What advantages would blue America have in a civil war?

Great Debates
221

I find it implausible that it would win enough approval for the Californian government to do anything about it.

I’m having some difficulty getting numbers later than early 2018, but I gather that support for it has been dropping and that the ‘Yes California’ organization had, in response to Trump’s depredations, grown to 44,000 members. I think California has soccer teams larger than that.

More to the point, when a country attempts a secession there are a few different steps to be taken, and I don’t think the California has the stones to carry out the step ‘seize the federal military bases within its borders and launch an attack’. I think that even if it got as far as the “submit a formal secession request to the US Government” step, when Congress laughed at it and told it to shut up I think California would slink away with its tail between its legs. Jumping from “please let us leave” to “send the national guard to arrest my pudgy, suit-wearing butt for treason” is a pretty big step for any politician to take.

ETA: Note that I’m saying that Congress slaps them down, not Trump. Trump can make any damn noise he likes, but Congress is where secessions die.

The hard part isn’t getting the sides killing one another - it’s getting it to happen so quickly and widespread that the cops don’t roll in and arrest the entire conflict. In my opinion terrorist actions do not a war make, and I don’t think that the actual warmongers have the numbers or cohesion to do more than that.

222

It won’t be outlawed so much as inevitably become unprofitable. If you can whip up steaks in labs just using some microbes and basic ingredients indistinguishable from meat sourced from animals, why would you bother with the costs of care and feeding of live animals, not to mention the slaughterhouses and processing and all the employees involved.

Or it’ll become a niche market, like fugu.

It scares me how people will get up in arms over shit like this but stay silent on important local and world issues.

223

Or even if it is not indistinguishable, but good enough. I don’t care all that much if my cheeseburgers or pot roasts change very slightly in texture or consistency, they do that right now based on season and quality that I buy.

I do see the niche market being a thing, though, as 3 star restaurants and other caterers to the wealthy will still have a demand for “real” beef.

How many people were killed in Alabama the other day due to storms that will only become more common due to climate change?

But, but, but, I want my cheeseberder!!

224

To be brutally honest, I do not believe for a second it will be one-sided. There will be multiple sides; both sides will definitely splinter in time and start fighting each other before the mess is all done.
But in keeping with the thread, in a scenario of strictly Red V Blue, the reds will probably win at first due to sheer numbers, majority support from the army, and sheer armory. However, the Dems are usually younger, less employed (and therefore more ready to take lifechanging risks like joining militias), and more communicative, and by extension, organized. In short, it may be a stalemate. If things don’t splinter like I said in the previous paragraph.

225

Yes. And ?

I mean, much like you (ISTM ?) I’m entirely unmoved by emotional vegan appeals - even when it comes to battery farming. It’s awful and I don’t wanna look at it… but then again, bacon. Just don’t tell me how y’all got it.

OTOH the more factual arguments (e.g. that growing animals to eat is wasteful and contributes to climate change) seem hard to dispute. And while I’ll fry my bacon as long as they’ll let me because le gras c’est la vie, ultimately it’s kind of the same deal as driving a Hummer (or owning an M16 in the US) : I might have fun with it and all ; but when you process the column A, column B evaluation it’d probably be better if I weren’t allowed to.
So while I, along with you, dislike the prospect of tactical moral revilement and will probably die an angry bacon-eating old man who’ll rant at all them self-righteous whatsevenafterMillenials and their stupid screeds, the truth is they’ll probably be right to treat me like I’m an asshole. Because meat eating really DOES come down to personal preference and indulgence, and it DOES involve some amount of tacit cruelty.

226

I don’t play these games, since all states are purple. An American Civil War divided along political party lines would be fought house-to-house in the suburbs, not on fronts along state boundaries.

227

I don’t know. I can’t imagine the complacent suburbanite murdering their neighbors over any cause more lofty than allowable paint colors, or grass height. And once Sunny Meadows Court killed all the Four Inch Grass Front, I don’t see them marching down to Windy Stream Avenue to aid the Muted Tones Brigade.

