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As a US citizen, I've been wondering for almost 10 years now if we're edging towards a new civil war. In the past 5 or so, I've been worrying almost equally ab

As a US citizen, I've been wondering for almost 10 years now if we're edging towards a new civil war. In the past 5 or so, I've been worrying almost equally about the state of global affairs setting the stage for potential world war. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have been in a relatively stable world (9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan notwithstanding -- none of them world war scale), but it now feels ever less so all the time. If one has to have either a civil war or a world war (bizarre choice), a world war would actually serve to unite us, although our existing division is a weak starting place. A civil war destroys us from within, full stop. My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war, whereby they win WWIII without ever firing a shot.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Replace CCP with Russia, and it's not a conspiracy theory.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Correct. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-Russia%E2%80%99s-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Ecosystem_08-04-20.pdf https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-...
ceilingcorner 5y ago
We are already in a low-level Civil War and have been for quite some time. The important thing to understand is that digital / media / information warfare will be the future of warfare, both in the US and abroad. Why? For better or worse, the average person in America is lazy. Arguing online is easy, but actually engaging in kinetic warfare over a sustained period of time is extremely difficult. Even the minor conflicts that erupt at protests are tiny and irrelevant compared to an actual civil war. There's also not much money to be made in actually destroying things, as compared to drumming up outrage (which is how the media, large and small, Alex Jones to CNN, makes its money.) My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war, whereby they win WWIII without ever firing a shot. This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's basic geopolitics. Every large state does this to each other. The US to China, China to the US, US to Russia, Russia to US.
dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
Yea that's not a conspiracy theory at all. CCP/Russia most definitely have heavily targeted campaigns to sow disunity via the whole "USA is a dumpster fire" and "we're so divided" nonsense all over social media sites like FB/Twitter and Reddit. Of course Reddit being Reddit and so forth you get regular Americans gobbling it up and amplifying. Even worse when late-night hosts with big audiences do it. The strength of the United States is literally its motto - "e pluribus unum" - of course foreign countries want to oppose that. What's annoying to me is having to lead coworkers though a rational thought exercise about "do you really think we're divided? as compared to what? how exactly do you measure division?" and so forth just to get them to admit it's mostly some generalized feeling and not some rationally considered measure. I sometimes wonder why the US gov't doesn't put CCP/Russia on blast and make Americans more aware of this. Americans love a common enemy, and if they caught wind of how much they are truly being manipulated it might shift the narrative. Maybe that would embarrass too many citizens to realize the stuff they mindlessly parrot is largely a planted narrative.
- kortilla 5y ago
  > To be honest I sometimes wonder why the US gov't doesn't put CCP/Russia on blast and make Americans more aware of this. Because CCP/Russia have already incorporated this into their disinformation campaigns. Anything anti-china is attacked as racist/nationalist. It got so radioactive that the government had to change the pattern they used to name pandemics.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > the pattern they used to name pandemics. What pattern is that, exactly? Looking at the Wikipedia list of worldwide pandemics with more than 1 million deaths[0], only two were named after places, and one of those ("Spanish flu") was the result of wartime misinformation and/or racism. Admittedly the other example on that list is "Hong Kong flu" from 1968–1969, but there are other recent outbreaks which are not included, like SARS, Swine flu, and Bird flu. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Major_epidemics_and_pandemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Major_epidem...
runarberg 5y ago
> If one has to have either a civil war or a world war (bizarre choice), a world war would actually serve to unite us, This is not only a terrible American exceptionalism thing to say, but also probably wrong if you look at history of failing states. The Russian emipre was it the brink of collapse before WW1, participation in that war lead to its collapse sooner then it probably would have. From an outside view much of the world is long since tired of American exceptionalism, and American influence on the rest of the world. For many people the collapse of America would be a preferable option over the status quo. Me personally would prefer no war at all (neither civil nor world). However I would love to see American influence dwindle in favor of a more global solidarity of the workers of the world (including American workers).
- xsquared2 5y ago
  > However I would love to see American influence dwindle in favor of a more global solidarity of the workers of the world (including American workers). Pardon my assumption, but are you a software engineer in america? How would the downfall of American hegemony and union of transnational labor favor you?
  - runarberg 5y ago
    Yes I am a software engineer in America (although from Europe originally). And to answer your other question, the downfall of America might favor me personally if it would be replaced with international solidarity of workers (as I am a worker my self). However my personal wealth is not my aspiration. Or as Mr. Spock once said: “The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few”. If I am one of the few, who’s benefits will marginally decrease in order for the needs of the many to be met. Then so be it.
    - voidfunc 5y ago
      Alright there Comrade... lets hope your vision for the future never becomes a reality. Here's the real rub, there's many of us who would also fight to preserve the status quo or something close to it. You think many (most?) HN'ers with their 150K+ jobs want to live either individually or with their families at a much worse quality of life so some folks an ocean or two away can be a little better off? Big doubt.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
torstenvl 5y ago
