US ‘closer to civil war’ than most would like to believe, new book says | Hacker News Reader

US ‘closer to civil war’ than most would like to believe, new book says

theguardian.com

48 pointsvanusa133 comments

I think the idea that we are in a unique time of civil strife is a myth.

From the actual Civil War, to the militant labor movement, to the first red scare, to McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement, to the anti-Vietnam war movement, American civil life has been defined by conflict.

Maybe social media allows conflict to be persistently on the top of people's minds. While in previous years one may have enjoyed the privilege of conflict not following you home, following you on vacation, and following you to the toilet.

The barricades aren't in the street, they're in your Facebook groups or Twitter threads, and they need to be persistently manned in order to ensure territory isn't lost to the other side.

But internet flame wars and real civil wars are not equivalent. Yes, there's always been some level of civil strife in America, just as there has in every country, at every moment in history. People argue, often angrily. But, it's not until there is actual, physical violence that it becomes a civil war. The question is, are we close to an organized faction taking up arms against the state? Anything short of that is interesting in its own way, sociologically and culturally, but it is not a civil war.

> American civil life has been defined by conflict.

How many times has the Capitol been stormed? How many times has it been possible for a party representing a clear minority of citizens (however defined) to gain or hold on to power via gerrymandering, rejection of votes, or state-legislative nullification of results? When, in the past, has it been possible and to a large extent legal for corporations and hostile foreign powers to influence our elections in a significant way? At least some things that are happening now are unprecedented (even if we disagree on the exact set).

Also, please note that the authors have actually studied what other changes act as precursors to civil war throughout the world. Perhaps we shouldn't put our own intuition above that, without at least considering the evidence they present.

> How many times has the Capitol been stormed?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_violent_and_danger...

So, not many. I didn't use "stormed" by accident. It means an armed group forcing their way past defenders into contested territory. A lone crazy doesn't count. An internal altercation doesn't count. Those are violent, but not storming, and AFAICT the last incident of that was 1814. Thanks for proving my point about how exceptional January 6 was.

None of the people who entered the Capitol were armed, at least according to the charges brought by prosecutors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_charges_in_the_2021_U...), and the only person shot that day was a rioter. I don't blame you for having misconceptions though, legacy media coverage of this topic has been absolutely abysmal.

None of them had firearms you mean. The claim that they weren't armed is a transparent lie. There is a lot of video showing them carrying and using weapons of various sorts.

> None of them had firearms you mean

At least one person is charged with both having a firearm at the riot and disorderly conduct in Capitol building, so even that is wrong.

> None of the people who entered the Capitol were armed

False:

(1) several people were charged for having and using weapons within the Capitol [0], and

(2) Even if none were specifically charged with using weapons, that would not support “None were armed...according to charges” only “None were charged with being armed”

[0] from: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases

Zachary Jordan Alam with Remaining in a Restricted Building with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon, and with Engaging in Physical Violence in a Restricted Building with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon;

Christopher Michael Alberts with both firearms offenses and disorderly conduct within a Capitol Building (note that while some of the firearms offenses were in the initial complaint and statement of facts, the full combination including disorderly conduct inside the Capitol is in the Second Superceding Indictment—the third version of the charges based on additional information.)

...and that's not even the whole way through the A’s.

When I said armed, it's pretty clear by context that I was referring to firearms. And fair enough, the Wikipedia page appears to be out of date, as it does look like Alberts and Ibrahim were charged with having firearms on Capitol grounds. Although Ibrahim was a DEA agent who was charged for LARPing and doing a photoshoot of himself in front of the Capitol with his DEA badge and gun, so that's going to be an entertaining one for the government to explain.

Still, your characterization of this as an "armed group" is also false, as a couple individual idiots bringing firearms to a riot is obviously entirely different than an organized squad "storming" the Capitol. One shot was fired during the entire event, and one person was killed, and that was a rioter, not a cop or a politician.

I don't have much sympathy for that crowd of idiots, but it is concerning how this event has been exaggerated into 9/11 2.0, providing an excellent excuse to crack down on civil liberties just as the justification of Islamic terrorism has receded.

> When I said armed, it's pretty clear by context that I was referring to firearms.

Yes, but that’s not what “armed” normally means, or what it was used upthread to mean, and a counterargument where you redefine terms to mean something else... isn't a counterargument, but closer to an admission.

> Alberts and Ibrahim were charged with having firearms on Capitol grounds.

Alberts was immediately charged with having a firearm on the grounds; the recent change is the charge of disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.

> Although Ibrahim was a DEA agent who was charged for LARPing and doing a photoshoot of himself in front of the Capitol with his DEA badge and gun

He was not charged with LARPing; nothing in the charges indicates he was not a serious participant.

> so that's going to be an entertaining one for the government to explain.

I don't see what’s entertaining about it, or how its any different than the handful of active duty service members charged. Yes, the government holds people accountable even when they work for the government.

> Still, your characterization of this as an "armed group" is also false

It wasn't my characterization, but it's also not false. It was a group, and they brought, forcibly stole, and used a wide variety of weapons..

> couple individual idiots bringing firearms to a riot is obviously entirely different than an organized squad "storming" the Capitol.

Among the very large groups storming the Capitol were several organized squads (the overall size of the group was much more than squad size, somewhere in the brigade-division-corps range.)

> Although Ibrahim was a DEA agent who was charged for LARPing and doing a photoshoot of himself in front of the Capitol

That behavior does sound like substance abuse.

It's possible to wordsmith a anything into a tiny set of just one truly unique thing. People do this with subjects such as intelligence, gods, and favorite athletes all the time. While this rhetoric tugs on my heart, it has no effect on truth value of any claim.

