How many years until U.S. mass violence, warring red and blue enclaves, civil war 2

You're not missing anything.

Karl I love u but

https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-catastrophizing

of course things suck, they have always sucked, all we can do is try to be better people

tbh yr viewpoint seems (to me) to be very much the 2021 version of 2000's "FEMA is gonna put us all into detention camps" which didn't happen either

will there be breadsticks in the detention camps

because: mmmmm, breadsticks

the poll's ending date is election day 2022

so maybe we'll see if things change between now and then. i'm sure we'll all be feeling great that day

honestly, and this will gain me more haters, but -- some of you guys have been around too long. you've seen too much shit. you've been told the bad things were coming for so long that you don't recognize it when it's at the door. it may very well turn out fine (for you) and life will go on (for you), but as others say upthread, for some people it's still the fucking civil war. to see all that and see the fears and just handwave away with a "nah" - especially one that involves not even reading or addressing what i'm fucking talking about -- it just fucking sucks. you don't tell me your life story about how your "nah" is attained from a lifetime of experience and you definitely know, it's just a "nah" when everyone else is about to get FUCKED and it's clearly telegraphed, just as the 2020 coup was clearly telegraphed, and everyone knew it and yet somehow no one knew it

more words that don't accurately describe real life, coming from me, the crazy guy who shouts at the top of his lungs at the park:

This has spawned a number of proposed laws around the country which, in essence, allow the state legislature to review the results of a presidential election and throw it out if they decide it’s not legitimate. In other words, they’ve created a legal framework to steal the election from their own state’s voters.

Things get more complicated when governors get involved. By definition governors are elected by the same statewide electorates that elect presidents. This was a key issue in 2020. In five of the key states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona) Republicans controlled the legislatures. But in the three northern states Democrats had elected the governors. Arizona had a Republican governor but a Democratic secretary of state, who runs the elections. This is why Trump was so uniquely focused on Georgia. It was the one state with a close result where Republicans controlled everything. Everyone in a position of power was subject to the career-destroying bullying Trump can bring to bear on Republicans.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-road-to-the-stolen-2024-election

they've always done that, though. the whole thing where no matter what the results are, they contest them and then it's up to GOP appointed stooges to do the right thing. the republic will stand another 1000 years!!

Nobody's waving this away. Watching secretaries of state question the results is how the GOP may win in 2022 and 2024 -- which is why a bloody revolution is unnecessary.

i won't copy and paste the handwaves, but the hands are waving

in my circle of friends and confidants, i see this over and over. there are seemingly lots of people who have accepted the idea that the fascist state is coming, and there's not much that can be done about. and also there are lots of people (i think) who do not accept this at all, and kind of think it's funny actually. these are usually people who have the resources to protect themselves from what they don't think is going to happen, anyway. and somehow, i feel like a rare individual who is actually really bothered, to the point that it is frightening, and ALSO, i don't believe it is inevitable, and ALSO, i WILL be the guy who goes down swinging against this shit, and no i WON'T accept it. i don't know if i have a displaced savior complex from my churchgoing years, but i refuse to be part of a huge group that just takes it and doesn't fight back. and yet, most of the problem is just accepting that something is deeply wrong here

Whoa oh
Nando's is the chicken that is portuguese
Whoa oh

My marxist ass says IMO the only way we get another civil war is if capital splits into two large opposing factions whose means of making money are incompatible with each other to the point that they are forced into physical conflict. At that point they will come up with the propaganda they need to try and get people fighting. I can't really think of any divisions among the US's capitalist class that could blow up to that level any time soon though.

More likely I'd expect a slow (and perhaps eventually rapid) slide into more authoritarian government as climate collapse becomes more obvious. Maybe we'll start seeing (justified) ecoterrorism followed by a brutal overreaction.

I suppose some sectors of capital might start losing their means of income due to climate change sooner than others and that could spur on conflict among the elites. That could cause some weird friction.

civil war is also geographical as much as factional, and i just don't see a majority of people reorganizing geographically en masse (even my famously leftish home in the PNW is still only like 60/40 blue), and definitely not getting into, like, murdering their neighbors' families anytime soon. i love my goofy idiot trump-obsessed neighbor who helps me with my plumbing and electrical shit. we talk about sports when he comes by, or the other day he asked me about the guy who's winning all those jeopardy games. up close people are less abstract and harder to hate.

