4 ms·

> National Guard drills, deployments, and contingency planning That seems pretty far-fetched. Much more likely (and welcome) would be a sort of "legal coup",

by _bxg1 7y ago

> National Guard drills, deployments, and contingency planning That seems pretty far-fetched. Much more likely (and welcome) would be a sort of "legal coup", where the states that still have functioning governments band together in the task of reshaping the federal government through voting and legislative power. We're certainly approaching a breaking point in the dysfunction of the federal government and its inability to do its job and serve a society; something has got to give. But I still think any kind of civil war scenario remains far, far out of the question.

yingw787 7y ago
Maybe. I mean, I would acknowledge that given post-9/11 deployments of National Guard troops to active combat zones, all you would need to do to mess up any planning would be to deploy those troops separately and randomly far away. Then it wouldn't matter if the governor called up the National Guard in self-defense and if they wanted to obey despite being federalized, because they wouldn't be in-theater. You'd have to raise fresh troops and train / arm them and by that point it'll already be far too late. Not to mention the firepower of existing federal garrisons in-state, complete air supremacy by federal air assets, and existing tensions between urban/rural areas preventing a retreat to the hinterlands. Whether these facts will change remains to be seen, but secession today is impractical. I think the situation we're in right now is pretty much a "legal coup" by a motivated minority. It'll be a slog to get back to representative democracy. I read "The Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb recently, and he mentioned how his home country of Lebanon went from diverse paradise to all-out civil war in six weeks, or 1.5 months. About the same time as "just a flu" to today. For all our sakes, I hope to God I'm wrong and I hope to God you're right.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  At the very most we might see Hong Kong-like civil unrest or something. But I see no path for any states to assemble a standing army under the nose of the federal government. Even if they tried to use the national guard; who's to say it would be more loyal to the state than to the fed?

by _bxg1 7y ago

yingw787 7y ago

Maybe. I mean, I would acknowledge that given post-9/11 deployments of National Guard troops to active combat zones, all you would need to do to mess up any planning would be to deploy those troops separately and randomly far away. Then it wouldn't matter if the governor called up the National Guard in self-defense and if they wanted to obey despite being federalized, because they wouldn't be in-theater. You'd have to raise fresh troops and train / arm them and by that point it'll already be far too late. Not to mention the firepower of existing federal garrisons in-state, complete air supremacy by federal air assets, and existing tensions between urban/rural areas preventing a retreat to the hinterlands. Whether these facts will change remains to be seen, but secession today is impractical. I think the situation we're in right now is pretty much a "legal coup" by a motivated minority. It'll be a slog to get back to representative democracy. I read "The Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb recently, and he mentioned how his home country of Lebanon went from diverse paradise to all-out civil war in six weeks, or 1.5 months. About the same time as "just a flu" to today. For all our sakes, I hope to God I'm wrong and I hope to God you're right.

_bxg1 7y ago
At the very most we might see Hong Kong-like civil unrest or something. But I see no path for any states to assemble a standing army under the nose of the federal government. Even if they tried to use the national guard; who's to say it would be more loyal to the state than to the fed?