If you blame everything that is bad on your political opponent as a group, you make yourself a tool for others to be exploited. And political parties will do that in any case. Not because they are evil, this is just the dynamics of public relations, elections or not, democracy or not.

I think the Business Plot was closer to civil war than any of those.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

Good counterpoint in this recent article in The Atlantic [1].

"Yet my father’s fears [of civil war in Northern Ireland] were not fulfilled. There was a horrible, 30-year conflict that brought death to thousands and varying degrees of misery to millions. There was terrible cruelty and abysmal atrocity. There were decades of despair in which it seemed impossible that a polity that had imploded could ever be rebuilt. But the conflict never did rise to the level of civil war."

"These prophecies have a way of being self-fulfilling."

"However, the belief that there was going to be a civil war in Ireland made everything worse. Once that idea takes hold, it has a force of its own. The demagogues warn that the other side is mobilizing. They are coming for us. Not only do we have to defend ourselves, but we have to deny them the advantage of making the first move. The logic of the preemptive strike sets in: Do it to them before they do it to you."

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/america...

From 2011-2015 we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and I read the vast majority (if not all) of the NY Times' excellent "Disunion" series on the war.

What struck me most was that at the onset of fighting, virtually everyone on both sides could agree on one thing: there was not going to be a prolonged conflict, because the other side had no real reason to fight. To a Northerner, it seemed ridiculous that working-class Southerners would die so a handful of planters could keep slaves. To a Southerner, it seemed ridiculous that any white Northerner would die to free Black slaves that had legally been born into bondage. Paradoxically, these beliefs seemed to be instrumental in driving the war, as both sides believed the other would come to their senses and lay down arms any day now.

I do believe this is a danger that we face today, where the belief that civil war is impossible keeps driving us toward it.

Call me cynical, but if you were a serious analyst who actually believed there was a reasonable chance of a civil war, your most responsible and effective move would not be to write a book and promote it. Not even in 1982, but certainly not in 2022. On the other hand, if you wanted to sell books, a good way to do it would be to tap into the current political tension by making a massive, attention-grabbing claim that can't be disproved for several years. Now, that would be hugely irresponsible, but I bet somebody out there would do it.

Oh? What would be a better strategy than calling out a public warning?

"closer to civil war than most would like to believe" is almost certainly true.

"close to civil war" is probably not true at all

Jan 6 was a violent attack on congress in an attempt to stop ratification of a fair election. People died in the attack. The instigator remains free and is rallying support. A major party is backing him. That party is actively supporting the lie that the election was stolen, undermining confidence in our democracy in close to half of our voters.

There will likely be more violence following the next election. How much closer to civil war will it get before you want to call it “close to civil war”?

Would you send a large amount of cash through the U.S. postal service? Just curious.

I'd say (more) violent civil conflict is a certainty at this point. Nearly the entire Republican party has reorganized around the concept of "if we win, good, if they win, they stole our country". That mindset has already led to violence and that mindset grows stronger every day.

But an actual civil war, and the sacrifices and consequences that come with it, seems far fetched in light of the fact that we are still a comfortable place to live and most people have a lot to lose and little to gain by killing their neighbor.

> Nearly the entire Republican party has reorganized around the concept of "if we win, good, if they win, they stole our country".

It's not like the other side is totally immune to this, either. There used to be a very real sentiment among Democrat-leaning politically-involved activists that the 2016 election had been "stolen" from them and that they would never acknowledge Trump as a legitimate president. You would even see echoes of this mindset in press outlets like the NY Times. Of course those folks didn't march on the Capitol like the other side did post-2020, and I'll gladly praise them for that choice.

The difference between some Democrats reaction to the 2016 election and the widespread (and growing) Republican reaction to the 2020 election is about as wide as the Grand Canyon. Or a few Grand Canyons. Even attempting to compare them seems deeply disingenuous. Trump still hasn't even conceded.

I'm taking a far left example because i don't want my argumentation to fall under partisan lines.

In the 70s, we lived in europe under the threat of the RAF [0], that was born out of a mix of misery, anger, violent radicality supported by the public and by some politics.

Once the terrorist attacks and the violent actions against people stated, there was an unanimous condemnation from all political parties, including the communist party (at least in France), and from activist groups, including some that would now be called "antifa" (autodefense and protection groups against "ratonnades" and other urban occupation groups).

With support from a part of the population, the RAF grew and convinced more and more people. Without a firm condemnation from the affiliated political party/activist groups, i'm not sure the group would've come down as easily.

That's why i think that as long as people in power support the extremists, they will perform extreme actions. In this case, this is the Republican party job to crash down on violence against people (idc about broken windows in the House tbh).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

No we're not.

Division is being fostered by social media ("rage = engagement") and the news media through articles such as this. People lean center and are tired of the fringes.

If both parties got rid of the extreme elements, everything would be boring again.

> If both parties got rid of the extreme elements, everything would be boring again.

This is the key isn't it? Do we observe anything happening on this end recently? What we observed in the last decades, is the opposite.

It's not even the key, the premise is flawed. The Democrats are pretty much just trucking along like usual, while the Republicans are embracing the end of democracy itself.

While fundamentally true, I think this is an oversimplification. I don't think you need the majority of people to be "extreme elements" to have a low-grade civil war.

One of those extremes literally tried to stage a coup d'état, and is in the process of doing its best to stack the deck for the next elections. Social media or not, their intentions, and the support they get, is pretty clear, and the two-party model makes opposition hard. It's entirely plausible that next time they get farther in their attempts, which triggers an agressive response from people against that.

