Senate Can a civil war happen soon in the U.S.?

That's nothing a little bit of propaganda can't fix.

 

No, it won't "fix" that whatsoever.

 

The only spark I can think of is another George Floyd tragedy happening after the shooting starts, where people watch someone or someones they identify with get brutally murdered on camera, and pick up guns out of anger.

 

Why wouldn't it? Propaganda is what got all those Japanese and Waffen-SS soldiers to fight fanatically to the death. And today's Trump supporters are every bit as brainwashed as they were.

 

A lot of things have to happen for a civil war to happen. I just don’t see it

 

Maybe not a war.
Just lots and lots of murder.

 

Sure and those people will hopefully face justice both left and right. I am against violence in any form. But we all know most of the violence will come from the right

 

why? Why make such a blanket condemnation without looking at context or situation?

 

I should rephrase that I am against most violence. There is justifiable self defense, but that’s pretty much it. Other than self defense you should never hurt another human unless they are in the act of hurting themselves or others, but even then I would prefer minimal force.

There are people who the world would be better off without. But violence should be the last resort for defense of you or others.

 

Well, saying that is the easy part. What happens when political leaders lie about when a situation requires warfare and violence? The Japanese and Germans certainly claimed to be acting in self-defense in WWII.

 

THIS. I reject the last part of option 2 cause we cannot get along, but we are so atomized and both sides so unable to organize that the very reason they hate eachother will prevent them from actually fighting

Like do people think boomers on their electric wheelchairs are gonna do cavalry charges against the line of "we'd still be at brunch" sign carrying liberals? Any actual militancy on the left will be crushed more fervently by the democrats than the republicans. So long as americans obey the parties there is no war, cause both parties have the same goals and beliefs. Minor differences and certainly large ones in terms of behavior dont change the racket being profitable for them together. Libs are as married to the idea of a stagnated country or one that sucks but gives them funding and that they can sell off, as the republicans are. It will stop at the point they want it to. That's why you have people like Obama doing what their real job is; to destroy movements and manufacture consent among the populace. Hey we do this cultural signifier and now racism is fixed I guess. Even as riots continue the liberal media has moved on and allowed the right to cover it pretty much unchallenged

edit: oh and as for violence I think an Italian Years of Lead situation is likely if anything. With the feds of all stripes doing more or less nothing if not assisting fascists, while liberals are frustrated but more than willing to eat some cake they are given, while cia and other groups fund fascists, with the occasional leftist push back met with state violence the fascists never are faced with

 

I was talking more on a personal level than a state level. I think war should be avoided at almost all chances. There are exceptions, such as Japan bombing Pearl Harbor. Or say the Allies cared at all about the Jews, gays or the countless other groups killed by the Nazis it would be in the world’s best interest to intervene, but then you have to contest with much of the population not caring and propaganda and telling what is real and what is not.

 

Yeah, pretty much. A fair number of people on the right and a smaller number on the left may really be willing to go at it, but they all have one thing in common: they’re all broke. You can’t fund an army if you’re someone who only goes to the doctor once a year, after you get your tax return money.

There are a handful of folks who actually have the resources to fund an insurrection, but why would they want one? The situation we’ve got now has made them the richest people who have ever existed. Trying to dismantle a cash cow like that would be unthinkable.

 

they might fund terrorism, but yeah no uprising

 

There is absolutely no reason to resort to a violent revolution in the United States at the time, and doing so would be a clear mistake.

 

Nope.

Not even possible really unless the us military splits in half which is unlikely to happen.

Civlians with guns, no matter what side of thr political spectrum , be they from the far right militia nuts to the violent anarchists do not have acess to tanks, artillery, miltary grade armored vehicles or the weapons to defeat them, sure they would probably use IED's but Modern tanks are armored aganist that. This isn't the 1770's pr 1860's where in most cases civilians had acess and owned equal orbetter weaponry than the us military

Small scale fighting is more likely, but but thst would be needed to put it down is the governors to call in the National Guard and maybe Congress to temporarily suspend Posse Comitatus due to a National emergency. Basically Marital law in the US now would be more effective than it was when the British tried it in Boston in the 1770's because of the difference in Firepower between Military and Civilians is more pronounced.

 

I like the idea that the MAGAs have their semi-automatic weapons, while the residents of NY and California order their killer drones on Amazon. Maybe with nice floral prints from Etsy.

 

... Apparently, I'm still not awake.

