As I’ve read it, recent genocide in other countries (Rwanda, Cambodia, et al) bubbled over rather quickly. Sure, it didn’t actually happen overnight; Rwanda’s tribes had feuded in the past, and Cambodian politics had been heading towards communism for a while.
But still, in both cases a 20-year period of relative calm ended abruptly with disastrous results. Perhaps a generation of young adults decided to enact their parents’ ideologies?
Either way, what I wonder isn’t so much WHY are they crazy, because it seems like history is full of anger and strife; my question is, why aren’t we, in the U.S., crazier?
What keeps us from dividing into tribes and lashing out with violence on a large scale?
Is it because our living conditions are dissimilar from Rwanda’s and Cambodia’s? Would it change if our economy went truly to crap?
Is it because we have safety valves to let off steam, particularly by being sports fans?
Is it because we have a good sense of humor? I’m serious about that - remember after 9/11, that bogus photo of the guy on top of the WTC w/the plane heading straight at him? And within days, he’d been photoshopped onto the Hindenberg? Do other countries share humor like we do? Does that help keep us sane?
I wasn’t going to count our Government, because it’s zigged and zagged to reflect current fears and fashion. Plus, how people choose to live isn’t entirely dictated by laws. Or would you argue that it is?
I don’t know anything about that. But I can say I think it’d be pretty damn hard to commit genocide against an armed population. I don’t know who’s committing the genocide here in this scenario, but if they try to fuck with cities and towns where even just one out of every three households has a rifle or a shotgun, I think they’ll find themselves in a world of trouble. And if they’ve got artillery or other ordnance - tanks or what have you - well, it’s not too hard to build an IED.
If, as mentioned in the OP, American society split “into tribes” and started “lashing out with violence on a large scale” wouldn’t being armed just make things all the more bloodthirsty? Apologies if you were being ironic…
Well, I’m quite sure it’s not the only reason, as less-armed countries don’t have rampaging mobs in the Rwanda/Cambodia scale either, but in the words of a German coworker I had in Switzerland, “the reason these guys are so polite is that they know their idiot neighbor has an automatic weapon in his closet.”
Look at all the millions of people who were murdered by their own governments in the 20th century. Then tell me that it’s paranoid to worry about that.
Make things all the more bloodthirsty? What do you mean by that? No, I wasn’t being ironic. If there was a genocide against a group of people in America, there are two options:
That group is armed, and tries to fight back.
That group is unarmed, and is slaughtered wholesale.
It never occurred to me that the NRA might be a kind of check-valve. But perhaps it is. Very interesting.
I always kind of assumed that our checks-and-balances government was pretty significant in keeping people from going out of control. Maybe the other loci of power (unions, gangs, the Mob, the NRA) help, too.
One never knows what one will hear back from a thread on here.
The NRA is not the only representative of private gun ownership in America.
In any case, if there was a full-scale revolution, genocide, civil war, whatever, there would be more to it than just guns. There would also be the underground creation of ordnance (bombs, rockets, artillery, IEDs) and probably people building armored trucks, “technicals” (4x4s with mounted machine guns) and possibly even tanks.
Any group of people can become very resourceful if they are forced to do it. This country has a lot of military veterans who still know how to do whatever it is they did when they were in the military, and do it well. People could get organized and fight back. If a few Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were able to hold out against the Nazis with a few dozen smuggled arms and Molotov cocktails, think of what a town where every citizen has a rifle could do. An American city would not be easy prey for anyone bent on genocide.
I think you mistyped option 1. Here’s what you meant to type:
That group is armed, and tries to fight back, but fails miserably, as fighting a regular army, armed with Challenger Two tanks, Apache helicopters and an actual knowledge of tactics, with peashooters is a fool’s errand. The government then kills ten innocents for every soldier killed by insurgents.
If the government wants to kill innocent civilians THEY’RE GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY.
You’re telling me that people should just accept genocide because if they tried to fight it, they could lose and then innocent people would be killed as a result - as opposed to them just laying back and letting themselves be annihilated?
I’m sorry, but that’s fucked.
Mods, put this in Great Debates, because that’s what it is.
No, I’m saying attempting to fight back effectively is pretty much impossible. The Holocaust wasn’t stopped by Jewish insurgents. In effect, the only real response, in the face of genocide, is to remove yourself and your family from the country as quickly as possible.
Bullshit they can’t fight back. IEDs can stop tanks. (They’re doing it right now, in Iraq.) An RPG can stop a helicopter. Guerrillas can sabotage enemy equipment. All kinds of traps and ambushes can be created.
Why did we have to pull out of Vietnam, again?
If the government wants to drop nuclear bombs on its own people, then yeah, they’re fucked. Barring a scorched-earth tactic like that, I think an insurgent force can put up a pretty effective fight against a professional military.
As to fessie’s post above - same deal. Genocide against your neighbors is harder to pull off if your neighbors can fight back.
Maybe we just get it out of our systems on a regular basis. We have a homicide rate that’s four times the world average. We don’t let the violence accumulate and then explode in a single wave.
You pulled out of Vietnam because of political pressure within the US, that’s my understanding, anyway. The conditions that forced you to pull out of Vietnam aren’t likely to be found in a nation where genocide is likely to occur, IMO. Any government even contemplating mass murder isn’t likely to be swayed by groups of hippies protesting.
Yes, like the insurgents in the Nazi-occupied territories did.
