16 ms·

Civil war, for what? Every time I see this mentioned, I think, "for what?"

• ant6n 4y ago
  What was the last one for? “States’ rights”?
  • stale2002 4y ago
    Fortunately there is no need to start a war over federal vs state power, given that the current supreme court is ruling in favor of state power, in recent court cases.
    • DawnQFunk 4y ago
  • jonnycomputer 4y ago
    The civil war happened because the abolition of slavery threatened the wealth and power of Southern elites. It was about wealth. I just don't see a similar situation right now.
    • danans 4y ago
      > I just don't see a similar situation right now The flight of capital to the most productive and/or cosmopolitan locations (domestically and globally) and the increase in immigrant representation in positions of influence threatens the cultural centrality of the part of society that has traditionally occupied it, and they would like to have that status restored any way possible. Does that outweigh the tremendous destruction (and loss to everyone) that would ensue? Perhaps not. Depends what enough people think they have to lose.
    • notch656a 4y ago
      I reject this notion. The civil war happened because the North didn't accept the peaceful right to secession. I do not think there would have been a war at all had the nation simply allowed the south to secede.
      • jonnycomputer 4y ago
        Sure. I guess the war wouldn't have happened if the North said, sure, see you later, bye. But then, again, the South wouldn't have seceded without Southern elites being frightened that the North would take away the foundation of their wealth. So, exactly what does it mean to "reject this notion"? And what would have happened when the Confederacy demanded that the United States return escaped slaves, and the United States refused? How long before Southerners decided that the North was an existential threat?
    • wishfish 4y ago
      The current situation with abortion will pose a threat similar to the slavery divide. There's a clear division of states which allow it and those with bans. Some of the states with bans are threatening prosecution of women who cross state lines for the procedure. There's a similar situation coming up regarding gay and trans rights. Some states will continue having equal rights. Other states may not. This situation will get even worse if the Supreme Court overturns gay marriage and sodomy law precedents. All of this will create even further division. One of the harbingers of a coming civil war will be internal refugees and increased internal migration. If people start fleeing the red states in noticeable numbers, then that's the time to start getting worried. Especially if some of those fleeing make their moves suddenly. If you start seeing hundreds, or even thousands, who leave their homes in the middle of the night to escape, then you know something bad is coming. There's already a trickle of such people. A few in Texas did just that. Parents of trans kids who wanted to get away from a situation where the state posed a threat. And they felt like they had to leave immediately with no notice to anyone. We'll start to see more of this if some states decide to ramp up prosecutions of women and investigations into miscarriages.
      • jonnycomputer 4y ago
        But how does this effect the wealth and power of elites? That's the point. A civil war has to be organized from the top, and elites, who always look out for their own self-interest first, aren't going to organize an expensive, disruptive war to prevent 10yo rape victims from getting an abortion.
        • wishfish 4y ago
          Sometimes these things come from the bottom up. In some countries, a small number of violent people set the spark and the flames start. The elite do have far more power than the rest of us, but sometimes they're also caught up in a wave they can't control. Just like the rest of us. The elites of the South wanted to keep their slaves and their wealth. Many of them ended up having their plantations burned down or seized. Their wealth diminished or vanished. Their cities occupied. They lost control of the situation fairly quickly. And it's not like the wealthy are unified exactly. Some, maybe most, would like to avoid future conflict. While others give money to the groups that seem hellbent on creating a conflict of some sort. You're correct. No one's going to immediately start the civil war based on abortion. But, to me, it feels like dry tinder being set. Just needs a spark. I'm not saying it's a certainty by any means. We have a decent chance of muddling through the current crises. But it does feel like the stage is being set.
  • thechao 4y ago
    The last one was for States' rights to indefinitely expand the right to keep slaves. The Southern states (slaveholders) feared violent slave rebellions.
  • bergenty 4y ago
    The right to have slaves without beating around the bush.
• hgazx 4y ago
  I’m not American but I can see how many things have simply gone too far these past years.
  • ako 4y ago
    Like what? And was it really that different in the past? Often it feels like people don’t have a good historic perspective and think the past didn’t have its difficulties. In reality, there’s probably no year in the past where most of us would have been better off than today. Doesn’t mean that today is perfect, lots of problems to address: housing, income, healthcare, global warming, destruction of the ecosystem, list goes on…
    • frob 4y ago
      In the past month, women in large swaths of the United States have lost their right to bodily autonomy, health, and even life. A woman in Wisconsin was forced to carry her dead fetus inside her for ten days because the hospital was afraid to perform an abortion to remove the fetal tissue due to the law from 1849 being unclear about when exceptions are allowed to its complete and total ban even in the case of rape and incest. A ten-year-old girl in Ohio had to cross state lines to get an abortion after being impregnated via rape since their state's 6-week ban does not have an exception for rape. Some hospitals and pharmacists are refusing to fulfill methotrexate prescriptions for lupus because it could be used to abort an ectopic pregnancy (which is definitionally not viable). Women are being denied mifepristone and misoprostol prescriptions to evacuate miscarriages because they could be used to induce an abortion and are instead being forced to carry necrotizing flesh inside their wombs until they hopefully expel it. Cancer patients are being denied chemotherapy because no oncologist will give chemo to a pregnant woman and the doctors in their area are afraid to give these women abortions until their vital signs literally start falling because the so-called exceptions for the life of the mother are so narrow as to open them up to prosecution by a zealous force-birth DA. And this hasn't even touched on the ground-shaking effect this is going to have on women's ability to participate fully and equally in society.
