There are a number of online fantasies on the Internet that go like this: If Blue America and Red America go to war, the blues are mostly urban while the reds are rural, and the rural areas is where the farmland is, and red Americans own more guns, and have more experience with fishing, hunting, etc. while the big cities would soon starve; ergo, Red America will win.
It does seem that from a logistics standpoint urban folks would be at a big disadvantage - a lot more mouths to feed than there is food nearby - but I suspect such fantasies are grossly oversimplified. The blues would have a numerical advantage and also 20% of Democrats own guns. There is a geographical disadvantage for the blues in that while urban liberals reside in cities, those cities are a hundred blue dots that are separated by vast swaths of red countryside “Flyover Country,” such that the blue dots would have a hard time cooperating with each other. But much of the high technology also resides in the cities or suburbs. FWIW, it is worth noting that the majority of retired or active-duty military personnel are Republican.
What else are these civil war fantasizers missing or omitting?
They may be, but I don’t see most of them joining a rebellion against the United States. Things have changed a bit since 1861.
I’m not sure how “the internet” is predicting this civil war starts, but if “red America” starts it, I would expect the military, past and present, to be firmly on the side of the government.
If history can be our guide, any armed insurrection against the federal government is brought down by the federal government. Insurrections since the civil war have been shocking brief, and have all failed, regardless of the military background of the participants, how many guns they own, or how rural their headquarters. The Battle of Blair Mountain failed. The Black Panthers failed. The Branch Davidians failed.
The thing that would keep Red America (hilarious that red no longer means communist) from succeeding is that they cannot cooperate. Any armed insurrection isn’t going to be lead by average Joe corn and soy farmers, it would be lead by crazy extremists. If you look at the crazy extremist community, it is constantly breaking apart into tiny sub-groups and splinter organizations. It must be difficult to construct a movement when every member believes in their tiny libertarian heart that they are the one that should be in charge, and that their conspiracy theory is the only one that’s correct.
That reminded me of an observation reported on PBS’s The Civil War, There was a letter from a confederate general recounting what he had seen when he did go to the confederate congress to get more support for the war efforts, instead of increased concern the general encountered that lack of cooperation and the crazies running the place.
Blue America would have the money and more access to the harbors which bring goods into the country. I suspect Red America would be suffering first from scarcities.
Ports are a great point. Unless the Reds were willing to eat all that corn and soy themselves. The naval blockade of southern ports kept the Confederacy from getting supplies and selling cotton, tobacco, etc. to foreign markets.
It’s impossible to say what a civil war and what blue America would look like. What’s more likely is that you’d have a party that claims authority and legitimacy to rule, and you’d have opposition, some of which would be willing to engage in violence to oppose it. If there’s ever another civil war, it probably won’t resemble anything like what happened in the 19th Century.
But one advantage that comes to mind is that, blue America lives in major cities and media markets, near centers of wealth and power. They can mass organize and mass demonstrate much more easily than, say, suburbanites and people in rural areas. Thus, it might be easier for ‘blue America’ to project people power than it would be for ‘red America’. This is particularly important when you consider that a lot of warfare in modern times is psychological and waged with information and ideas.
“Red America” would fold the second someone actually shot back at them. The real crazies would hole up and have to be bunker-busted into oblivion, but your average Magabot would curl up into a ball and whimper the second their government check didn’t show up. Cut off their internet access and they can’t even organize. What’s Wyoming going to do - invade California? They’d be outnumbered by LA’s third-graders. Outsmarted, too, for that matter.
Wyoming also would have to deal with the fact that 20% of them voted for Clinton in 2016. Bad news for your rebellion if one out of five residents disagrees with it.
I don’t think an all out war would ever break out. No one likes dying or seeing their kids die. It might be possible for tensions to reach a point where skirmishes and hot spots as well as terrorism could be happening at several spots at one time. The west coast would be the most likely place this would start happening with a smaller version of the same breaking out on the east coast. I believe the military would simply go after the violent aggressors even if that meant both sides.
Our rural areas could not keep the technology level needed for modern agriculture they currently have without imported materials and products. And is there anywhere in the United States that has cobalt mines? A good navel blockade would starve flyover country before the coasts starting having problems.
Before Red America can go to war it has to organize into a coherent organization - otherwise all you have are a bunch of disparate terrorist attacks that would be met with increasingly harsh reprisals by local governments as the situation required. And seriously, Red America isn’t going to organize into a coherent organization. And there’s an extremely practical implication that arises from that: no supply lines. It won’t be a situation where Red America has all the farms; the situation will be that individual clusters of Red America farmers are climbing into their pickups to drive to the nearest city and start killing civilians - and having to drive back home when it’s time for dinner. (In the unlikely event that there are any of them left to do so.) This means that the intrusions into Blue America aren’t going to be very deep or long-lasting.
AIUI, most of these fantasies aren’t about “civilians vs. government;” that’s somewhat different than “red vs. blue.” They’re purely usually Red vs. Blue; in which case the military isn’t siding with the government, but rather, about 65% of military joins the reds and 35% joins the blues, since it’s all about political affiliation.
I’d love to see a cite from either one of you on this. Here’s what I see (from the NYT 2016 exit polls): HRC won voters making less than $50k. DJT won every income category making $50k+.
But many blue cities have no access to the ocean whatsoever (Denver, for instance.) They would run out of food and it would be the blues who have to go out into the countryside for food, not vice versa.
