How many years until U.S. mass violence, warring red and blue enclaves, civil war 2

also, the supreme court.

i offered more granular options for the upcoming 10 years or so just because that's when it's going to happen

if anyone offers doubt that chaos is among us and it's truly "the end of an era" for this country, i defer you to my spokesman robert kagan, who has written several more paragraphs about this that are very convincing. nice job kagan!

voting 2025 since i feel like whatever happens, the next inaugural could be some kind of catalyst or we could reach some moment of truly ultimate gridlock and dysfunction, idk, who can say.

karl, i do worry (a teeny bit only!) about your possible tendency towards doomposting. you are one of my favorite posters and i always enjoy reading even your more bitter and pessimistic medium-form posts, but i do wonder if maybe there's some case for disengaging just a little, for your own sake? but obviously you be the judge - if focusing on this stuff helps it feel more manageable then i can't say you're wrong! and i know with your family there's probably a lot of opportunities to be reminded of how screwed up our national infosphere has become, and how frustrating it is to deal with people who seem to have no common ground at all in terms of accepting a certain universe of facts or ground rules of what's important or moral, etc. so i totally get it. just throwing it out there.

Partisans on both sides are likely to be better armed and more willing to inflict harm than they were in 2020.

Not even remotely true re: both sides. I have my doubts that there’s been a big surge in gun ownership among Biden voters.

for non-christians only:

no one realizes how fucked up it's going to be when the white evangelical christian problem in this country does its damage. it is a time bomb. in at least two terrifying ways.

but first, you should think about my premise, which is that the white evangelicals are by far the dominant political christian group in U.S., almost all white evangelicals will clearly align themselves with their lord and savior, donald trump. or i'm sorry, you know what i meant. their good pal, good guy donald trump. if you don't agree with that premise, then you can definitely stop wasting even more time than you already are, because this is just going to get worse.

but if you accept, then it means that 1) there will be many more families torn apart among christian/political lines: the family ties liberal dad pitted against the michael j fox conservative son. the more violent things get in the conflict between red and blue enclaves, the more intensely the relationships burn down. 2) there will be intra-christian factions. or god, i hate to say this, but i hope there will be. if not, it means that 100% of the christians in this country, of all stripes, have united with the white evangelicals. and if that's the case, i will be one of those people who kills himself before they get to me first. but my hope is that at least some christians in this country will not take the side of the white evangelicals.

anyway, the whole "encroaching fascism" thing seems very real to me. it does seem like a tinderbox to me. things like the above, ok, it probably won't happen like that, of course. but there is something very wrong, and the very wrong people are directly aligning with the fascists. something is going to go very badly.

xp Which is why it won't be Civil War 2 or even violence on both sides rising to a fever pitch - it will be a slide into undemocratic authoritarianism. The American military and natsec/intelligence community would be fine with an undemocratic takeover that's steadier and (more obsequious to them) than Trump.

jfc i am the worst user of "hide text" tags of all time, sheesh.

also dr casino, sad lol xpost here. your post is prescient as always :)

btw if any of you would ever talk to me in real life about this stuff, you'd see that i am 90% laughing the entire time. i know it doesn't come through all the time. but i have recently found some happiness in the absurdity of it all and have been bonding heavily with fractured, mid-20th century painters, their whole lives upended by conflict all the time, and working through it. i have been eating it up with a spoon, and it helps. that's the 90% laugh, it's not a joke. if anything it makes me feel more alive than ever, like a desire to squeeze up a full life into the number of years that remain, no matter how few they are.

I vote never because MOST people (note emphasis) are still pretty committed to sleeping in their houses, getting up and making coffee, going to (or not going to) jobs, doing the shopping, dropping off the kid at daycare, rotating the tires, mowing the lawn, having some beers with friends, watching some Netflix, sometimes going out for Nando's and a movie.