      • AnnikaL 4y ago
• 100011_100001 4y ago
  • truthwhisperer 4y ago
    [dead]
  • jonnycomputer 4y ago
    There are christian fascists out there that would like to. Whether they'd play a big role in any civil war is a different question.
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    It is funny, if you go on Christian or conservative forums, they think the left is fascist. My observation so far is that neither is correct about Fascism.
    • 100011_100001 4y ago
      Uhm, you do know that actual Nazis vote Republican right?
• frankbreetz 4y ago
  Revolts over wealth inequality have happened many times throughout history. Wealth inequality is currently quite high.
  • jonnycomputer 4y ago
    A revolt isn't a civil war, though. Not that I know that people are making such fine distinctions in the poll.
• PKop 4y ago
  Political power and cultural dominance/self-interest
• xenospn 4y ago
  it's a natural occurrence when fascists go a little too far.
• jasonjayr 4y ago
  A deeply religious conservative America, or a secular progressive America. Groups are not seeing eye to eye on the fundamental role of government, and lines in the sand are being drawn.
  • BatFastard 4y ago
    I could see Christian Nationalists making waves, but those are 1% of society? Secular Progressives are non violent by creed(small joke), so I just don't see that happening. Poor vs rich? I see poor on all sides of the issue, hard to see that happening.
    • __jambo 4y ago
      I second this. Progressives wouldn't fight. Some small radical groups people would, but they aren't large enough or organised enough, who/what can they do other than spot violence/terrorism? I don't think the US can have a proper "civil war" there are too many disparate groups. But then again, Germany was very divided before WW2, so maybe one of these charismatic cult leaders could to come along.
  • hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    > Groups are not seeing eye to eye on the fundamental role of government I wish it were that. Having differing opinions on the fundamental role of government would be a good thing in a normal, functioning political environment. What's going on now is that each side fundamentally believes the other side is rigging the system against them. Trump-siding conservatives believe (provably false, I might add) that the voting system is "rigged". Those on the left believe (but, this is actually provably true) that the voting system is also "rigged", albeit that "rigged" here is exactly how the Constitution intends (e.g. a voter in a small state has a vote worth ~50x a voter in a large state in the Senate, and that the winner of the presidential popular vote has twice in the last six elections lost in the electoral college).
  • moduspol 4y ago
    Which side has 95%+ of the guns and land?
• jeffbee 4y ago
  One side believes that woke transgender illegals are stealing their jobs, homes, and children. It only takes one side to start a civil war.
  • mrweasel 4y ago
    Isn’t one side significantly larger than the other? It seems to me that while there’s clearly two “sides” in the US, one is vastly overrepresented, due to how the US democracy is structured. That’s not to say it wouldn’t be dangerous, both to the US and the stability to the rest of the world. So please wait until Germany have rebuilt it’s army, otherwise the UK is going to get very busy, covering for an absent US.
    • jeffbee 4y ago
      Yes I think it's pretty obvious that the 99% are on the side of "no civil war" but there are accelerationist groups who are trying to start one.
• shkkmo 4y ago
  And between where? Every state has strong red and blue regions. A second "civil war" is more likely to be terrorist campaigns like the IRA conducted rather than a war like the one the that northern states fought against southern states a century and a half ago.
  • nequo 4y ago
    It would be a civil war as long as there is a part of the country that's controlled by one side and another part that is controlled by the other side. Doesn't have to align with current state borders.
    • shkkmo 4y ago
      It doesn't have to align with state borders, but a lack of alignment with state borders make the organizational start of a civil war complicated because it can't utilize any existing governmental structures. Thus the conflict is much less likely to be one between armies, but between vigilante terrorist groups.
  • glogla 4y ago
    > A second "civil war" is more likely to be terrorist campaigns like the IRA conducted rather than a war like the one the that northern states fought against southern states a century and a half ago. Given the number of mass shootings and who is usually behind them, you could say this has been already happening for years.
• havblue 4y ago
  Yeah. I guess it's supposed to imply a red vs blue state conflict. Proud Boys versus Antifa fighting in the streets! MSNBC fans firing tear gas at Tucker Carlson viewers! Reylo shippers versus original trilogy fans, hitting each other with plastic lightsabers! What's supposed to happen? Texas is going to invade California?
  • jonnycomputer 4y ago
    More like rural Texas invading Austin.
  • BatFastard 4y ago
    First Texas would have to fight the other half of Texas, its not like whole states would just join a revolution.
  • codefreeordie 4y ago
    By far the most likely actual kind of conflict is just an expansion of what we've already seen in the last decade or two: states or municipalities of one color refusing to comply with the other color's legal mandates, and states forming color alliances against each other. For example, California has prohibited any official or municipality in the State doing any business or sending any representatives to the red States. None of the red States have done exactly that thing, but, for example, red border States are exploring programs that, for example, bus illegal migrants into blue States. This sort of behavior will probably escalate.
