Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/20/racist-iowa-congressperson-ste.html
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No one. The Civil War wiped out nearly 2% of the entire population of both sides, that would be roughly 6.5 million people today.
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Also the lines today are not state v. state so much as urban vs. rural.
I would see the next civil war being more like Northern Ireland and The Troubles only worse.
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Your periodic reminder that Steve King’s favorite person committed suicide in a bunker at the end of World War II.
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Two observations: first, the obsession these people have with bathrooms explains a whole segment of the pornography industry that has heretofore baffled me.
Second, the glee with which these fucking jamokes imagine another civil war and fantasize about the noble farmers blockading the cesspool urban areas and starving them out until something magical happens and they realize the error of their ways is really something. Trying to convince these people that having industrial capacity and capital and access to the coasts might be at least as important as having access to a basement full of .30-30 shells is a lost cause, though, pun very much intended.
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately due to the emboldened radical right wing and trump’s dogwhistle muster calls. I definitely think that under a number of circumstamces he will attempt to declare martial law, dissolve congress or something similar. What I can’t quite get my head around is where the first front would be. I really don’t think the radical right is centralized enough to organize an attack on such a huge area the “blue states” represent, but I can definitely envision some sort of siege of D.C. I also have a hard time believing that the majority of US Military leadership would go along, but certainly some factions would arise and splinter. I just have a hard time envisioning a groundswell taking hold in the US in the short term, but I could see a protracted engagement mobilizing more and more folks.
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Does the US not have any laws around treason then? Or attempting to incite a coup?
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Yes, definitely, but as all laws rely on enforcement and congress is the Executive’s de facto enforcer… it’s not looking great.
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I see less another full-on Civil War but, more of a continued slow roll molding the U.S. into another Russia-like state with sporadic uprisings along the way.
Full on fighting is the alt-right wet dream. The ultimate expression of hate.
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Let’s be honest. A new civil war would be over on day one. It would be traitors vs the US Armed forces just like it was last time. Only this time, the difference between how those two sides are armed is stark.
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Nothing is ever certain in war. Especially not a civil war, where divided loyalties can mean that members of the same family who lived in the same house could wind up shooting at each other. In the event of another civil war, there would be both individual and unit mutinies and desertions in the armed forces, just like there was in the last one. There’s no way to tell where and how many there would be. Nobody can say with any certainty what the “US Armed Forces” would be on day two, or who they would be loyal to. And I defy you to give us a coherent, rational explanation of “traitors” in this context.
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Are they also the ones responsible for all the “sibling/stepsibling”-themed porn?
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“Folks keep talking about another civil war,”
No they don’t. It’s mainly a few idiots who think somehow a civil war would solve any problem.
@TobinL 's comment is spot on - it would be more like The Troubles. Or even like Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam. Many if not most wouldn’t be uniformed military. Who is the enemy? No one knows.
Also, it wouldn’t be purely US Military vs traitors. I could there be a schism within the military. Not everyone within is going to fight on just one side.
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Seven out of eleven of the Confederate states seceded prior to Lincoln being inaugurated.
The Confederacy fired the first shots of the war.
As late as August of 1862, over a year into the war, Lincoln had this to say:
It never was “The War of Northern Aggression”
It was, instead, “The War of Southern Temper-tantrum”
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plus this isn’t exactly treason. It’s off-color for sure. And all sorts of other things. There’s some grey area between out right treason and just being an asshole idiot.
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and to complete that thought it was the “war of the southern temper tantrum over not letting them have slavery everywhere guaranteed permanently”
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Gotta be careful what you wish for–if this kind of nonsense was punishable by law, then every person who advocated breaking up the country after '04 or '16 to let Republican states go their own way would also be in a spot of trouble.
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One thing that’s always seemed strange to me: Red-staters always complain that both taxes and government spending are too high. But red states consistently get back more in federal spending than they pay in taxes, while in blue states it’s just the reverse.
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I mean, they weren’t wrong that staying in the Union would eventually lead to the end of slavery. Lincoln was just content to let it continue for a few more years (or decades) if that was what it took to avoid armed conflict. But describing “long-term political trends spelling the end of chattel slavery” as “Northern Aggression” was all kinds of stupid.
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As someone wiser than me once pointed out, a second US civil war isn’t going to be a two sides thing.
There is a third side. Unlike the right with their playtime militia, this side has deliberately sent it’s people for military training, not to learn to shoot, but to get training in logistics and supply management and as medics. Not to mention OpSec, which is something highly lacking in many of the militia players.
A quick question for you: from a logistical and supply chain perspective, what is the difference between drugs and guns and food? If the rural areas did try to starve the cities, within weeks there would be a thriving black market in any urban area. A black market run by a heavily armed contingent that legitimately scares the shit out of the militia poseurs, because these guys are the real deal.
This is not a threat or a wish, it’s simply reality borne out by history. Organised crime has never shied away from a profit sector. They will be their own side, though in this case, one of those sides has supplied extra reason for animosity should all-out war break out.
It sure as fuck isn’t going to be the cakewalk that King (IA) and some others of his ilk think it will be.
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