In my view, the primary reason we are edging toward a new civil war is that politicians have decided to wield the law as a weapon in the growing urban/rural cultural divide. Classical liberalism is a necessity for pluralism, and pluralism is necessary for a country as diverse as the United States to survive. As soon as you drop "live and let live" as a fundamental principle and start trying to micromanage personal choice, you're on the road to division. The Right should stop trying to ban gay marriage or abortion or TG folks from public schools. The Left should stop trying to ban guns or family gatherings or large sugary drinks or the rebel flag or traditional pronouns. Until American can break the habit of trying to control one another and make other Americans live a certain way, we will never live up to E Pluribus Unum. EDIT: Case in point...
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > ... should stop trying to ban ... Or perhaps these contentious social questions should be decided by the individual states, and citizens should be free to move to states which best match their views? It would be nice to think that the federal government could just ban "bans", but deciding what is and isn't a ban (or which bans are strictly necessary) is an equivalent problem to the one you are trying to solve.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    I never suggested that the federal government ban "bans" and, perhaps, the fact that you immediately thought of yet another government ban is emblematic of the problem I am describing. In any case, yes, to some extent, federalism is a partial answer to ensuring a baseline liberalism.
- bob_roberts 5y ago
  > traditional pronouns Nobody is banning traditional pronouns.
  - raducu 5y ago
    In many parts of the world they are being soft banned.
enriquto 5y ago
> My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war, whereby they win WWIII without ever firing a shot. How is this a conspiracy theory and how is this a bad thing? The so-called Cold War (i.e., WWIII) was won by the USA "without ever firing a shot", by exactly the same method: sowing division within the socialist bloc. Do you think that the U.S.-influenced division of its enemies was a bad thing? Would you have preferred an all-out war between the two nuclear powers?
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Some would argue the actions of the US in Afghanistan during the Cold War led to 9/11 as blowback. That one event permanently altered the US's path and helped to show that the empire is declining.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    In terms of civilisational collapse 9/11 is meaningless, and all of the damage done by response was a series of unforced errors on the US's part. They didn't have to tear off a nose to spite their face.
    - nebula8804 5y ago
      >They didn't have to tear off a nose to spite their face. That is the civilizational decline made clear by 9/11.
  - fuzzfactor 5y ago
    Actually it was the Soviets that were in Afghanistan during the Cold War, not the US.
    - nebula8804 5y ago
      Are you seriously ignoring the US's role in arming the mujahideen?
nebula8804 5y ago
>As a US citizen, I've been wondering for almost 10 years now if we're edging towards a new civil war. I don't think the population is capable of a civil war just due to their health. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States What are they going to do? Fight each other on their Power Wheelchairs? Yes I am aware of the far right arming themselves and training for years for a coming 'war'. I think with the Parler leaks + Facebook, I suspect the government knows the exact location of the overwhelming majority of these people and wouldn't hesitate to gun them down if some calamity broke out. I agree that the CCP, Soviets and others are probably devoting some resources to spreading division. It is so cheap to do in the grand scheme of things so I guess that everyone including 'soft allies' might be participating but these tactics only work due to real issues in the society that have been unresolved for decades. Besides...long term China has more serious problems to contend with. Things such as the coming population collapse, extreme climate change that threatens their food supplies, and growing unrest as the population starts to expect more and more from the CCP.
roenxi 5y ago
> If one has to have either a civil war or a world war (bizarre choice), a world war would actually serve to unite us, although our existing division is a weak starting place. A civil war destroys us from within, full stop. If those are your options, what is wrong with being destroyed from within? The two sides can split the country and each get a share - say, in proportion to their numbers. The British aren't exactly suffering after their empire dissolved. Life still looks pretty good for them. There is no reason to unite people who do not want to be united.
nostrademons 5y ago
Not mutually exclusive. I could easily see a future where the breakup of the U.S. essentially sparks WW3 as every regional power takes the fall of the global hegemon as license to make war on its neighbors. Could totally see China taking Taiwan and eventually Japan, India and Pakistan erupting in bloodshed, Russia invading Eastern Europe, [the Middle East is already in flames], etc. It also wouldn't surprise me if the CCP or Russia or both are conducting propaganda campaigns to break up the U.S. without them firing a shot. These strike me as very shortsighted; the threat of an external adversary is pretty much the only thing holding large empires together, so both of those are next on the break-up list of the U.S. splits. (Arguably, the primary factor behind political divisions in the U.S. was the breakup of the Soviet Union; without the external threat of communism we have nothing to remind us that we're more alike than different.)
baybal2 5y ago
> My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a full-time job for a large number of Russian KGB, and Chinese state security employees.
fuzzfactor 5y ago
There is only one road and it does not continue past a certain point. Progress toward that point needs to be arrested or reversed judiciously, with rest stops along the way being some of the most useful. Sometimes it can be worthwhile to point out that after WWII peace had been achieved but there were only three types of people in the world remaining. Those that won WWII, Those that lost WWII, and those that were saved by the ones that won WWII. Everyone else was killed. That's what made it a world war. Everyone living is descended from only these three types, spawned for better or worse out of their hard-won environment of unprecedented world peace. Anyone dissatisfied with this, the only way they can change it is to start WWIII. Got any ideas if there might be somebody willing to take us further down that road anytime soon?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Replace CCP with Russia, and it's not a conspiracy theory.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Correct. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-Russia%E2%80%99s-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Ecosystem_08-04-20.pdf https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-...