It's not like we aren't aware of what civil wars are like. We see them on the news all the time. And even a cursory familiarity with history can give you way more information than you need. I am personally sitting on ground where at least two of them actually happened, and we haven't forgotten it. In fact, some folks never shut up about it, so we couldn't forget even if we wanted to.

There is (has always been, currently is, and will always be) a fringe population of people who get a gunrection over this shit. They are very vocal at present. Of course that worries me - but not because anybody's gonna be organized into regiments and marching on campaign through the countryside. What they (and it is very much a they) are gonna do is the same bullshit they've been doing. Ruby Ridge. Malheur. Oklahoma City. January 6-type shit. A VERY CONCERNING firestorm when shown on CNN, but one that doesn't much change how life is lived for most folks in most places.

Last year, my office in downtown DC (7th and F) had its windows covered with plywood for some days of completely justified rage, as well as some days of completely stupid rage. I will freely admit my privilege here: I went downtown exactly once during that time. I saw nothing, and I shrugged and went home.

There are some people on the right who speak of "boxes": the soap box, the ballot box, and the ammo box, and feel we have seen enough and the only thing that will change things to their liking is to "finally" open that last box (as if they haven't already). To me this shit mostly just sounds like pathetic rambo cosplay. To say that most of these clowns are poseurs is not meant to diminish the ACTUAL acts of violence people on the right have unleashed. But just to say: c'mon, man. Perspective. If the best those dudes can do is Horned-Hat Facepaint Guy, I'm not exactly all that scared for the survival of something like the current social contract.

Which, again, is not to defend the current social contract - loads of it is bullshit - but to dismiss predictions of a real shootin' war any time soon.

I think things will just continue to be awful, but the slide will be relatively slow so I voted 2030

There is (has always been, currently is, and will always be) a fringe population of people who get a gunrection over this shit. They are very vocal at present. Of course that worries me - but not because anybody's gonna be organized into regiments and marching on campaign through the countryside. What they (and it is very much a they) are gonna do is the same bullshit they've been doing. Ruby Ridge. Malheur. Oklahoma City. January 6-type shit. A VERY CONCERNING firestorm when shown on CNN, but one that doesn't much change how life is lived for most folks in most places.

i also think those people are going to keep doing that kind of stuff.

what about the part that is new and unprecedented (in our lifetimes, at least?) what about that essay i excerpted above?

the difference is that the ruby ridge people have taken over state legislatures now, and the blueprint for another "stolen" election is known to everyone. they are going to do this, just like they almost did pull off a coup on jan 6.

actually, let me refer to my spokesman, robert kagan. he describes these things so elegantly!

Most Americans — and all but a handful of politicians — have refused to take this possibility seriously enough to try to prevent it. As has so often been the case in other countries where fascist leaders arise, their would-be opponents are paralyzed in confusion and amazement at this charismatic authoritarian. They have followed the standard model of appeasement, which always begins with underestimation. The political and intellectual establishments in both parties have been underestimating Trump since he emerged on the scene in 2015. They underestimated the extent of his popularity and the strength of his hold on his followers; they underestimated his ability to take control of the Republican Party; and then they underestimated how far he was willing to go to retain power. The fact that he failed to overturn the 2020 election has reassured many that the American system remains secure, though it easily could have gone the other way — if Biden had not been safely ahead in all four states where the vote was close; if Trump had been more competent and more in control of the decision-makers in his administration, Congress and the states. As it was, Trump came close to bringing off a coup earlier this year. All that prevented it was a handful of state officials with notable courage and integrity, and the reluctance of two attorneys general and a vice president to obey orders they deemed inappropriate.

i mean, i guess the thrust of kagan's entire essay is "you all are underestimating the problem here - by a lot", so i should be surprised to find that nearly everyone i know underestimates the problem by a lot

this as well:

The banal normalcy of the great majority of Trump’s supporters, including those who went to the Capitol on Jan. 6, has befuddled many observers. Although private militia groups and white supremacists played a part in the attack, 90 percent of those arrested or charged had no ties to such groups. The majority were middle-class and middle-aged; 40 percent were business owners or white-collar workers. They came mostly from purple, not red, counties.

this should not be comforting

Karl, I heart u 4evs, but I still see most people just wanting to be able to go to Olive Garden, catch the Sox game, grill some brats by the kiddie pool, grumble about their commutes, watch Netflix. It's only a tiny fraction who are drilling with their ARs in the hinterlands.