> literally tried to stage a coup

They did indeed! However, the results were mostly just pathetic. The unfortunate thing is that the President himself tried to play along with it, and best chance for significant escalation would be if the President manages to be re-elected in three years' time — which is not the most likely outcome but is still actually distressingly credible — and does more to lay the groundwork during his term in office.

> However, the results were mostly just pathetic.

It was closer to working than you'd think. It looks pathetic until it works.

> The unfortunate thing is that the President himself tried to play along with it

That's generous wording.

I have doubts it was close to working! It was close to placing Congresspeople at risk of life and limb, and it was a little bit further from being a hostage situation. A standoff with the National Guard, or the military itself, following such a hostage-taking, would have been very unfortunate.

But disrupting the continuity of government would take a good deal more than that. A real, non-sad coup attempt would have sent the military in there to support the crazies, or at the very least, a quasi-organized group of armed men who could set up some defensible position. Instead we saw mostly maniacs looting the speaker's podium.

> That's generous wording.

If you're assessing his intentions, yes, but while his act of "oh look I'm doing plausible deniability, I'm not organzing any coup" was weak, so was any organization he actually did. The risk is that next time people might learn from these mistakes.

(The other risk is a counter-coup crackdown like Turkey, which cracks down on the opposition and purges them from both the public and private sphere, as enemies of the state. Our due-process is still a little too strong for that to work right now, fortunately, and any attempts to that end that may exist are pretty marginal.)

> A real, non-sad coup would have sent the military in there to support the crazies, or at the very least, a quasi-organized counterforce which could set up some defensible position. Instead, we got maniacs looting the speaker's podium.

That's not the only way to succeed. Occupying the Capitol alone would indeed not have done anything.

If they had managed to prevent the certification of the vote, however, and thrown the question to the House, that's success. (unlike usual votes, the one for this is one-vote-per-state in the House, yes US democracy is organized fucking cray-cray).

It wasn't closer to doing anything. If they had stopped the certification process, the election and changer still would have continued.

If the election isn't certified, they could have pushed on states more to have some pretense of not counting the electors. Without 270 electors for Biden, it goes to the House for a one-vote-per-state vote.

Jan 6 was practice. They know where the weaknesses are now and next time they'll more fully exploit them.

One party attempted a coup and no organizers have yet even been charged with any crimes. If you allow the basic system of government to be attacked without repercussion, that's not going to have a peaceful end.

Social media and "the news media" may be part of our issues, but they're not the whole of them.

If by "attempted a coup" you mean "walked calmly into an otherwise empty building after police let them in", then yes. The whole thing is a joke once you dig into it, all propaganda to try and make people scared of each other. We even had elected leadership lying about being on premises when it happened (Cortez).

"United we stand, divided we fall", and the goal of most media rhetoric is to divide. Don't trust the "it was a coup" rhetoric. Dig in, take a look at the footage of what happened at the capitol. Don't take the media's word for it.

Some people in Jan 6 assaulted capital guard and chased people into private areas of Congress. But I don’t think they had any chance of overturning the election.

All they needed to do, and what the plan was, was to disrupt the proceedings and get more time.

More time for what? They left quickly and peacefully when asked. Wasn’t much of a plan. definitely not evidence of a strong desire to do what it takes.

Their goal was to prevent the certification of the vote, and to pressure Pence to assist with that.

They wanted to throw it back to the states, have them do more "review" or give different electors.

If nobody can convincingly be said to have the required number of electoral votes, the US House decides, with each state getting one vote.

> They left quickly and peacefully when asked

Oh? Then what is anyone being charged with and convicted for exactly?

They finally left vaguely once Trump asked, because he was forced into it, it hadn't worked, and public pressure had risen.

> Oh? Then what is anyone being charged with and convicted for exactly?

Importantly, there are very few being charged with anything. Not everyone, but a very few people.

Also note the presence of undercover FBI on premises as members of alt-right groups [0].

[0] https://republicandaily.com/2021/07/confirmed-undercover-age... <-- The editorial is left to the end of the summary of news events. I really, really wish we could go back to a world of just reporting and not editorializing.

Last I checked there are ~700 people being charged (or already convicted). How is that "very few", what are we comparing against?

I don't get what the rest of your comment is about, you'll have to spell it out for me. The feds _should_ be targetting these far-right extremists. They've shown themselves to be violent threats to society and democracy.

I’ve seen about an hour footage and it doesn’t tell the narrative you’re trying to tell.

They came armed, attacked police and guards, broke in, had tools and plans necessary to kidnap and assassinate members of congress and Pence, had maps of where to go, there were organized groups hiding their presence, had plans with some members of congress, etc.

You are at _best_ completely misinformed.

For what it's worth, many of the capitol rioters have been charged. Not nearly enough though. Trump/Guiliani probably deserve to be in prison and that's unlikely to happen.

At this point one of our few chances is the investigation in the House being done well and the media reporting it well. Neither one is a given, I'm especially pessimistic about the latter.

A bunch of boomers stealing stuff off Pelosi's desk and posting selfies with #patriot on Instagram is not a coup. It was sad and pathetic, not an attempted coup. If it was, it was the worst one planned in history. A bunch of people show up, mostly unarmed and stand around and take pictures and shout 'mericaaaa a bunch of times.

They had a zero percent chance of taking over the government. Do you seriously think that a bunch Q-cultists that didn't even fire a single shot could take over the US government?

What they did was not OK, but it's clearly not what you are making it out to be.

Those people ARE facing repercussions. Many of them are facing prosecution. We should avoid this type of partisan rhetoric. I know it's a nice talking point to call it a coup and all and helps get clicks, but let's look at things as they actually happened.