ceilingcorner 5y ago

We are already in a low-level Civil War and have been for quite some time. The important thing to understand is that digital / media / information warfare will be the future of warfare, both in the US and abroad. Why? For better or worse, the average person in America is lazy. Arguing online is easy, but actually engaging in kinetic warfare over a sustained period of time is extremely difficult. Even the minor conflicts that erupt at protests are tiny and irrelevant compared to an actual civil war. There's also not much money to be made in actually destroying things, as compared to drumming up outrage (which is how the media, large and small, Alex Jones to CNN, makes its money.) My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war, whereby they win WWIII without ever firing a shot. This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's basic geopolitics. Every large state does this to each other. The US to China, China to the US, US to Russia, Russia to US.

dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago

Yea that's not a conspiracy theory at all. CCP/Russia most definitely have heavily targeted campaigns to sow disunity via the whole "USA is a dumpster fire" and "we're so divided" nonsense all over social media sites like FB/Twitter and Reddit. Of course Reddit being Reddit and so forth you get regular Americans gobbling it up and amplifying. Even worse when late-night hosts with big audiences do it. The strength of the United States is literally its motto - "e pluribus unum" - of course foreign countries want to oppose that. What's annoying to me is having to lead coworkers though a rational thought exercise about "do you really think we're divided? as compared to what? how exactly do you measure division?" and so forth just to get them to admit it's mostly some generalized feeling and not some rationally considered measure. I sometimes wonder why the US gov't doesn't put CCP/Russia on blast and make Americans more aware of this. Americans love a common enemy, and if they caught wind of how much they are truly being manipulated it might shift the narrative. Maybe that would embarrass too many citizens to realize the stuff they mindlessly parrot is largely a planted narrative.