 

Ok I actually disagree on that. it is highly debatable if counter insurgency tactics can ever work long term. Also that is not close to true for 1860. Many men had to be sent back home cause the CSA didn't have the weapons for them. Some showed up with hunting rifles or shotguns from their farms, many came literally with their grandfathers' muskets from the war 1812. Literally confederates used stuff over half a century old in some cases. They technologically where eclipsed from day one. The Union struggled with mobilization and dealing with fortified positions, that and trash leadership on the field in those first years.

The problem is not arms, it is that americans dont have the will or enough to lose to be like Cuba, South Lebanon, the PLO, IRA, or Ukrainian fascist militias, ISIL, etc. Regardless of ideology, asymmetric warfare requires horrible situations and a real consciousness. We are, to use Marx's parlance, a sack of potatoes even when we are together

Castro put it like this

yeah but just wait till they start doing what Palestinians do, but instead of slingshots they will throw their big gulp cups and destroy the drones

 

Trump supporters are willing to support a president and a party that steals from them and kills them, for no other reason than to spite liberals who never did anything to them. They're literally willing to throw away their very lives for the sake of hate. I don't think their dedication is in question here.

According to that same article, there's plenty of younger people who support Trump, which means we're in trouble.

 

I don't know, I think the BLM folks have had it. If they and their ideological forbears have made little headway over the years, it's because they've had pretty close to the entire white population of the U.S. dragging them down, as well as a non-negligible percentage of the Black population, and a good chunk of "Other" as well.

There are some other groups ready to throw down as well, but not together, because intersectionality gives you cooties, and even the most beaten-down American is sure he has a better chance of becoming a billionaire one day than of improving his lot by working together with other poor people.

 

Yeah but that's the thing. BLM is a movement not a liberation front or revolutionary group like the Black Panthers. They have had the strength to not fold much, but like, that is not the same as a coherent vision with manifest goals. They are still so held back by liberalism in this country that not even of their own accord, any power they have is limited by what the MSM and DNC say.

They do have so many whites, a chunk of black people, and "other" against them, that is why they dont have enough to lose. It is a general refrain or movement, a good one, but not a specific cause or organization.

I just covered the Knights of Labor in a course and something that stood out was how for all their "republic of the producers", intersectional, and general unifying message; they accomplished very little in the long run, and very little for most workers past a certain point. Cause everything they did was backed by having a HUGE amount of the workforce with them, but Haymarket showed something to the bosses, the knights as a group and movement didn't actually wanna put its money where its mouth was. Powderly refused strikes, with the threat of them despite his attestations being the thing that made bosses blink.

He condemned the march for 8 hours a day when it started, and when on May 4th when the Haymarket Riot happened he denounced people like Parsons, who were knights and the entire strike movement which included the entire membership of many chapters. he left those men to hang. From then on the bosses knew they could always win, just take a hardline stance for a short amount of time, if demands are not met and only a strike would be possible, the knights will fold. Suddenly they lose most every conflict after having dominated for a few years.

But it was not just the betrayal that did them in, it was the fact that this "holy order of the knights of labor" was hardly an order at times. It sorta attached itself as the umbrella to the labor movement, but it as an organization hurt the movement, cause a movement was not what was needed, a militant union of solidarity was needed. Solidarity means little when everyone involved belongs to an organization that refuses to back them. The solidarity is real on the ground, but the dialectical forces between the pie in the sky incrementalism and the workers' material needs was unreconcilable

The American Federation of Labor was way less inclusive, both racially and in that it was a loose federation of the national craft unions for skilled workers. However it blew the Knights away cause it kept winning, it didn't focus on big tents or balancing radical speech with civility in actions and works; the AFL managed to win and win and win cause it had such specific goals to meet the needs of specific unions, in their specific arrangements. Then again the AFL was not only not inclusive, it also practiced "business unionism" which made organizing amazing, but also meant they didn't hold as hostile a relationship with the idea of companies as prior groups had. It did however fight hard to try and make strikes protected and blacklists illegal. End of the day they narrowed to collective bargaining, but showed that could work.

What was to come was perfectly highlighted by the much smaller contemporary; United Mine Workers. Which merged a KOL group and a trade union, with AFL strategies. So they went across all race lines, and organized in families as most miners lived in mine towns sprung up across the country. They had all the diversity of the Knights, but with precise goals, they collectively bargained, but with militant strikes and opposition to capital as their predisposition, they had a unified vision that was tangible and worked for all members. No one else took after them of the existing unions, but you can see their model as what the Wobblies would soon create in the IWW but on an interprofession, international, scale, with the necessary thing that people like Parsons saw put at the forefront: that a workers movement, that any movement for justice needed to be socialist.