The biggest issue with the scenario posited in the OP is: what do you do? What do I do? That scenario is predicated upon all of the usual mechanisms of change accessible to the Little People (i.e. voting, protesting, calling your congressperson) being rendered moot. I'm an increasingly doughy middle aged dude with no money or weapons or fighting ability so that's a world even less suited to my temperament than the current one. I mean, I'll look out for my loved ones and neighbors as best I can, but...it's just a nightmare made flesh. It might happen, it might not. I have enough trouble many days getting to bedtime without collapsing from the weight of it all. I don't bother worrying too much these days about what I'm personally going to do if GOP gamesmanship works out (even more) in their favor because that's not a scenario I'm gonna have the juice to reckon with.

Console vs pc

Karl it's not that I "don't recognize it" (and that's actually really fucking insulting, check yourself dude), I have actually been through the same fears you had with the same intensity, AND THEY NEVER HAPPENED

at the same time, OF COURSE things are worse now. that's how it happens. as per Philip K. Dick (who, I may suggest, you need to read or re-read if you still don't get this), all we need to do in our lives is carry whatever bits of light forward that we can. taking on the worry of the larger picture leads straight to hell. stop doing it. it's not your responsibility to mourn humanity, live your life.

that's what I'm coming around to

In the '70s, the US saw a couple of thousand bombings and 100+ airplane hijackings. The center held (by held, I mean it lurched right) and things continued on getting a bit worse year by year.

The capacity of average people to get along with a bit of political violence is immense, so long as most can pay their rent/mortgage and enjoy a couple of luxuries here and there.

xpost, i hear you sleeve, and you're right in the sense that i need to check it. it is an insult - one i didn't intend, but still real, and one that i was complaining about the other day on some thread. i thought people just thought i was a complete fool. so i get that, i'm sorry. i'm not trying to turn into a 'sheeple!' person

i've been reading the exegesis of pkd on my toilet for several years and it's funny, i've never tried to connect any of it to my current situation. i love pkd though. to me it is things like his layering of 1st century rome on top of today's world that mesmerizes me. i like to just think about that.

things get worse, that's an easy money prediction, but the ways they get worse aren't always linear, even if they seem to have been for a long time. things that have been sliding steadily but slowly south can suddenly break entirely. systems are often at their most complex just before the collapse. house of cards, interlocking systems crumbling, etc.

Things can get worse, things can improve, it's happened like that for thousands of years.

I mean, not that I think human beings have thousands of years left but you get the idea.

i will try to no longer "talk" on this thread but i bet i will occasionally still post links, including ones like this that are meant to be reassuring

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/24/why-the-fear-of-trump-may-be-overblown-514270

i know the thread title and concept is horrible and will prevent people from having a good conversation about this. partly because i put "civil war 2" in the title like a complete idiot, and no matter what, people will skip directly to that idea, rather than the more plausible ones people are talking about upthread. i think that's important to talk about, even if it's a discussion that doesn't include me.

i am sorry for, just, generally the way i've been recently. i agree that thinking about this stuff doesn't really help, and being on my computer doesn't really help because that's where the news is, too.

For good or ill, I agree with you more than almost any other currently active political poster.

(truly, it is for ill, at least for personal mental and probably physical health reasons. but thank you)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i-voted.gif

I note that the author of essay quoted in the OP is Robert Kagan (from Wikipedia:) "an American neoconservative scholar, critic of U.S. foreign policy, and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism. A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, he is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution."

Besides publicly wringing his hands in a WaPo OpEd I haven't really detected any of the institutions he is intimately connected to loudly broadcasting these dire warnings as if they really believed violent mass civil discord and the dissolution of democratic government was imminent. It's the progressive left that keeps ringing those warning bells against rising fascism. You'd think such concerns, if sincerely believed, would be worth more than an OpEd.

…cars and dogs living together, mass hysteria.

-cars- cats

2024

How many of these ppl are winning tomorrow?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/01/us-election-deniers-trump-big-lie-republican-midterm-candidates-running

All of them

Civil war 2

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I like that there's a vote for last year and two votes for this year.

Time's a wastin', civil warriors! Get on it!

Civil war 2 fast 2 furious