kortilla 5y ago
> To be honest I sometimes wonder why the US gov't doesn't put CCP/Russia on blast and make Americans more aware of this. Because CCP/Russia have already incorporated this into their disinformation campaigns. Anything anti-china is attacked as racist/nationalist. It got so radioactive that the government had to change the pattern they used to name pandemics.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > the pattern they used to name pandemics. What pattern is that, exactly? Looking at the Wikipedia list of worldwide pandemics with more than 1 million deaths[0], only two were named after places, and one of those ("Spanish flu") was the result of wartime misinformation and/or racism. Admittedly the other example on that list is "Hong Kong flu" from 1968–1969, but there are other recent outbreaks which are not included, like SARS, Swine flu, and Bird flu. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Major_epidemics_and_pandemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Major_epidem...

runarberg 5y ago

> If one has to have either a civil war or a world war (bizarre choice), a world war would actually serve to unite us, This is not only a terrible American exceptionalism thing to say, but also probably wrong if you look at history of failing states. The Russian emipre was it the brink of collapse before WW1, participation in that war lead to its collapse sooner then it probably would have. From an outside view much of the world is long since tired of American exceptionalism, and American influence on the rest of the world. For many people the collapse of America would be a preferable option over the status quo. Me personally would prefer no war at all (neither civil nor world). However I would love to see American influence dwindle in favor of a more global solidarity of the workers of the world (including American workers).

xsquared2 5y ago
> However I would love to see American influence dwindle in favor of a more global solidarity of the workers of the world (including American workers). Pardon my assumption, but are you a software engineer in america? How would the downfall of American hegemony and union of transnational labor favor you?
- runarberg 5y ago
  Yes I am a software engineer in America (although from Europe originally). And to answer your other question, the downfall of America might favor me personally if it would be replaced with international solidarity of workers (as I am a worker my self). However my personal wealth is not my aspiration. Or as Mr. Spock once said: “The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few”. If I am one of the few, who’s benefits will marginally decrease in order for the needs of the many to be met. Then so be it.
  - voidfunc 5y ago
    Alright there Comrade... lets hope your vision for the future never becomes a reality. Here's the real rub, there's many of us who would also fight to preserve the status quo or something close to it. You think many (most?) HN'ers with their 150K+ jobs want to live either individually or with their families at a much worse quality of life so some folks an ocean or two away can be a little better off? Big doubt.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

torstenvl 5y ago

In my view, the primary reason we are edging toward a new civil war is that politicians have decided to wield the law as a weapon in the growing urban/rural cultural divide. Classical liberalism is a necessity for pluralism, and pluralism is necessary for a country as diverse as the United States to survive. As soon as you drop "live and let live" as a fundamental principle and start trying to micromanage personal choice, you're on the road to division. The Right should stop trying to ban gay marriage or abortion or TG folks from public schools. The Left should stop trying to ban guns or family gatherings or large sugary drinks or the rebel flag or traditional pronouns. Until American can break the habit of trying to control one another and make other Americans live a certain way, we will never live up to E Pluribus Unum. EDIT: Case in point...

dane-pgp 5y ago
> ... should stop trying to ban ... Or perhaps these contentious social questions should be decided by the individual states, and citizens should be free to move to states which best match their views? It would be nice to think that the federal government could just ban "bans", but deciding what is and isn't a ban (or which bans are strictly necessary) is an equivalent problem to the one you are trying to solve.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  I never suggested that the federal government ban "bans" and, perhaps, the fact that you immediately thought of yet another government ban is emblematic of the problem I am describing. In any case, yes, to some extent, federalism is a partial answer to ensuring a baseline liberalism.
bob_roberts 5y ago
> traditional pronouns Nobody is banning traditional pronouns.
- raducu 5y ago
  In many parts of the world they are being soft banned.

