7 ms·

And then what? People who have a mental model where if, God forbid, things come to that point, they will just come to an underpants-gnome like step that settles

by gfodor 6y ago

And then what? People who have a mental model where if, God forbid, things come to that point, they will just come to an underpants-gnome like step that settles the issue seem ignorant of history. What you illustrate will just be a point of further escalation, one of a long chain that will lead to a real shooting war, unless one side turns away from the abyss on their own volition, not because the other side "nuked them" via a legal case.

pfdietz 6y ago
What happens then is that the full power of government would be in the hands of the democrats, likely including the power to impeach and remove members of the Supreme Court they don't like. If they control enough state legislatures they get to amend the constitution as they see fit also. There is no prospect of a rebellion overcoming the US military machine, and its presence would allow the GOP to be purged and suppressed. Maintaining a low level of guerilla activity would allow this to continue. The GOP is playing a very dangerous game for themselves moving in this direction.
- gfodor 6y ago
  OK, lets say that we find ourselves in a situation (again, God forbid) where the Democrats have secured all levers of power in response to a small violent uprising, and the mechanism was not through a vote but through a legal process which barred Republicans from the government. What do you think happens if half of the country sees that government as illegitimate, including many members of the military? Governments aren't magic. They exist only if enough people see them as legitimate. The scenario you outline, as supported by polling data, implies to me approximately a third of the country would reject this outright as a legitimate government, with a high bias towards the military. Are you really thinking this through? Do you know how easy it would be for there to be a guerilla war in the US, which is organized in part by military defectors? All it would take would be for enough belief that the country's goverment had become tyrannical. This is exactly the premise of the two prior situations where Americans mobilized for war on our own soil. The scenario you outline is precisely the situation that most strong supporters of the second amendment believe it was created for, and why they exercise it - to provide a deterrence and eventually, if needed, a mechanism to overthrow a tyrannical government.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    To the extent that individuals like that rebel, they are simply setting themselves up for extermination. This is not the 1860s with a distributed state-controlled military; the rebels will not have the supply chain for modern warfare. They will at best be a dispersed nuisance that can cause pain, but to the extent they do so they ensure their own destruction. If someone talks up rebellion and civil war to try to prevent some legal action of a democratically elected government, I will just look in them in the eye and say "Rebel and be damned."
    - gfodor 6y ago
      You seem pretty confident in your ability to predict how such a terrifying scenario will go. I hope we don’t get there because enough people like you do not sufficiently fear it.

by gfodor 6y ago

pfdietz 6y ago

What happens then is that the full power of government would be in the hands of the democrats, likely including the power to impeach and remove members of the Supreme Court they don't like. If they control enough state legislatures they get to amend the constitution as they see fit also. There is no prospect of a rebellion overcoming the US military machine, and its presence would allow the GOP to be purged and suppressed. Maintaining a low level of guerilla activity would allow this to continue. The GOP is playing a very dangerous game for themselves moving in this direction.

gfodor 6y ago
OK, lets say that we find ourselves in a situation (again, God forbid) where the Democrats have secured all levers of power in response to a small violent uprising, and the mechanism was not through a vote but through a legal process which barred Republicans from the government. What do you think happens if half of the country sees that government as illegitimate, including many members of the military? Governments aren't magic. They exist only if enough people see them as legitimate. The scenario you outline, as supported by polling data, implies to me approximately a third of the country would reject this outright as a legitimate government, with a high bias towards the military. Are you really thinking this through? Do you know how easy it would be for there to be a guerilla war in the US, which is organized in part by military defectors? All it would take would be for enough belief that the country's goverment had become tyrannical. This is exactly the premise of the two prior situations where Americans mobilized for war on our own soil. The scenario you outline is precisely the situation that most strong supporters of the second amendment believe it was created for, and why they exercise it - to provide a deterrence and eventually, if needed, a mechanism to overthrow a tyrannical government.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  To the extent that individuals like that rebel, they are simply setting themselves up for extermination. This is not the 1860s with a distributed state-controlled military; the rebels will not have the supply chain for modern warfare. They will at best be a dispersed nuisance that can cause pain, but to the extent they do so they ensure their own destruction. If someone talks up rebellion and civil war to try to prevent some legal action of a democratically elected government, I will just look in them in the eye and say "Rebel and be damned."
  - gfodor 6y ago
    You seem pretty confident in your ability to predict how such a terrifying scenario will go. I hope we don’t get there because enough people like you do not sufficiently fear it.