228

Same could be said for the actual civil war. With many states having had internal civil wars and many states supplying troops to both sides and at least one (probably more) having two governments.

Lincoln not recognizing the Confederates as a nation and subsequently allowing federal army posts to remain then calling for troops to defend those posts when they were being forced to leave caused the secession of the majority of the states which did secede.

So if you had a handful of states strongly to one side that seceded and the national guards of other states called to defend federal installations in those states you could easily kick off something that went from a big argument among neighbors throughout the nation to a war divided along state borders.

One or two major issues can turn into something entirely different.

Abortion and gun control turns into " we’re our own country now, we can’t stand for foreign occupation" or “well, I’m not going to fight against Wyoming but I’ll be damned if I let them new Yorkers run things here, what do they know”

Suddenly it’s territorial rather than being all about party views.

Though if that war is any indication, I think you would need issues that went beyond moral bounds to something that could threaten livelihood in a major way.

229

You misspelled slavery.

230

Yeah, I think this is one of the main advantages blue american would have. Blue America would be less likely to support an action by the far-left, so you couldn’t really call such an action “blue vs red” since the majority of democrats would probably oppose it. Whereas even if Republicans did not all cheer on such a rebellion from the wingnuts on their side, enough might that it would be fair to call it “blue vs red”. And if such an action were swift, it might succeed, but if it were drawn-out, most of the police and the Guard would side against the aggressors.

231

In today’s world the industries that matter most are not manufacturing so much as the tech and information industries and those are overwhelmingly staffed and run by those with D leanings and located in Blue regions.

This thread reminds me of a who would win, a velicoraptor or a Saber-tooth tiger, but a modern Civil War would be fought with those weapons more than with bullets. Nerds would prevail.

232

So engineers and such are 100% left? Those folks who work at all the defense industries and power plants are all left wing? You think Facebook and Twitter employees defeat Lockheed Martin when they can’t keep out a few Russian trolls?

And look at a political map. See the mixture of red and blue districts? What sort of physical security do the so-called blue corporations and their residential areas have? It wouldn’t be a war of battle lines. It would be like Syria. But worse. It’s actually a very horrific scenario to contemplate.

233

The reason you think manufacturing doesn’t matter as much as silicon valley tech is because you have been spoiled by living in a world where the basics of life can be taken for granted, and you don’t have to think much about where it comes from.

But in fact, the average city has about two weeks of food available to the population. Imagine that - a city of a million people, and every two weeks enough food is transported in to feed everyone. Then there’s the gas, and the energy, and the constant supplies of material to maintain the infrastructure.

Shut down Apple, and people lose their iPhones. Shut down Proctor and Gamble or cut off the rail lines carrying food and other goods from the rural red areas into the big blue cities, and people go hungry and stuff starts breaking down pretty quickly. Red America makes most of the food that blue America consumes. If they decide not to provide it any more, losing your iphone will be the last of your problems.

234

One other thing - the fastest way to get to the kind of breakdown between red and blue areas is to continue with the left’s project of attempting to turn America into a pure democracy devoid of things like the electoral college. If you manage to make America a pure democracy where only the popular votes count, America will be run by the big coastal cities and other large cities. Politicians won’t even bother campaigning in rural areas, and only the interests of the city dwellers will matter.

I can’t think of a faster way to break up a country short of a coup. The alienation that people in the flyover states would feel under that kind of government would be an order of magnitude greater than it is now. They would feel essentially disenfranchised.

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As opposed to the actual disenfranchisement curently experienced by the more populated areas of the country?

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IIRC, some cities, such as Phoenix, are essentially large “islands” that exist only artificially - they are on constant 24/7 life support in an otherwise extremely inhospitable environment - Arizona surroundings that offer little direct freshwater or food in the nearby vicinity. Starve Phoenix of electricity, food, and water for just a few days and there would be already the risk of imminent deaths running into the tens of thousands. Los Angeles was/is also something like that, except that it at least has direct access to the ocean (but even then, that’s not drinkable).

237

Funny enough I did not state 100%.