enriquto 5y ago

> My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war, whereby they win WWIII without ever firing a shot. How is this a conspiracy theory and how is this a bad thing? The so-called Cold War (i.e., WWIII) was won by the USA "without ever firing a shot", by exactly the same method: sowing division within the socialist bloc. Do you think that the U.S.-influenced division of its enemies was a bad thing? Would you have preferred an all-out war between the two nuclear powers?

nebula8804 5y ago
Some would argue the actions of the US in Afghanistan during the Cold War led to 9/11 as blowback. That one event permanently altered the US's path and helped to show that the empire is declining.
- roenxi 5y ago
  In terms of civilisational collapse 9/11 is meaningless, and all of the damage done by response was a series of unforced errors on the US's part. They didn't have to tear off a nose to spite their face.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    >They didn't have to tear off a nose to spite their face. That is the civilizational decline made clear by 9/11.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  Actually it was the Soviets that were in Afghanistan during the Cold War, not the US.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Are you seriously ignoring the US's role in arming the mujahideen?

nebula8804 5y ago

>As a US citizen, I've been wondering for almost 10 years now if we're edging towards a new civil war. I don't think the population is capable of a civil war just due to their health. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States What are they going to do? Fight each other on their Power Wheelchairs? Yes I am aware of the far right arming themselves and training for years for a coming 'war'. I think with the Parler leaks + Facebook, I suspect the government knows the exact location of the overwhelming majority of these people and wouldn't hesitate to gun them down if some calamity broke out. I agree that the CCP, Soviets and others are probably devoting some resources to spreading division. It is so cheap to do in the grand scheme of things so I guess that everyone including 'soft allies' might be participating but these tactics only work due to real issues in the society that have been unresolved for decades. Besides...long term China has more serious problems to contend with. Things such as the coming population collapse, extreme climate change that threatens their food supplies, and growing unrest as the population starts to expect more and more from the CCP.

roenxi 5y ago

> If one has to have either a civil war or a world war (bizarre choice), a world war would actually serve to unite us, although our existing division is a weak starting place. A civil war destroys us from within, full stop. If those are your options, what is wrong with being destroyed from within? The two sides can split the country and each get a share - say, in proportion to their numbers. The British aren't exactly suffering after their empire dissolved. Life still looks pretty good for them. There is no reason to unite people who do not want to be united.

nostrademons 5y ago

Not mutually exclusive. I could easily see a future where the breakup of the U.S. essentially sparks WW3 as every regional power takes the fall of the global hegemon as license to make war on its neighbors. Could totally see China taking Taiwan and eventually Japan, India and Pakistan erupting in bloodshed, Russia invading Eastern Europe, [the Middle East is already in flames], etc. It also wouldn't surprise me if the CCP or Russia or both are conducting propaganda campaigns to break up the U.S. without them firing a shot. These strike me as very shortsighted; the threat of an external adversary is pretty much the only thing holding large empires together, so both of those are next on the break-up list of the U.S. splits. (Arguably, the primary factor behind political divisions in the U.S. was the breakup of the Soviet Union; without the external threat of communism we have nothing to remind us that we're more alike than different.)

baybal2 5y ago

> My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a full-time job for a large number of Russian KGB, and Chinese state security employees.

fuzzfactor 5y ago

There is only one road and it does not continue past a certain point. Progress toward that point needs to be arrested or reversed judiciously, with rest stops along the way being some of the most useful. Sometimes it can be worthwhile to point out that after WWII peace had been achieved but there were only three types of people in the world remaining. Those that won WWII, Those that lost WWII, and those that were saved by the ones that won WWII. Everyone else was killed. That's what made it a world war. Everyone living is descended from only these three types, spawned for better or worse out of their hard-won environment of unprecedented world peace. Anyone dissatisfied with this, the only way they can change it is to start WWIII. Got any ideas if there might be somebody willing to take us further down that road anytime soon?