Like, I have Trumpy Fox-benumbed inlaws too. For all their hyped-up rhetoric about Stop the Steal, they're still WAY to attached to going to Olive Garden, catching the Sox game, grilling some brats by the kiddie pool, grumbling about their commutes, watching Netflix.

Basically, I think you're underestimating the appeal of Olive Garden.

We shall see, I guess.

Kagan wrote that before this news came out: https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-influence-waning-suggests-straw-poll-mackinac-gop-conference-michigan-1632793

I think that with the social media ban still on, we're going to see continuing diminishment in his fortunes except among those who are most diehard and are most loud.

I don't think I disagree with where Karl thinks things are headed... I just don't think there will be any real pushback against it so endless breadsticks will still be on the menu.

i love you too YMP but you're not reading my post! i was saying, i'm talking about about that kagan article, which isn't about that at all

I also agree with YMP— most people in the US are much too comfortable with their quotidian lives to go to war.

haha, this all relates to another one of my loony ideas: that we effectively create a shitty future for ourselves by broadly discussing the way that it will probably be shitty for months in advance. which totally makes sense, i mean, look at this thread lol.

Those who criticize Biden and the Democrats for not doing enough to prevent this disaster are not being fair. There is not much they can do without Republican cooperation, especially if they lose control of either chamber in 2022. It has become fashionable to write off any possibility that a handful of Republicans might rise up to save the day. This preemptive capitulation has certainly served well those Republicans who might otherwise be held to account for their cowardice. How nice for them that everyone has decided to focus fire on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

it's just one of those things that is kind of...new, i think. the advent of widespread media/communication/"conversation" like this, combined with having so much information available and commentary on what will probably be happen. it seems very likely that there won't be enough republicans to help, if any. but in accepting that as a fact we bypass that moment when that actually happens and we're all super mad at the people that actually did the thing. instead we will have already progressed into a state of mourning or coping, explaining or arguing about how it could have gone differently if only. pretty cool deal for republicans

btw, i know everyone will ignore the rest of that and only focus on "How nice for them that everyone has decided to focus fire on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin." part, sigh, and i'll pre-emptively just say "yes, manchin fucking blows too, they all suck, kagan's point was that the republicans have managed to avoid even the obligation to address their support for fascism, which is a huge benefit to them

I vote never because MOST people (note emphasis) are still pretty committed to sleeping in their houses, getting up and making coffee, going to (or not going to) jobs, doing the shopping, dropping off the kid at daycare, rotating the tires, mowing the lawn, having some beers with friends, watching some Netflix, sometimes going out for Nando's and a movie.

My first response to your post was to wonder if you were typing it from the UK, because I didn't realize we had Nando's in America. But I guess if we were gonna have it, it would be in DC (and certainly not where I am, in NJ, where there are a whole fuckin' lot of actual Portuguese people making excellent chicken already).

Anyway...

My thinking is a combination of this essay from last year (title: "I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There") and William Gibson's quote "the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed", plus Gibson's concept, elucidated in his last two books, of "the jackpot," which is a combination of environmental collapse, political unrest, pandemic(s), economic cataclysm, etc. Basically, we're already fucked, the ball is already rolling downhill and getting larger, and even if there isn't a Kosovo-style shooting war in city streets, there may well be a total breakdown of the US political system as we have known it lo these past ~250 years. If Joe Biden isn't the last US president, whoever takes over after him probably will be.