But most tech leaders are Democrats (albeit ones that simultaneously believe in wealth redistribution and less regulation), and their employees more so.

As to what sort of battle lines there would be - if there was the sort of no battle lines melee then pretty much everyone dies pretty fast. Transportation of food fizzles, healthcare halts, sewage treatment so on all cease … Choose your dystopian fantasy but that one goes fast into mutually assured destruction, so boring.

I’ll play with the mostly state based battle lines dystopic vision. And in that one the tech that even agriculture depends on is controlled by companies mostly located in the Blue States of America, which Sam Stone also happens to produce lots of the country’s food, 13% of American agricultural production in CA alone.

It is very hard to overestimate how reliant all industries are today on current technologies controlled mostly from solidly Blue areas.

In the historic Civil War a physical blockade preventing trade of cotton hamstrung the South fiscally. A Blue Red War would have a blockade executed by cyber methods.

238

How do the “blue” tech companies that make software compete with the manufacturing companies that make hardware, heavy equipment, and ammunition? How do the blue cities drink when the water and power gets cut? Look at the power distribution of the country. Look at where the electricity is generated and how it gets to the cities. Unless those power lines are protected from being cut the cities and these so-called tech companies will be running on batteries and solar panels.

How do the blue cities stay populated when sanitation is destroyed and disease spreads? Where do the large cities in the high tech areas get their drinking water?

In a nasty fight siege warfare, including biological, is a much more real threat than Facebook programmers writing some code that magically shuts down the interstates and kills all the corn and chickens.

High tech is good and all. But as irregular warfare in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan demonstrates high tech is not sufficient to defeat a persistent and concealed force. And unlike fighting Afghan irregulars, blue vs red has tech and number parity. So it comes down to depth of terrain and population density.

239

Again, an irregular warfare dystopic vision is sort of boring as it goes quickly into millions dead from disease and starvation across all regions. And of course a Civil war would not start off like that. There are paths to Civil Wars.

A way to actually play the game would be to imagine how such an event occurs, what the path would be, and thus how it looks as it occurs.

Let’s go with Sam Stone’s scenario maybe. The electoral college is eliminated and rural voters lose their disproportionate power relative to their numbers, the Federal government actually represents the will of the majority of the voters and is controlled primarily by them (meaning those who live in greater metropolitan areas), and rural regions feel alienated and disenfranchised.

Now let’s get from that rural/Red resentment to Civil War.

Is it Red states attempting to secede? Or rural counties all deciding to secede into a Confederacy that does not pay Federal taxes (and receives no Federal services)?

Is it militias from farms engaging in a terrorist and insurgency campaign on cities and/or on the Federal government?

Describe the path to a Civil War and we can figure out what it would look like and who would lose less badly.

You want to go the other way, fine. The West Coast states, several Northerly East coast states, and multiple counties across the country all get tired of having to submit to rule by a minority of the country’s population, and vote to form a new confederation and to secede. They refuse to pay Federal taxes instead use the same tax structure to self-fund for the services they want and will only allow products through their ports and airports and train stations to the rest of the country with high fees. Or do it stages - first CA and NY as a team then other states and metropolitan areas join in.

Proceed from there with a path to to Civil War and again we can discuss who loses less badly.

You don’t start a Civil War as a Battle Royale, Fortnite style.

The idiots of the Right, like Steve King, who are trolling with a Hrrr hrr the Reds have more bullets must be imaging a militias insurgency/terrorist campaign against a Federal government that they feel has stolen their country and urging for various Red states to secede.

In the insurgency case the Feds are against them and insurgent/terrorist campaigns against cities and/or Washington would be met with greater force than all the gun collectors together have.

If it is Texas and multiple other Red saying we want then either the rest of the country agrees to let them or the battle is fought economically at first.

Likewise if there was a successful Calexit vote.

And in an economic battle the Blue states are in general better positioned to do less poorly.

240

FWIW a less improbable future dystopic vision than Red/Blue is fresh water scarcity and coastal flooding with natural disaster refugees leading to interstate (and interconglomerate) conflicts.