The system IS working (these folks are going to court) and hyperbole only leads to more division.

It's a coup when it's planned and assisted by Trump and his cronies.

The "system" is doing a poor job so far of punishing anyone but the useful idiots.

What would have Trump done if the certification was delayed? He certainly wouldn't have made a public statement that Joe Biden won a fair election and would be president on Jan 20. He's still claiming the election was stolen.

Agreed, most people are far more reasonable in person than social media would like us to believe/click on. I figure even 80% of the more "radical" people would be a lot more to center if they talked to real people instead of stuck in outrage loops designed to have them view as many ads as possible.

The fact that people perceive polarization and extremism will cause rise to polarization and extremism.

Disagree, I think we are in an extremely dangerous situation. One party tried to stage a coup, and is still claiming the election was stolen. Just because the coupe failed doesn't mean we're safe. Polls show widespread distrust about American elections, and a significant portion of the Republican party believes Trump should be president.

The coup was pathetic, but what would have happened if the riot had delayed the presidential election being certified?

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry helped cause the American civil war two years later. He and most of his raiders were quickly caught and executed. But the trial turned Brown into a martyr in the north and motivated the South to form the Confederacy.

I think Brown's raid was a moral action, and the Jan 6th coup was an attack on American democracy. I'm not very confident that the justice system will hold the planners accountable, or that it just did short term damage to our democracy.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/09/15/poll-...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/24/republicans-...

https://www.axios.com/axios-ipsos-poll-republicans-lose-trus...

> If both parties got rid of the extreme elements, everything would be boring again.

I don’t agree neither disagree with the article, but that’s a big “if”.

Extremes are more pervasive now than ever.

It would be great if we could just avoid the war part and just split. As a progressive I feel like I have no need to ever go to a conservative state and I’m sure conservatives feel the same way. Let them define the laws they want.

I agree we aren't close to civil war but it isn't as simple as saying 'get rid of extreme elements'. All "media" is specifically designed to foster faux outrage to sell more ads. When is the last time a headline wasn't worded as click-bait. As long as outrage is extremely profitable for Hatebook, Fox News, CNN and Twitter, these "fringes" aren't going anywhere.

The belief that we're on the brink of civil war only makes things worse...

"Once that idea takes hold, it has a force of its own. The demagogues warn that the other side is mobilizing. They are coming for us. Not only do we have to defend ourselves, but we have to deny them the advantage of making the first move. The logic of the preemptive strike sets in: Do it to them before they do it to you." [1] (in the context of the N Ireland troubles.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/america...

It'd be interesting, from a neutral-ish, academic, historic, curiosity perspective, to see a civil war / revolution in a developed country with a modern industrialised military. The resultant mess can get extremely deadly and hard, if not impossible, to resolve.

That being said, i do personally think a revolution in the US has been coming for quite some and is needed to fix the broken political system ( two party model, winner take all, gerrymandering, electoral college, appointed judges, mind boggling fetishisation of an obsolete document, remnants of slavery, to name just a few). I do sincerely hope it happens as bloodlessly as possible.

(I'm currently listening to the Revolutions podcast, specifically about the Russian Revolution and resultant civil war, and i find it fascinating. Living in such historic moments ( like a pandemic) feels weird. You're there while history is being written, and heck, you might be an active participant! A blessing and a curse).

How modern and industrialized? Syria is a real country with MiGs and submarines.

True, but i meant a country modern and industrialised on the level of the US or Western Europe. Drones, nuclear weapons, everything digital and stuff more so than MiGs and submarines ( the latter are of somewhat limited use in a civil war, bar denying the other part supplies from overseas)

The idea that we're that different than Syria (or many other examples one could name) is just a form of exceptionalism.

Turkish drones have seen wide use in Syria. I am not keeping up with the situation, but for instance:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-dron...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2020/03/02/idli...

Nuclear weapons are 100% irrelevant to a potential civil war in the United States. It's not North vs. South, it's Red vs Blue, and the physical boundaries are impossible to define - the ideologues are far too evenly distributed. Even in the deepest Red areas of the country, an airburst would murder 20-30% of your own side. That's a level of collateral damage that would be unacceptable to either side.

Drones could be useful for more surgical actions, but they would be extremely reliant on accurate intelligence, which would be difficult to gather and verify in this type of theater of war. The failures of the US military to hold Afghanistan would be even more magnified at home. I don't think any of our traditional or modern military hardware would be particularly useful in an actual civil war.

I've been through a civil war in a developed country with modern industrialized military. It's just a curse.

> the broken political system ( two party model, winner take all, gerrymandering, electoral college, appointed judges, mind boggling fetishisation of an obsolete document, remnants of slavery, to name just a few)

two party model: while the two party model isn't ideal it's not always been as divisive as it is right now since ~2016. There are steps we could take at the state level that would over time make this better.

winner take all: Our system is designed to have a relatively powerful head of state while also enforcing severe limitations. The constitution mostly accomplishes this by giving the president the military but not the budget. In principle this is a difficult balance to get right. Too much power to the president and there is a run-away effect where limitations get sidestepped over time. Too little power and the federation eventually breaks apart (imagine Lincoln accepting the confederacy without a fight).

gerrymandering: This is also hard to get right. It is indicative of systemic problems that politicians can't reach an agreement that would more universally curb this undemocratic practice but it's easy to condemn these practices and much harder to propose airtight alternative solutions.

electoral college: there are pros and cons. The pros are that it works to balance power between population centers and vast rural areas by giving a slight boost to unpopulated areas over the population centers. The cons are obviously that the result of this leads to elections that are slightly off from a 'popular' vote. Feel free to dislike the rule but it is debatable at the very least.