(I do not think Donald Trump will be re-elected. Defeat, and his response to it, has bled him of 80% of his charisma. He is now seen by an even larger percentage of Americans than before as a combination scary asshole and petulant, possibly brain-damaged child. Oh, and his voters keep dying on him. But I do think the next president may well be a Republican, and that man — it's not gonna be a woman — will immediately begin drawing up the ladder, dismantling the system that allowed him to take power and strengthening every possible means of hanging onto it.)

Once the government is thoroughly rotted out, there will be economic repercussions. We're not gonna fuck ourselves as hard as Brexit — we're not a tiny island with delusions of grandeur, we're a massive sprawling continent-wide monstrosity — but the vast poor regions between the gleaming rich cities are going to become vaster, and poorer, and angrier, but at the same time more impotent. New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles are gonna stay theme parks for the ultra-rich, and every other city that's not being swept away by hurricanes is gonna be more like Detroit. But because we're Americans, we'll find other reasons to shoot each other, or no reason at all. It won't be a "civil war" in the historical sense, because nothing would be achieved by it. Eventually the United States will de facto dis-unite because there's nothing holding us together, really, except money. Once there's no money, this country will just kind of topple over. Maybe it'll become 50 little countries, or 10, or 5. But no one will sweep in and take over, because who would want to? The world has been watching us stomp around and break shit for decades. They don't like us, except as a benefactor or someone to sell things to.

yep i'm firmly in the 'no civil war' camp, pretty obvious to me that the trump-wing boogeyman is much less powerful than .. people who benefit from them appearing to be powerful would have the average liberal believe. when there's war it will start somewhere else, probably the global south, and the u.s. will not be the center of it imo. crises won't be conservative/liberal at their root, they'll be about access to resources. whatever ideological justifications need to happen in those circumstances will happen.

unperson otm really

there isn't some moment of apocalypse, it's already here and it will just be amplified along those lines.... because it's already working.

Just as an aside— my comments are mostly how I'm feeling today, though unperson's post is more where I'm at in the long run. That's why I'm trying to make as much money as possible to build a little compound somewhere where there's fresh water in the next 5-10 years.

The problem with a disunited states of Amerikkka future is the military and nukes. Given 3000+ nuclear warheads stockpiled, there's no transition that doesn't involve millions of dead people.

I would lean more toward the "United States" lasts as long as humanity as a going concern - even if the only functioning apparatus of state is the military.

Kinda feels like we'll wind up like Francia after the Carolingians, with states just turning into their own little principalities in the absence of a strong central government, self-declared lords building the 21st Century version of castles all over the place, etc.

Alls I know for sure is a) I'm for sure never having kids at this point and b) I need to make getting fitted for that cyanide tooth implant a top priority. Otherwise, it's just straight-up mangia time at the OG for me. Have you had their salad?

i think that as long as electronic global connection exists, any violence will be tangential to the nation-state. but after that collapses or fractures, who knows.

i'm just glad it's possible to choose love but it's still a hard road, pretty impossible to do it perfectly but you gotta start there imo or else just swallow that cyanide already.

For sure. We're all gonna die someday, one of our few options we have (to some extent, anyway) is where our heads and hearts are at when we go.

I pretty much feel that we never really concluded the first Civil War we had

^^^

exactly.

I vote "no war." But the apocalypse is here, happening in many states like mine, and we'll wake up every day with more constitutional liberties we took for granted gone.

Instead, we go to Olive Garden with the Constitution we have.

I need to go to the Olive Garden for the first time before things get really serious, it seems.

(Seriously, though, I've never been)

You're not missing anything.

