I’m speaking mostly to my fellow Americans, although input from the Dope’s durty furriners is welcome as well.
The more American history I live through, the more Appomattox looks like a temporary ceasefire.
We have long taken the luxury of living in a mostly-peaceful country for granted. I want to make it clear that I am NOT excited about the possibility of partisan hostilities breaking out in the United States. I don’t want it to happen, and I would be happiest if we could all just get along.
But seriously, how does this thing end? A month or so ago, the republican candidate for President stopped about one millimeter short of calling for his opponent’s assassination. The governor of Kentucky recently suggested that violent revolution might be the only way to “reclaim” the country in the event of a Clinton victory in November (reclaim it from whom was not made explicit in his remarks).
There are two clearly-defined sides, and a small-but-growing number of people who are just not gonna be happy until the USA is an actual, non-metaphorical war-zone. All that’s left is for the number of “militants” to reach a critical mass, and we’re Syria. Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Russia in 1917.
I’m not just talking about this election either. It goes beyond the outcome of one political contest. It’s not even about policy or “issues” anymore. Issues can be resolved by people who are willing to resolve them. This is more like a cultural or ethno-cultural conflict, where some people just can’t stand the fact that people on the other side exist.
They’re not gonna change their minds, folks. And we’re not gonna change ours.
So how can we possibly get out of this alive? How long can this stalemate last, and what happens if/when it falls apart?
We aren’t any where near at those critical levels. What we have right now is squeaky wheels drowning out everything and driving our two political parties to gridlock. The bluster of the left and right, however, don’t make for an actual civil war nor will it lead to Syria or the troubles or the Russian revolution.
We’ve gone generations with stalemates and gridlock. We are no where near falling apart. There also isn’t a huge dividing issue such as slavery that tore the union apart last time. Myself, I think what will eventually happen is the current ridiculous conservative antics are going to make being labeled a ‘conservative’ the equivalent of being a ‘liberal’ was in the 80’s and 90’s, and there will be a shift in the Republican party similar to the shift that happened in the Democratic party during that time period…a shift away from the more radical and nutty parts of the party and towards the center, or at least towards something more sane. The Dems will, in a similar fashion to the 'Pubs during that time, think they have ‘won’, and their already resurgent nutball faction will become more hard core and push the party towards their agenda. This will peak at some point and then the cycle will repeat…we will rinse and then go through the whole thing again. During that time, the country will just keep chugging along, with things getting better overall by small degrees and something new for us to bitch about or decry coming up again and again. Race will always be a perennial favorite since we just can’t seem to deal with it. But there won’t be a civil war because there simply isn’t any large dividing issue that people are willing to fight over on that scale.
I don’t know, but I suspect we’re a long LONG ways off from ending up like Syria.
However, there’s been a fair bit of low(ish)-level political violence on and off for years. The Weather Underground, Timothy McVeigh, the recent spate of black police shooters, etc. I don’t see that getting much better, and maybe a bit worse, but we’re talking about a few dozen or hundred people in a country of hundreds of millions that have actually been willing to shoot / bomb someone over political differences over the last few decades.
If it ever did come to a full-blown civil war, it’d probably be the most interesting one the world has ever seen: a country with as many guns as people, vehicles galore, plenty of civilian-owned drones, garage machinists, chemical and electrical engineers making IEDs, etc.
I wish I shared your optimism. Racism, LGBT rights, 1% vs 99%–I think the potential for violence, if not full blown revolution, is there. We’ve already seen potential flashpoints that could have spread and ignited like wildfire…the riots in Ferguson, MO, the ranchers out west wherever they were, the current barely reported pipeline protests, another questionable police shooting…there are lots of very angry people out there.
They say the Chinese have a curse that goes something like “May you live in interesting times”. We do. Og help us all.
We don’t. Seriously…even a cursory look at history will tell you that we really don’t. Almost all our current problems are retreads of problems we’ve had in the past…and they were a lot worse in the past. Look at the 60’s for ogs sake…we are not even the 60’s lite at this point, just a pale shadow of them.
Sure, there might be some violence. We have idiots who are setting off pipe bombs and using pressure cookers in unintended ways, and we have crazy folks and loonies out there with access to more than a gun per person. But looked at in the broad scheme of things this is all small potatoes, though you wouldn’t know it looking at how the media focuses on stuff and gets folks riled up. We are nowhere near the level of division we were during the run-up to the civil war…again, even a cursory look at history shows that the US has been MUCH more violent and volatile than it is today. Heck, the turn of the 19th to the 20th century was more turbulent and we didn’t have civil war then.
One thing to remember is that people talk big on the Internet, and especially in their chosen on-line echo chambers, but that stuff pretty much stays there; out in the real world, people are still civil, and you can wear a Trump or Hillary t-shirt around anywhere without fear of reprisal or retribution. Maybe someone might mouth off to you about your sartorial resplendence, or lack thereof, but I suspect it would go uncommented 99.9% of the time.
And to a large degree, the more blowhard Republican politicians are taking pages from the books of Baghdad Bob, Kim Jong Un and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and saying hyperbolic bullshit because it plays well to the rubes, not because it’s true or because they actually believe it. Or maybe Bevin’s just that stupid… I can’t tell.
Because 99% of the people talking revolution are pussies. Doesn’t matter what side they are on. As long as the majority are fed, sheltered and entertained, the chances of an uprising are virtually nil.
Jack Kennedy, Malcolm X, MLK Jr., Bobby Kennedy … these fellas were actually assassinated … dead on arrival … race riots, anti-war riots … VP Agnew calling for the National Guard to open fire on student protestors …
There won’t be a civil war in the USA until all the pokemon are found. The general standard of living is way too high here … no one is going to risk their 300 channels of TV for something as silly as less National Parks or cheaper smart phones.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, and it took years to implement. The Vietnam War had 10x the casualties as the Iraq war, and there was a draft. Compare the 1968 Democratic Convention to either of the ones we had this year. Students taking over university buildings left and right. Cities on fire. Women burning their bras, kids burning their draft cards. Some of us burning something else… It was a crazy, horrible time, but it didn’t come close to “a shooting war, as in The Civil War”.
Well, not internally, but that decade (1962 in particular) is also the closest the U.S. ever got to an actual shooting war likely to end its existence as a nation.
Most of you seem to be saying that there just aren’t enough people with a militant mindset to get any real civil unrest going. That may be true.
So what’s the threshold? How many people have to be convinced their way of life is under siege before that fuse gets lit?
Because there are at least some of those people around now, right? Does anybody dispute that?
And like I said, these people are not going to stop until they’ve convinced enough people of their worldview to turn life in America into their favorite first-person-shooter video game. What would it take for them to succeed at this? Is it really so hard to imagine?
I, for one, wish people were called to account more often for their “big talk” on the internet or in their echo chambers. I always want to say “Okay, America is under attack from [Obama, immigrants, whatever]? Is that your honest opinion? Then what the hell are you doing here? Why aren’t you on the barricades right now? Do you have a gun? If not, why don’t you get one and put your goddamned money where your mouth is? Do you not care about America? Are you a coward? Or are you, as I suspect, just full of shit? You don’t really believe the violent rhetoric you’re spewing, do you? Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Problem with that is, somebody could go “Yeah, he’s right! I should go out and start shooting some people!”
Fine, let’s embrace a Turner Diaries scenario. If they somehow manage to get all (or at least most) of law enforcement on their side and all (or at least most) of the military on their side… yes, things will get very nasty.
But until then, any armed insurrection will be put down by those law enforcement types and (if need be) those military types, and they’re better trained, funded and organized than any number of loudmouthed malcontent sovereign/freemen/militia wannabes.