Appointed judges: yes they're appointed at the federal level (there's a deep history to this aspect of the three branches of government), but states do it differently. In my area most of my judges by case load are elected officials.

obsolete document: again, it's easy to criticize but hard to offer alternatives that would work better. I'm weary of the lazy attempts to tear institutions down while not recognizing their incredible value. Remember this has been the defining document outlining our system of government since King George III.

Remnants of slavery: what country doesn't deal with problems stemming from its past sins? How would some sort of revolution help to fix this?

I'd have to hard disagree.

> two party model: while the two party model isn't ideal it's not always been as divisive as it is right now since ~2016. There are steps we could take at the state level that would over time make this better.

Is this really the best excuse you have? It hasn't always been this bad? Are there any legitimate reasons to want or keep a two party system? That the people benefiting from it don't want it to change is a very poor excuse, and honestly i can't think of another one.

> winner take all: Our system is designed to have a relatively powerful head of state while also enforcing severe limitations. The constitution mostly accomplishes this by giving the president the military but not the budget. In principle this is a difficult balance to get right. Too much power to the president and there is a run-away effect where limitations get sidestepped over time. Too little power and the federation eventually breaks apart (imagine Lincoln accepting the confederacy without a fight)

I meant winner of a single election take all, disenfranchising anyone who didn't vote for the winner. E.g. a senator elected with 45% against another candidate with 30% represents only the 45% of the electorate who voted for them, the rest be damned. Obviously that's ridiculously stupid, and makes it so people in areas overwhelmingly disagreeing with them don't even bother voting, and aren't represented by anyone.

> gerrymandering

It's not that hard to get right, go proportional at a fixed predefined level - like a state. 10 representatives from the state, state-level elections, and the places are proportionally distributed per list/party by percent of votes.

> electoral college: there are pros and cons. The pros are that it works to balance power between population centers and vast rural areas by giving a slight boost to unpopulated areas over the population centers. The cons are obviously that the result of this leads to elections that are slightly off from a 'popular' vote. Feel free to dislike the rule but it is debatable at the very least.

To stop disenfranchising a part of the population ( rural areas), it drastically disenfranchises the vast majority of the population ( urban areas). Rural areas are already overrepresented by virtue of the fixed number of senators per state. I think that's more than enough, but i agree, it's debatable. However what's not debatable is applying the ridiculously stupid winner take all logic for that.

> Judges

I'm not saying elected judges are better than appointed by the executive, because both are pretty bad. Popular judges aren't necessarily the best ones. A mixed system whereby other judges, prosecutors and lawyers vote seems better, but that's certainly debatable.

> Slavery & constitution

Few countries explicitly allow slavery in their constitution. Or have their system of governance proportional based on number of slaves (3/5s, electoral college distribution). Most countries are capable of realising and admitted bad things, and working on making them impossible ( see Germany). The document is obsolete ( as you said yourself, it literally dates from a different time, a time with kings, slaves, the fastest travel method being a horse or a boat, literacy being rare, etc.) and needs to be rewritten before being torn down.

Few countries explicitly allow slavery in their constitution...Most countries are capable of realising and admitted bad things, and working on making them impossible

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution[0] abolished slavery back in 1789:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/

That's an amendment, the original constitution and other legal statutes ( e.g. 3/5 compromise) explicitly allow it and discuss it.

Furthermore, did you miss the except part in that 13th amendement? Slavery is still legal in the US, that has to be the only country that is considered developed and still does that.

Be careful what you wish for. The alternatives to the two party system are:

1. Less internally democratic parties with more side-show parties like the UK. You'd probably end up with 3 or 4 parties with name recognition, one of which acted as a kind of protest vote and occasionally came near enough to winning to be interesting, but which in reality never did. It would mean giving up things like presidential primaries.

2. PR. Look at European politics closely before deciding you want that. It's a recipe for not having a functioning/elected government for months or even a year+ after an election. In a system with elections every 4 years that'd lead to a situation where most of the time there wasn't actually any legitimate government at all and power would shift even more decisively to the civil service. There'd also be frequent collapses of government, and changes in government unconnected to any election.

3. Totalitarianism. The less said about this the better.

The US has a two party system because both Democrat and Republican parties are extremely broad and loose coalitions, so it basically never makes sense to try creating a new party instead of taking over one of the existing ones. Hence people like Trump, Bernie Sanders, etc who aren't even really connected to their host parties at all. Americans like to complain about the two party system but also like to complain about primary elections getting fixed by the party machine. Well, get rid of your current system and you're going to just formalize and institutionalize that party machine, in return for a couple more parties that most people won't vote for.

The US system has its flaws but it's not obviously worse than the alternatives. It's different, but both UK style Parliamentary systems and European style PR systems create different problems.

I’m probably biased, but European proportional representation seems to me much better than the bipolar mess of US and UK politics.

It’s true, Belgium went through a long period of not having a majority government... mind you they still had one, just without major power. But that was a major exception.

Otherwise, since it is rare that one party grabs a majority of seats on its own, it requires compromise searching. It makes big strategic moves harder, and everything is indeed a bit slower, but also less extreme and more predictable.

Parties can’t carve out their niche simply by being more extreme, so you get more of a middle ground even before you get to elections.

But also, other than various quirks of casting floats to ints, if a decision goes through parliament, it means it has the support of (MPs as of election time representing) the majority of the society. As opposed some strange nonlinear function thereof.

It's not really a bit slower. It's a lot slower. Germany has also recently gone through a long period without a legitimate government, it's not some one-off Belgian thing.

