In reality, everyone would be starved out. Those flyover heartlands are 99% corn, wheat, and soybeans. Mostly grown for livestock. They aren’t cornucopias of plenty, or family farms which produce a wide variety of foods, they are monocrop grain factories. The idea that the farmlands are self-sufficient and cities aren’t is total bullshit. Unless you want to eat field corn.
These farm-factories are totally reliant on fossil fuels, roads, power lines, water delivery, complex high tech, and skilled mechanics. It would be quite possible to disable any one of these and the crops would die in the fields.
Sure, cities would be worse off sooner, but not much sooner. Those hearty independent folk of the heartland are just as dependent on supermarkets as anyone else.
Of all the scary scenarios possible, this is the most likely. Not a full-scale war, with organized regiments wearing clearly identified uniforms in different colors.
I’m imagining it starting maybe a year from now, after a serious shock occurs. (Maybe a Kent State type of event. )
A day of protest will be declared, with Democratic party rallies held simultaneously in several cities, The right will show up on the other side of the street to counter-protest. There will be a few Kyle Rittenhouse style events, and shots fired, possibly from both sides.
The news and social media will magnify things way out of proportion. People will start carrying their legally-licensed guns
everywhere. Mostly right-wingers but plenty of left-wingers too, With everybody saying-- and honestly believing-- that they have to be armed for self-defense.
A few right-wing militias then go crazy, and openly attack obvious left-wing locations (abortion clinics, gay bars, vegetarian restaurants.). Then some less-organized but well armed people defend themselves… and shoot a few of the gun-carrying customers in a Walmart parking lot who are walking towards the adjacent locatons that got attacked the day before.
Quoted for truth. “The heartland” is just as dependent upon industrialized agriculture as cities are, and we’ve gotten so far from sustainable farming and fat on hydrocarbon dependent yields of commodity crops that we could not hope to sustain more than a small fraction of the population through pre-Industrial farming. “A world made by hand” is a much smaller (and more parochial) world with real limits to population.
I’ve seen Elon Musk do math. Despite his hype-promoted genius myth he’s really not very good at it.
A lot more like the French Revolution, than the North Vs. South, Blue Vs. Gray geographical lines we had in the 1860s. Different factions will rise and fall depending on their recent achievements or failures, and on popular whims and public sentiment.
As to how it all shakes out and who will be on top at the end? It’s a crapshoot. I guarantee Danton and Lafayette weren’t planning on or expecting Emperor Napoleon I when getting their little shindig started in 1789.
I suspect it will be more like a national riot with small groups stopping traffic to collect money and guns. And the occupation of public land to establish settlements and colonias.
I think there are different possibilities, depending on what is meant by “civil war”.
Understand that the first American Civil War had certain political realities that framed the conflict. Notably, there were two contiguous regions with separate economic factors and political bodies. The States formed up on polotical lines, and then the conflict arose between two geographic regions.
The role of the States as framing seccession and forming their own collective government split the existing military.
And even then, it wasn’t nearly as clean as that makes it sound. “Brothers fighting brothers” is a meme for a reason.
The current American political situation is much different. As you say, State governments may seem unified, but in fact the States themselves do not have the same economic and social factors to be anywhere near unified. Like you say, lots of intermingled people of each worldview.
This means that the states are unlikely to form largely cohesive groups. And the areas for each population will not be contiguous, but splotchy and even purple within neighborhoods. So the States themselves would be facing internal conflict.
The military would likely fracture, with factions going to each side. Either that, or collectively sit it out.
The fighting is much more likely to be small bands of locals fighting it out, or local regions purging the minority in the area.
Alternately we could just slide into tyrannical despotism with militias and local groups taking advantage of the chaos to enact terror and oppression of their own.
Either Weimar Germany or the Yugoslavian civil war. Some variant of the rise of the Soviet Union.
This is what I expect. A collection of historical states, but which were politically integrated for quite some time, such that there was significant intermixing of the traditional cultures. Then the traditional cultures went to war with each other. So you had Groups of X people in a Y-person state warring with each other, while the Groups of Y people in the X-person state were warring with each other, and the X-state and Y-state were also warring with each other. Just a mass of little battles making up one larger mess of a war.
I mean, look at the last civil war in the USA. There was irregular violence but what decided the war? Real armies. Grant taking Vicksburg. The US Navy’s blockade.
I think the only way blue state has a chance is if it is part of a larger fight against MAGA,for example as part of a broader war between NATO on one side and Russia/US on the other. In that scenario, parts of blue state America could possibly fight as a fifth column.
Probably a lot of domestic terrorism. If there was a final split people would have to move if where they lived was no longer agreeable. Given the nature I think it would be that, part of what’s currently the US would become White Christian Nationalist US and the remainder would be something(s) else.
Exactly. And the gap in combat power between the military and irregular forces has only gotten much larger since then.
Also, comparisons between conflicts like Afghanistan and Vietnam with such a civil conflict miss two key points. The first being that the tactic of “wear down the military until they get tired of it and go home” won’t work because they are home. And the second is that those conflicts weren’t being fought by fascists who were willing to end the conflct by simply outright exterminating the other side; this one would be.
During Reconstruction they were home, and the wear down strategy worked too.
If they are really going to do death camps then I would recommend a change of tactics by the opposition. Then you are arming yourself and fleeing or taking to the hills. It’s a large country to try and militarily occupy permanently.
One thing that nobody mentioned is that if white militias attacked big cities, it would quickly turn into a race war. Whites aren’t the only group in the country to have guns.
