how long until the next US civil war?

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’.