Europeans like to call what happens after an indecisive election a "caretaker government" but this is a fantasy to cover up the ugly truth - caretaker governments invariably keep ruling as if nothing had happened. They often struggle to accept that legitimacy was lost and they should do nothing, especially leftist governments that are ideologically pre-disposed to government action in the first place. Even Merkel was still turning up at global conferences and speaking for Germany months after her coalition had failed.

PR often results in bizarre, unwieldy and politically contradictory coalitions, like libertarians trying to make alliances with hard-left Greens. Hence the popularity of flag-colour names for German coalitions. The resulting governments are unstable, yield completely incoherent policymaking and frequently collapse.

In places that don't have this problem they've often evolved other deeply questionable workarounds. Switzerland has some semi-formalized mechanism for dishing out cabinet seats across parties (literally called the "magic formula"), with the result that the government is run by people who fundamentally disagree on the most critical and foundational issues of government. Worse, they constantly pretend that they don't really disagree (collective responsibility), and that this state of affairs is normal. It normalizes and institutionalizes lying to voters about their actual beliefs. The result is a federal politics that feels fake and the whole thing becomes unaccountable because the politicians end up being more loyal to each other than their voters (e.g. Berset scandals, what happened to Blocher).

I used to favour PR and thought it would be an improvement over the Parliamentary or US systems. These days I'm much more ambivalent. PR systems look more democratic on the surface but when you look at how they actually behave, I think they actually create perverse incentives. For example, the business of coalition building is pushed to politicians instead of voters themselves, although a stable society ultimately requires coalitions and understanding between citizens.

It's interesting. I actually didn't notice that Germany didn't have a government (it's news to me, I need to do some research).

Why did I not notice? Well, the country is functioning perfectly well. They have a coherent foreign policy. They have a coherent domestic one. A lot of their functions are devolved to local governments, so you're not relying on some centralised behemoth for everything. They are tackling Covid, I'm sure many would argue whether their decisions are right, but they are certainly efficient at implementing what they intent to do.

Germany, despite all the tropes about their efficiency, is also very bureaucratic, which affects government more than other things.

If I look at outcomes in genuinely democratic countries, I think UK and US - prime two-party democracies - come out top for dysfunctional politics.

Perhaps one misconception is that governments need to spur a constant revolution. I'd much rather see governments with stable policy, which simply keep the barrel rolling down the tracks. In that respect, the "bizzare" coalitions are a good thing - change only happens when there is broad support for it. Otherwise, you see one government come in and revolutionise, say, foreign policy, then another comes in and turns it all around again.

You point our various failures of proportional representation, I could do the same for first-past-the-post two-party politics:

- Polarisation of politics. Both parties have an incentive to pull to the extremes, almost without bound, because the only differentiation is against "the other side".

- Disconnect between popular support and the voting game. This is particularly painful in two-party systems, because the winner can easily have the minority of popular support. This used to happen regularly in the UK through "gerrymandering", I believe it happens in US in presidential elections. So you have a democratic process where the most popular candidate... loses?

- Compromise-building only happens within parties, not between parties (rare exceptions excluded). To push something through, the party needs to trade horses with its own members (generally not on grounds of merit), as opposed to with other parties (where there is scope, at least, for policy horse trading). It can go wrong in any system, but I think it is more prevalent in two-party systems. See the running joke about how every major US government project ends up with financing split among all US states, because senators all want a piece of the pie.

- Voters have almost no way to express political preferences. You can vote for 2 candidates, one of whom generally represents the opposite of your views. The idea of voting for a person, not party, is illusory IMO: MPs generally vote with their party, so it's voting for a party anyway. In proportional representation, at least you can express some mild preference as to which candidate from your party should go in, not in first-past-the-post. Whereas in proportional representation, minor parties totally can get votes, and can totally be a channel for voter preference, then in a coalition push their agenda through. This is not a bug, it's a feature.

To restate, despite appearances, European politics are rather boring and keep the lights on. The exceptions - Italy for a while or Spanish secession are so notable precisely because they are exceptions.

UK Brexit process (regardless of whether it should have happened or not) was an embarassing shitshow, US frequently is on the verge of bankrupting itself, and seems to have produced a society where two roughly equal halves hate each other.

> Or have their system of governance proportional based on number of slaves (3/5s, electoral college distribution).

Uh... you do realize that 3/5 hasn't been true for close to two centuries now? You sound like you're just grasping for something to complain about.

> Most countries are capable of realising and admitted bad things, and working on making them impossible ( see Germany).

We did. See the US Civil War.

> The document is obsolete ( as you said yourself, it literally dates from a different time, a time with kings, slaves, the fastest travel method being a horse or a boat, literacy being rare, etc.) and needs to be rewritten before being torn down.

You've argued that it's old. That doesn't make it obsolete - that's something different.

You sound like people who want to re-write their program in the new shiny language, just because it's new and shiny. That's a terribly wasteful idea. If it's broken (not just old), then fix what's broken.

> Uh... you do realize that 3/5 hasn't been true for close to two centuries now? You sound like you're just grasping for something to complain about.

Isn't the 3/5s still used as the basis for the number of representatives and electoral college members? If not, i'm sorry, i was mistaken.

> We did. See the US Civil War.

Which then resulted in Jim Crow laws and segregation, which only ended a century after said Civil War, and the effects are still visible today. Furthermore, slavery is still legal as a form of punishment.

> You've argued that it's old. That doesn't make it obsolete - that's something different.