Karl I love u but

https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-catastrophizing

of course things suck, they have always sucked, all we can do is try to be better people

tbh yr viewpoint seems (to me) to be very much the 2021 version of 2000's "FEMA is gonna put us all into detention camps" which didn't happen either

will there be breadsticks in the detention camps

because: mmmmm, breadsticks

the poll's ending date is election day 2022

so maybe we'll see if things change between now and then. i'm sure we'll all be feeling great that day

honestly, and this will gain me more haters, but -- some of you guys have been around too long. you've seen too much shit. you've been told the bad things were coming for so long that you don't recognize it when it's at the door. it may very well turn out fine (for you) and life will go on (for you), but as others say upthread, for some people it's still the fucking civil war. to see all that and see the fears and just handwave away with a "nah" - especially one that involves not even reading or addressing what i'm fucking talking about -- it just fucking sucks. you don't tell me your life story about how your "nah" is attained from a lifetime of experience and you definitely know, it's just a "nah" when everyone else is about to get FUCKED and it's clearly telegraphed, just as the 2020 coup was clearly telegraphed, and everyone knew it and yet somehow no one knew it

more words that don't accurately describe real life, coming from me, the crazy guy who shouts at the top of his lungs at the park:

This has spawned a number of proposed laws around the country which, in essence, allow the state legislature to review the results of a presidential election and throw it out if they decide it’s not legitimate. In other words, they’ve created a legal framework to steal the election from their own state’s voters.

Things get more complicated when governors get involved. By definition governors are elected by the same statewide electorates that elect presidents. This was a key issue in 2020. In five of the key states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona) Republicans controlled the legislatures. But in the three northern states Democrats had elected the governors. Arizona had a Republican governor but a Democratic secretary of state, who runs the elections. This is why Trump was so uniquely focused on Georgia. It was the one state with a close result where Republicans controlled everything. Everyone in a position of power was subject to the career-destroying bullying Trump can bring to bear on Republicans.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-road-to-the-stolen-2024-election

they've always done that, though. the whole thing where no matter what the results are, they contest them and then it's up to GOP appointed stooges to do the right thing. the republic will stand another 1000 years!!

Nobody's waving this away. Watching secretaries of state question the results is how the GOP may win in 2022 and 2024 -- which is why a bloody revolution is unnecessary.

i won't copy and paste the handwaves, but the hands are waving

in my circle of friends and confidants, i see this over and over. there are seemingly lots of people who have accepted the idea that the fascist state is coming, and there's not much that can be done about. and also there are lots of people (i think) who do not accept this at all, and kind of think it's funny actually. these are usually people who have the resources to protect themselves from what they don't think is going to happen, anyway. and somehow, i feel like a rare individual who is actually really bothered, to the point that it is frightening, and ALSO, i don't believe it is inevitable, and ALSO, i WILL be the guy who goes down swinging against this shit, and no i WON'T accept it. i don't know if i have a displaced savior complex from my churchgoing years, but i refuse to be part of a huge group that just takes it and doesn't fight back. and yet, most of the problem is just accepting that something is deeply wrong here

Whoa oh
Nando's is the chicken that is portuguese
Whoa oh

My marxist ass says IMO the only way we get another civil war is if capital splits into two large opposing factions whose means of making money are incompatible with each other to the point that they are forced into physical conflict. At that point they will come up with the propaganda they need to try and get people fighting. I can't really think of any divisions among the US's capitalist class that could blow up to that level any time soon though.

More likely I'd expect a slow (and perhaps eventually rapid) slide into more authoritarian government as climate collapse becomes more obvious. Maybe we'll start seeing (justified) ecoterrorism followed by a brutal overreaction.

I suppose some sectors of capital might start losing their means of income due to climate change sooner than others and that could spur on conflict among the elites. That could cause some weird friction.

civil war is also geographical as much as factional, and i just don't see a majority of people reorganizing geographically en masse (even my famously leftish home in the PNW is still only like 60/40 blue), and definitely not getting into, like, murdering their neighbors' families anytime soon. i love my goofy idiot trump-obsessed neighbor who helps me with my plumbing and electrical shit. we talk about sports when he comes by, or the other day he asked me about the guy who's winning all those jeopardy games. up close people are less abstract and harder to hate.

