and find that without any bloodshed or violence, without any seeming change in the smooth running of traffic signals and ATMs and supermarkets, without, even, an immediate wave of arrests or a clampdown on free speech, your country is run by somebody who took power illegally. Something must be done! But what, apart from venting on social media? And by whom? Me? In Ukraine, students and the liberal middle class found fighting allies among football ultras, small farmers and extreme nationalists. Such an alliance would be hard to pull together in the Euro-American world. Describing liberal protests against government corruption and malfeasance in Bulgaria in 2013, Ivan Krastev spoke of ‘the frustration of the empowered’ and an urban middle class that ‘risks remaining politically isolated, incapable of reaching out to other social groups’.