• BurningFrog 4y ago
  And who would be fighting? Where would they fight? Twitter doesn't count!
  • chasd00 4y ago
    that's a good point, all the strife is really online. It would be hard to translate that into widespread physical violence because people would have to put their phones down, go outside, and do it IRL.
  • jasonladuke0311 4y ago
    The average "combatant" on one side couldn't lift a rifle, and the other side would be more likely to die from heart disease than from enemy fire.
• thechao 4y ago
  The voting system in the US (FPTP) is fundamentally unfair. Combine with post-red-map gerrymandering, it is becoming obvious even to the people "on the wings" that our election system fundamentally disenfranchises large swathes of the population. As a short hand, think "Democrats and Independents in red states" and "Republicans and Independants in blue states". Being disenfranchised sucks. The system is designed to prevent you from having any ability to even change the system by using the system. If everything is "ok", then people just ignore the political system. Buuuut... when people get scared (reasonably, or not), and the system is fundamentally unfair, their only option is violence.
  • colinmhayes 4y ago
    I agree that this is by far the biggest problem, but I don’t see it leading to a large scale conflict for one reason. The system favors the current political elite. Notice that neither party every really talks about legitimate electoral reform. They talk about voting reform, but not the way our elections actually work. No one is talking about removing fptp, or the electoral college/senate, or moving to a proportional representation system. Without politicians to rally the masses it’s hard to see enough support.
    • thechao 4y ago
      Fair voting systems need to be both fair theoretically, but also "obviously fair" to those voting. The vast majority of the electorate is poorly educated on how election system game theory works. (Which should not be surprising.) I plan to start rolling out fair systems locally (my water district) so that people can familiar with both how easy they're to use; and, more importantly, how they're obviously fair. Right now, we're looking at proportional random selection.
  • nverno 4y ago
    I dont think the 'system' is designed to be unfair, but instead our two political parties have corrupted the voting process through gerrymandering. Then again, it's not as bad as some people seem to imply it is - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-new-national-congressional-map-is-biased-toward-republicans/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-new-national-congre.... We are talking about a net gain of a seat or two in either direction. If the two parties weren't so dominant this problem wouldn't be nearly as bad either. Given most Americans are independents, it would be great to see more candidates breakthrough without party alignment.
• danans 4y ago
  You don't want to fix/improve the society to suit your preferences through existing democratic and legal mechanisms, so you decide destroying the opposition via violence/intimidation is easier.
  • codefreeordie 4y ago
    I would argue that today, the median partisan of both political colors is of the belief that Democracy is at risk, today, because their opposition color is ignoring the rules, not playing fairly, and generally wants bad things to happen to people of their political color. I've seen an awful lot of posts by both flavors of political partisans that "we're already in a war, we're just losing because we refuse to fight back"
    • danans 4y ago
      I didn't make a partisan distinction, only described the thought process for how someone justifies the use of political violence instead of the legal and democratic process.
• unethical_ban 4y ago
  A critically flawed vote tallying mechanism entrenching a catastrophically polarized two party machine. A rise of fascism and a rural urban divide. A lack of trust in fundamental roles of government. A federal judiciary that abdicated their role to check legislatures against undemocratic structure. A potential ruling in Moore v. Harper that would allow state legislatures to literally, blatantly and without any check on power dispose of a representative government. I don't want a civil war, I want radical reforms at every level of government which put faith back into the function of government and the will of the people. I'm ready for cities in fascist states like my home state of Texas to blatantly disregard immoral state regulations and become city-states. And in the face of right wing extremist protests and feckless law enforcement, I think the left wing should arm themselves.
• seabea 4y ago
  A civil war doesn't need to be between two regions (like in the American Civil war). I think most people (including myself) envision a "Handmaid's Tale" style coup from by an extremest group / government faction with an ensuing rebellion. I would like to think it could never happen. But I also wouldn't have ever expected to see the halls of Congress violently trespassed by a bunch of rednecks with confederate flags. Just imagine if the Jan 6 insurrectionists we're organized and not completely inept at accomplishing their goal.
  • BurningFrog 4y ago
    Even if they take over the Capitol, hang Mike Pence, and shoot some democrat lawmakers, I don't see how they rule the country after that.
    • corrral 4y ago
      It hinges entirely on who the military and police decide to listen to. Hanging Pence wasn't the only, or first, option that day—getting him to maybe, kinda, technically, if you tilt your head and squint legally overturn the election was one attempted strategy. That's far more dangerous, and there sure seem to be chess pieces lining up to take similar sorta-maybe-technically-legal shots at the principles of democracy in the next election or two. How the military and cops will react to orders coming from someone who plainly stole an election according to every norm we have about how our government is supposed to work, and who sure looks like they're sending us toward single-party dictatorship on fast-forward, but maybe is kinda, sorta, technically doing all this legally, or at least has sown enough confusion that you're not sure whether they're legitimate or not, is anyone's guess.