The biggest issue with the scenario posited in the OP is: what do you do? What do I do? That scenario is predicated upon all of the usual mechanisms of change accessible to the Little People (i.e. voting, protesting, calling your congressperson) being rendered moot. I'm an increasingly doughy middle aged dude with no money or weapons or fighting ability so that's a world even less suited to my temperament than the current one. I mean, I'll look out for my loved ones and neighbors as best I can, but...it's just a nightmare made flesh. It might happen, it might not. I have enough trouble many days getting to bedtime without collapsing from the weight of it all. I don't bother worrying too much these days about what I'm personally going to do if GOP gamesmanship works out (even more) in their favor because that's not a scenario I'm gonna have the juice to reckon with.

Console vs pc

Karl it's not that I "don't recognize it" (and that's actually really fucking insulting, check yourself dude), I have actually been through the same fears you had with the same intensity, AND THEY NEVER HAPPENED

at the same time, OF COURSE things are worse now. that's how it happens. as per Philip K. Dick (who, I may suggest, you need to read or re-read if you still don't get this), all we need to do in our lives is carry whatever bits of light forward that we can. taking on the worry of the larger picture leads straight to hell. stop doing it. it's not your responsibility to mourn humanity, live your life.

that's what I'm coming around to

In the '70s, the US saw a couple of thousand bombings and 100+ airplane hijackings. The center held (by held, I mean it lurched right) and things continued on getting a bit worse year by year.

The capacity of average people to get along with a bit of political violence is immense, so long as most can pay their rent/mortgage and enjoy a couple of luxuries here and there.

xpost, i hear you sleeve, and you're right in the sense that i need to check it. it is an insult - one i didn't intend, but still real, and one that i was complaining about the other day on some thread. i thought people just thought i was a complete fool. so i get that, i'm sorry. i'm not trying to turn into a 'sheeple!' person

i've been reading the exegesis of pkd on my toilet for several years and it's funny, i've never tried to connect any of it to my current situation. i love pkd though. to me it is things like his layering of 1st century rome on top of today's world that mesmerizes me. i like to just think about that.

things get worse, that's an easy money prediction, but the ways they get worse aren't always linear, even if they seem to have been for a long time. things that have been sliding steadily but slowly south can suddenly break entirely. systems are often at their most complex just before the collapse. house of cards, interlocking systems crumbling, etc.

Things can get worse, things can improve, it's happened like that for thousands of years.

I mean, not that I think human beings have thousands of years left but you get the idea.

i will try to no longer "talk" on this thread but i bet i will occasionally still post links, including ones like this that are meant to be reassuring

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/24/why-the-fear-of-trump-may-be-overblown-514270

i know the thread title and concept is horrible and will prevent people from having a good conversation about this. partly because i put "civil war 2" in the title like a complete idiot, and no matter what, people will skip directly to that idea, rather than the more plausible ones people are talking about upthread. i think that's important to talk about, even if it's a discussion that doesn't include me.

i am sorry for, just, generally the way i've been recently. i agree that thinking about this stuff doesn't really help, and being on my computer doesn't really help because that's where the news is, too.

For good or ill, I agree with you more than almost any other currently active political poster.

(truly, it is for ill, at least for personal mental and probably physical health reasons. but thank you)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i-voted.gif

I note that the author of essay quoted in the OP is Robert Kagan (from Wikipedia:) "an American neoconservative scholar, critic of U.S. foreign policy, and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism. A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, he is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution."

Besides publicly wringing his hands in a WaPo OpEd I haven't really detected any of the institutions he is intimately connected to loudly broadcasting these dire warnings as if they really believed violent mass civil discord and the dissolution of democratic government was imminent. It's the progressive left that keeps ringing those warning bells against rising fascism. You'd think such concerns, if sincerely believed, would be worth more than an OpEd.

…cars and dogs living together, mass hysteria.

-cars- cats

2024

How many of these ppl are winning tomorrow?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/01/us-election-deniers-trump-big-lie-republican-midterm-candidates-running

All of them

Civil war 2

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

I like that there's a vote for last year and two votes for this year.

Time's a wastin', civil warriors! Get on it!

Civil war 2 fast 2 furious