I mentioned all the things i consider obsolete, like the broken political system. I can add a few more - slavery being legal, an electoral college existing, the current "Equal Rights Amendment" which still hasn't passed, the serious link between religion and government ( swearing on a bible counts for something), plenty of others.

The document is obsolete because it is old, doesn't contain things which are the norm in any developed country's constitution ( like equal rights between men and women), and carries significant baggage. It's like saying an old COBOL program, which has many patches for many bugs and many things it did wrong, but kind of functions, is a black box that can't be monitored, etc. needs to be rewritten in a modern language with modern tooling. There are things that are wrong with the old one, and so much so it merits a complete rewrite.

> Isn't the 3/5s still used as the basis for the number of representatives and electoral college members? If not, i'm sorry, i was mistaken.

No. That was removed, by amendment, right after the Civil War. That language is no longer part of the Constitution.

So this gets to the question of what to do with that crufty old COBOL program. How many bugs are you going to introduce by re-writing it? How many interfaces to other programs are you going to break? Sure, it's a pain to patch it - it's difficult and time-consuming. But re-writing it has a lot of downside, even though programmers keep assuming that it will be easy and painless...

I agree that there are problems that should be debated, solutions proposed, agreed on and implemented. What I disagree on are:

1. That a revolution would help the above process occur (namely solutions proposed/agreed on specifically). Just governance is about balance and this is incredibly hard to achieve in a vacuum if history is our guide.

2. That the problems are insurmountable. This depends on what insurmountable means. I mean that we can make progress on these issues over time using the framework of constitutional democracy. States as recently as 2018 [1] have moved towards ranked based voting.

3. That slavery is part of our constitution. 160 years ago they fought a bitter war that culminated in the outlaw of slavery. Are you arguing for reparations? That's very different from saying that slavery is baked into the constitution.

[1] https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/rankedchoicefaq....

Regarding 1, in my personal opinion the status quo seems way too entrenched. As you mention in 2, bandaids are being applied ( ranked choice voting is better than first past the post, but doesn't really fix most of the issues with US elections like gerrymandering, winner take all elections, dual party system, electoral college, unlimited campaign funding, etc.). The two parties and "establishment" have very little interest in changing things fundamentally.

Slavery is still allowed today, as punishment for a crime. The 3/5s count for stuff like the electoral college and number of house of representatives seats is still there. I'm not arguing for reparations, I think that's a whole huge debate of itself I'm not really qualified to participate in (I'm neither American nor a descendant of a slave ( more akin to colonial subjects, so quite different).

And please note, when i say revolution, I don't mean a bloody armed uprising or anything of the like, just a sudden movement for massive change. It could be brought on by a sweeping electoral victory by a reformist party, be brought upon by protests and strikes, or anything of the like.

Serious financial collapse is all it would take at this point. The minute the social safety net fails to keep people in food and heat we'll be there. The precondition is currency collapse. The traditional precedents of currency failure are already in place and the early symptoms are visible today.

It could be averted and there is sufficient time to do so. Ultimately I doubt it will be averted. The quality of citizens in the US is declining and that can't corrected prior to failure.

How do we avert currency collapse without removing the safety net? All I can think of is rapidly reducing the military budget, but the consequences of that aren't as lovely as some people believe.

Hike rates. But the stock market will take a big hit, so it won't be done. Rates will sit at 0% and inflation will continue unchecked, or they will try hiking rates a little, the stock market will freak, and they'll give up.

What needs to happen is a rate hike and eat the consequences. But our factota don't have the fortitude for that.

I feel like the stock market will freak out at any significant rate hike and we'll have a depression on our hands.

> How do we avert currency collapse without removing the safety net?

I don't think we do. We're in the coffin corner[1] where stability becomes impossible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_corner_(aerodynamics)

> All I can think of is rapidly reducing the military budget

Parts of the military budget are clearly safety net. Angry veterans are a classic source of violent protesters/insurrectionists/revolutionaries.

Arguably most of the military budget is social safety net. Cutting it would blow up a lot of lives.

>Arguably most of the military budget is social safety net. Cutting it would blow up a lot of lives.

I thought I had implied that, but reading again, I was not clear. We agree.

I've seen similar headlines from NYT and WaPo. I think this is irresponsible journalism. I live in a very divided swing state and while some conversations are uncomfortable, no one wants war or thinks it's necessary.

I only ever see news headlines and online-political-radicals (both left & right) making this claim. My left-leaning family is terrified that Trump is building a literal army to blitzkrieg through the country, and my right-leaning family believes Biden's tuesday announcement will be about covid camps and strict federal limitations on interstate travel.

It's unclear even where the boundary for 'sides' would fall. Anti-racists vs everyone who isn't 100% onboard with race essentialism? Vaxxers vs non vaxxers? gun owners vs controllers? Fundamentalist Roe v Wade repealers against everyone else? Climate change denires vs green energy people? I don't think any of those align on exact, or even similar axes.

It's just more & more fear-based "news". I can only assume it's because legacy outlets can hardly turn a buck these days. I can't figure out what the motivation would be otherwise.

My left-leaning family is terrified that Trump is building a literal army to blitzkrieg through the country,

Which is perfectly understandable, given that he did, in fact, incite a literal army to blitzkrieg through the Capitol.

Jan 6 was an clearly a legitimately attempted coup but

> literal army to blitzkrieg

is exaggerating to the point of offense.

He did not in fact incite anyone, not even a figurative army. Yes a group of people, armed with water bottles and cameras infiltrated the Capitol. Not a blitzkrieg and certainly not an army.

Yes a group of people, armed with water bottles and cameras infiltrated the Capitol.

This is just nuts, of course.

