# Is the U.S. about to have civil war? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [March 21, 2025, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935 "2025-03-21T22:31:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/161 "2025-03-25T22:40:12Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Because if you actually look at the historical record, left wing regimes are responsible for an order of magnitude more death. “Order of magnitude?” I question that. The numbers killed by tyrants are sometimes fairly firm, but in other cases can only be estimated within a wide range. I’d be more comfortable just saying that left or right, there is potential for mass death regimes. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/162 "2025-03-25T22:49:30Z")
Just to amplify … When considering Reagan, Bush (41/43), Clinton, Obama, Trump, and Biden, who _honestly_ has more in common with the modern-day [**fascists**](https://secularhumanism.org/2003/03/fascism-anyone/)? I think a healthy dose of **[exponential weighting](https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/career-map/sell-side/capital-markets/exponentially-weighted-moving-average-ewma/)** is called for, here. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/163 "2025-03-25T22:55:13Z")
Yeah, but when post after post after post is about a global holocaust caused by the evil white supremacist fascists that only care about cruelty and suffering are going to nuke the whole planet in thread after thread some historical context needs to be provided by somebody. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/164 "2025-03-25T23:10:26Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Because if you actually look at the historical record, left wing regimes are responsible for an order of magnitude more death. Yet for some reason that’s ignored even though the government that Mao established is still running the show in China and still committing genocides. I’m not sure if our sample size is quite big enough. You had three stunningly evil leaders in the 20th century, one on the right, Hitler, and two on the left, Stalin and Pol Pot. I’d put Mao in the middle; I don’t think he actually set out to kill millions of people, but he was evil and/or incompetent enough not to stop it. Japan is an outlier in that, while on the right and quite evil, there is no single leader that really led the evil; it was collective in nature. Stalin and Mao also have to be given credit for doing an incredible job of industrializing feudal-level countries and fighting off almost maximally evil attackers. It’s not an acceptable excuse, but they at least probably believed it themselves. In the 21st century, Putin is on the right, and that dude is pretty damn evil. The right tends to attack the Other. The Left tends to eat itself via purity tests, etc. Even in the US, one can see the latter at work through cancel culture, etc. > [@](#): > > So the idea that political violence is only the tool of one faction is clearly false no matter how much it is repeated ad nauseam. It’s indeed false, but it’s unclear whether the Left can ever be as evil as it was in the 20th century, when the context was much different. In contrast, the right is clearly the more evil and destructive force in the 21st century: basically fucking things up out of sheer lust for power and domination, without even a coherent ideology as an excuse. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/165 "2025-03-25T23:52:09Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Because if you actually look at the historical record, left wing regimes are responsible for an order of magnitude more death. Yet for some reason that’s ignored even though the government that Mao established is still running the show in China and still committing genocides. And is no longer left wing in any meaningful sense. And your statement even if it was true ignores that Communism lasted much, much longer and had far more time to kill. And most important of all, killing and oppression isn’t the point of the Left; just a side effect of stupid utopianism and power lust by dictators. Killing and oppression _is_ the point of the Right. As far as the Right is concerned only three states of existence is permissible for people: being them, being slaves, and corpses. If aliens existed they’d want to kill the aliens too. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2025, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/166 "2025-09-20T13:52:58Z")
:: bump :: Have any of you changed your opinions since I posted this? Please show your work. Myself, I filed a Canadian family sponsorship application for my husband **Tom\_Scud** and am relieved that it’s now at the point where if we decided to get the heck out of Dodge, he’d be eligible to apply for employment authorization. We haven’t decided to pull the trigger on that yet, but I’m definitely not ruling it out and really wish processing times hadn’t gone from 9 months when I first checked, to 15 months when I checked again a couple of days ago. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2025, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/167 "2025-09-20T14:16:30Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Note that the regime in Turkey effectively claims that Ekren is a Kurdish civil warrior — but he is a actually peaceful. That is a portent of what may happen here, especially if MAGA wins in 2028. Like “Trans activists”. Who could be basically anyone to the left of the GOP. Even if they don’t actually do anything about trans issues, and only reference it occasionally. Their base will eat it up since there are plenty of people who thought that the Democratic party was obsessed with trans issues when they barely discussed it and only wanted the status quo. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2025, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/168 "2025-09-20T14:21:35Z")
> [@Eva\_Luna](#): > > Have any of you changed your opinions since I posted this? Please show your work. No, I have not changed my opinion on whether the US is about to have civil war. Because, while I do not think that the opposition is doing _nothing_ like a lot of people claim, words and nonviolent actions are not war. On the other hand, I think we’ve severely dropped down in the “Freedom index” even just in the past 2 weeks. There just isn’t any militant resistance to it. I guess the state compacts for mutual health care guidelines may provide a _template_ for future separatist agreements, but that’s a strained enough hypothetical that I don’t think it portends civil war as of yet. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2025, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/169 "2025-09-20T15:07:48Z")
Rereading the thread is interesting six months later. So far, I’d say “civil unrest” is on point, but I don’t see any signs of civil war or revolution. It mainly seems to be a cowed nation grumbling a bit as they learn to accept their new fascist reality, because what can you do? (Edit: posters here and many other Americans excepted, of course. I was speaking for the aggregate.) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2025, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/170 "2025-09-20T20:04:27Z")
My opinion is unchanged. For there to be a civil war there needs to be at least _two_ sides willing and able to fight, and so far all I see is the fascists relentlessly punching down on everyone else with barely a protest, much less resistance. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/171 "2025-09-21T11:13:48Z")
FWIW I’ve just read a bit about the unrest during the depression and financial crisis of the 1870s. “Street battles in Baltimore and Chicago, a massacre in Pittsburgh, martial law in Scranton\*.” But hardly civil war (not surprising if no-one wanted one so soon after the actual civil war). \*from a discussion of the background to _1984_ in Dorian Lynskey’s _The Ministry of Truth_. ---
**Author:** ![Cmyers1980](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyers1980/32/11814_2.png) [@Cmyers1980](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cmyers1980)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935/172 "2025-09-22T15:01:49Z")
The future of the US will likely look like the Years of Lead. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-u-s-about-to-have-civil-war/1015935.md?page=8)