The point of this is......I wanted to write to remind myself and work through my college work; but also cause I think it speaks to BLM. When there is no organization, or the organization's place is filled by a force of liberal hegemony etc, or the bosses are cowardly like with Powderly; then a righteous movement with true believers and a lot of support in places cannot win.

The knights had all the cards, it didn't mean much in the long run and it didn't prove to be enough of a threat to be violently opposed, but was nonconformist enough to lose the support of "civility". With in BLMs case cultural signifiers and the limited framework of liberal democracy being a weight that can never be lifted so long as it is allowed into the framework at all. I think CHAZ speaks to the fact that the will or lack of things to lose is not there, but more than that the lack of a coherent vision or structural analysis powering any goals is telling. Look at how when BLM takes a more coherent and radical form, all the online celebs and media darlings make a hard right turn. Oh they dont speak for or control the movement, but they certainly can exert pressure on it and not from within like a party or union does. Movements with very diehard supporters are also not the same as a force in a civil war

 

In the grand scheme of things yes, but by far most young people won’t vote or will vote for Biden.

 

I see that people here have focused more on the question of the poll, rather than the points I’ve mentioned in the first post.

Maybe it’s true that there isn’t any organization or plan to make a civil war (I should have added that to my points earlier). However, it is clear that the divisions are so deep in the U.S. (and Trump isn’t necessarily to blame here since the divisions were already there before his election) that people there seem irreconcilable.

So the question is, how to solve the divisions and the main problems mentioned earlier, especially the points #1, #3, #4 and #5, other than removing Trump from office? Because even if he loses the elections, removing Trump from office won’t solve the problems and divisions won't disappear.

Because, whatever happens in the U.S. affects other western countries and societies. Here in Quebec for example, we’re beginning to see the rise of far-right and far-left groups for the past couple of years, being emboldened by what happens in the U.S. On one side, we have far-right groups asking for less immigration and demonizing Muslim people for example (although, some that openly express themselves like this with hatred can get arrested, since hate speech is forbidden and punishable in Canada). On the other side, we have far-left people, being also emboldened by movements like Antifa and BLM, asking for defunding and dismanteling the police in Montreal, one of Canada’s biggest cities, and have managed for example to overthrow the statue of Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald. Now those movements may not be as important or as big as in the U.S., but it shows that the events in the U.S. can also impacts other societies in other countries. And with it, slowly over time, it may create divisions within those societies since movements and acts like those only polarizes public opinions, especially when holding extreme and unrealistic claims in both the far-right and the far-left.

For example, when the far-right asks for less immigration and are against minorities, it’s unrealistic since in Canada we have an ageing population with less young people, and we need more workforce for the economic sector. And it’s not true that immigrants steal the jobs of local or native people in Canada, since the native population is shrinking for having made less children in the past. And when the far-left asks for defunding and dismanteling the police, especially in a big city with nearly 4 million people, it’s unrealistic since for example, in tourism sectors such as the old port of Montreal, which have become empty since the beginning of this pandemic, crime and gunshots have increased, making people feel less secured. Now, what would be the solution for this if the far-left asks for defunding the police (since the police is “a force for racism and white-supremacy” according to the far-left)? Giving guns to everyone to protect themselves as the far-right advocates for, especially when we are having a debate in Canada to impose more severe restrictions to gun rights? No, giving a gun to everyone doesn’t increase the feeling of security and defunding the police will only increase existing problems.

The point I want to demonstrate here is how irrational things have become in the U.S. and how it affects else where’s public discourse, especially when people and some leaders are being polarized like this and emboldened, which eventually, leads to confrontation by force. Especially in regards to point #1, #3, #4, and #5. So how do we solve that and how we bring people to think more rationally? Because America, no matter what group Americans may be in (on the left or on the right), seems to have become irrational, not to say to have fallen into some kind of madness.

 

What part of the population is this? I don't think there is one.

This is just the same red scare crap Republicans have been spouting for decades. I don't think it's dehumanizing, just stupid.

I don't think this is really true, either.

I accept violence as a solution, so. Don't want that to change. I will continue to instantly condone (forgiveness requires that I think it wrong to begin with, which I don't) it whenever I feel like it. I want to tear up the US Constitution, as it's terrible. I want to demolish statues, as they were undeserved, and are a blight on our country. I hope the mainstream media continues to support these actions as much as possible.

Leadership is a problem that won't be solved even if Trump loses. There's not much leadership on either side, and not much coming down the pipeline, so there's not much we can do about that.