I’m actually not worried about my President being elected. One of the reasons he won in 2016 is that he was an outsider businessman. People were ready for a change they figured “What can it hurt?”. Now that they’ve seen how that worked out they won’t be fooled again.
As for the 2nd Civil War… I guess I’d better read the article.
Okay, read the article. With the death of RGB and this hypocritical rush to fill her seat I’d think scenario #1 is plausible.
Damn that was some terrifying reading!
I’m not one to be swayed by the illusion that the US is some outlier in history that will last forever, but we also are way too quick to pretend that thing we’re seeing have no precedent. We’ve danced on this cliff edge before. I’ve had Kent State on the brain, but I think it is a reminder that we still have a few more clicks on the ratchet before war is inevitable. After the shooting, NYC lowered their flags to half mast in honor of the dead students and there was an anti-war/funeral march. A group of construction workers attacked the marchers, and bystanders who fit the look while police stood by and did nothing. The workers tried to storm city hall to get the flags returned to full mast. The flags were raised to prevent the storming. The head of the building trades council, Peter Brennan served as their spokesman in a series of continuing rallies, eventually being invited to the Nixon White House and later appointed labor secretary. The late 60s and early 70s have huge numbers of examples of all of the things you listed.
Also, let no one pretend for a goddamn second that the collapse of our democratic republic is somehow just a theoretical exercise among panic mongers. This is something being planned in broad daylight right in front our faces:
ETA:
Our situation has no precedent. We have never had an executive with less knowledge of how government works, or less concern for the institutions of government continuing to function if they are not serving his personal interests. When that is combined with a complicit Senate and a feckless Court, we are absolutely in uncharted waters here.
I do not agree that Trump fooled any meaningful number of people. He’s not a mystery–he’s exactly as he appears, and he gave his base pretty much what they wanted: punishing those they hate. We can tell ourselves that a lot of his voters are going against their interests, but I think that requires us to impose what we think those voters’ interests should be, as opposed to the interests they actually prioritize. And Trump has fulfilled those interests.
Before we all panic, I don’t see what qualifications this guy has to be a credible speculator on this. Not a historian, not a political scientist… he… helped re-release an old board game that was someone else’s design to begin with?
The headline should read “Some Guy talks about stuff that everyone else has opinions on too”.
There are all kinds of unprecedented aspects to the current political situation.
I could go on but the point is “we’ve been here before” is not really accurate.
Maybe in the 19th century @Brainspore.
Jim Crow ruled!
I had no idea sleeping on the back of the bus was racist. That’s the most comfortable seat on a Greyhound in 1965.
I couldn’t get off though. Only Nana.
I think there is a lot unprecedented in the president, but not as much in our broader social situation. Given his reelection I think it is probable that we would be in that unprecedented territory pretty quickly. But even in your list of we’ve never had, point 2 also applied to Andrew Johnson who called for the hanging of Wendell Phillips from the podium at a speaking engagement in Cleveland, even if the speaking tour is better remember for the threats against Congress.
Not convinced we can separate the two since the cultish devotion of this President’s supporters is a pretty novel situation in itself.
Maybe, but my point was more that there is still time to step back from the brink. We’ve had moments where it looked like we were very close to civil war, but managed to step back to a more stable state.
I was just in New Hampshire and it’s like MAGA Xmas up there. trump billboards, painted barn sides, banners, flags are everywhere, even on the lakes.
Not so far away from you.
Sad. Maybe a wall along the Merrimack and up the coast around Portland.
Maine?
At one of those times, we fell off it.
I agree that war is not inevitable, but history is extremely clear that it is plausible, and a realistic fear. Annoyingly, as long as something is avoidable people tend not to worry about it, when not worrying is one of the things that makes it inevitable.
I don’t have an answer to “How many times in our 250 year history has the country been as divided as it was at the time of Kent State?” but the answer is necessarily “At least two, and one of those times we had a civil war.” Well, actually, the Revolutionary War was also a civil war in some sense, so in 400 years we’ve been that divided at least 3 times and had 2 wars as a result.
I would add that the years leading up to Kent State, despite all the unrest, were in many ways a time of hope and progress. We’d just landed on the moon. The Warren Court era just ended, a period where one of our traditionally most conservative institutions had been really providing (to some extent) legal solutions to important social problems within our political system. It was an era where cross-party legislative efforts were common, because the parties still meant different things in the North and South and were overall less polarized. None of that is true today.
Yeah, we’re already seeing the overlap of Trump-supporting “militias,” local police and federal law enforcement inserted into situations, all working in parallel. Not just resulting in killings, but also e.g. Trump supporters attacking democracy itself by illegally blocking people from voting (as happened recently) with no repercussions. Then there’s a next step - Trump or his flunkies explicitly sending out agents to publicly kill or “disappear” people for political reasons. (Hell, Trump may feel emboldened/desperate enough to do this before the end of the year. But we can count on it happening if he gets to stay in power.)
And that is why I’m taking material steps to prepare for it, but one of those steps is reminding people that there is still a path back. The best way to come out ahead in a civil war is to avoid it. Every time we talk about the possibility as inevitable we apply a little more pressure to the system. An actual hot civil war in a nuclear power is probably something to be avoided and we can use our rhetoric as one of the tools to steer clear.
I agree that a full-blown Civil War is not inevitable, but it’s not exactly a crazy scenario either.
When we’ve stepped back from the brink in the past it was largely because we had leaders who were actually trying to avoid such a conflict instead of actively working to make it happen.
~160 years back: war of Southern treason
Upcoming: war of Republican treason
Note the constitutional definition of treason.
BTW I live in a rural red county but signs for Donny Boy are rare. I guess our rednecks aren’t spirited.
I visually process a civil war like it’s a fire, and the build up to civil war like a fuel load.
The way I see it, we’ve got roughly 30% of the country who wants to fight because they’re unhappy that black people might be treated like people… and 70% of the country that basically wants to do the right thing. With <1% orchestrating the puppet theater that makes it look like a 50/50 split. Could this become a real war?
The stuff that makes someone powerful has little to do with weilding a gun. Powerful people know how to communicate and coordinate their actions with other powerful people. I see the 30% as a drag on our real economy, coasting along on the accomplishments of people more capable.
Either the 70% get tired of letting the 30% bully us, or the 99% get tired of fucking with the numbers, either way, I don’t see these punks getting what they want out of a civil war.