This "group" literally battered the doors down, using objects a lot larger than "bottles and cameras". As you are presumably perfectly aware.

Now discuss the marxist groups that took over entire city blocks in Portland, where people were actively being shot.

Wait what? “Go to the Capitol and fight like hell” is not inciting? Are you delusional?

Armed with water bottles? Are you high? People bright bombs. Police officers were murdered. One person attempting to break through a door and attack congress was shot and killed.

Don’t try to gaslight and don’t try to minimize. That won’t work here.

Police officers were murdered.

Could you defend this part of your claim with some links? You used the term "officers", which is clearly plural, and use the verb "murder", which has a specific legal meaning. I think this is one of the areas where people seem to be basing their views on different sets of facts. My belief is that despite some initial reporting, no police officers were killed by the crowd. To my knowledge, none of the rioters have been charged with murder, much less convicted.

Is your belief that multiple police officers were intentionally killed by rioters? I don't think this is true. While I'm eager to see anyone who participated in a violent attack on an officer thrown into jail for a very long time, my understanding is that only one officer died, and the coroner concluded that this was not because of any injury sustained in the event. If I'm wrong about this, I'd take it as a major sign that I misunderstand the events that took place. If you are wrong, I'd hope you'd take it as a similar sign that you should re-evalulate.

My belief is that despite some initial reporting, no police officers were killed by the crowd.

From:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Sicknick

Within hours of his death, the Capitol Police released a statement that the death was "due to injuries sustained while on-duty", when he was "physically engaging with protesters" at the Capitol.[10] The next day, the U.S. Justice Department attributed the death "to the injuries he suffered defending the U.S. Capitol, against the violent mob who stormed it".[11]

It is true that the Medical Examiner initially said the death was due to "natural causes"; but then he later said that "all that transpired played a role in his condition." So it would appear he was mincing his words, to say the least (more like blatantly contradicting himself).

In addition, 4 officers died by suicide in the months following the attack.

Is your belief that multiple police officers were intentionally killed by rioters?

It is beyond dispute the rioters intentionally acted in a way that placed the lives of the the capitol officers at extreme risk. Whether the 5 subsequent deaths meet the legal definition or premeditated homicide is of lesser importance. And practically speaking, splitting hairs.

I appreciate your response, and also that you posted the article in the first place. I think civil discussion is a good thing, especially among parties who disagree.

It is beyond dispute the rioters intentionally acted in a way that placed the lives of the the capitol officers at extreme risk.

Yes, I think this is a reasonable summary, and a good start to reaching common understanding. It's not murder, but it's very wrong, and should be punished.

Police officers were murdered.

This, though, is both inflammatory and false. It's the sort of thing you'd say if your intent is to provoke a civil war, rather than prevent one.

I'd rather prevent one. I hope that's your goal as well?

I hope that's your goal as well?

Absolutely, and I appreciate you civility as well.

As to this statement, which wasn't mine:

Police officers were murdered.

I would agree that it is inflammatory; but "false" -- only as a technicality.

It was an emotional reaction to an orchestrated act of mass violence (that some people, in this very thread, was saying wasn't violent at all). As a result of which, between 1 and 5 people on the defending side (depending how you count the suicides) lost their lives -- unjustly.

Furthermore: those who incited this attack (or delayed a more vigorous response to it) are, in part, responsible for these deaths -- and should be held accountable.

That's what I see as important. That some people hyperbolize a bit, and use the phrase "murder" -- I just don't see as very important.

Especially when they were responding to someone who was basically gaslighting, and attempting to deny that there was anything especially unruly about the "group" of people who visited the capital that day -- with their "cameras and water bottles". That kind of feigned ignorance I do consider to be much more inflammatory.

I don't think this article is going to lead to _any_ productive discussion here. That may just further support the articles case but yeah, I don't think the HN crew is going to solve this one.

@vanusa may I ask why you felt this was a good idea to post? All we do is fight on the internet and it leads to very few productive conversations and may even be causing more friction between us.

> All we do is fight on the internet and it leads to very few productive conversations and may even be causing more friction between us.

Then why are you here?

I have left every social media except for here and GitHub. HN is on the chopping block but I'm still here because I do indeed find critical thinking and fruitful discussion here when it's not about politics/current events. I enjoy it still, to answer your question.

I dunno, theme of the thread seems to be pretty unanimous.

Because the article dealt with a serious academic analysis of the subject, not just some blogger's speculation.

And as the events of Jan 6 showed, very clearly -- the issue at hand is far from abstract.

Fair enough. I agree; but I honestly have no idea what positions to hold anymore when it comes to the massive cognitive dissonance of a population of people who have been tricked into thinking they _aren't_ involved with the death of democracy. They refuse to give up and admit what happened was horrifying that day, instead endlessly deferring to whataboutisms and obvious defense mechanisms. It's just not good discussion; and it feels inevitable lately.

Everything feels so broken.

Everything feels so broken.

Which is precisely the outcome they've been striving to achieve.

Interestingly of course, US population actually has access to guns, a large population who knows how to use them and ready supplies at home.

Still, if in this day and age you picture a democratic militia fighting a Republican one, surely some kind of armed force would come in eventually.

In the Civil War, I’m guessing there was no professional army, only two citizen militias working it out.

...a member of a key CIA advisory panel has said.

Surely it can be prevented by giving the CIA more power and money?!

5 years ago, I started raising this topic.

People said, "It can't happen here"

4 years later, they got an insurrection which was few hours away from something way more serious.

The harder people want to believe into "It can't happen here," the more likely it is going to happen.

The argument for a civil war is an insurrection where 80% stood around then left after an hour? The people who stole stuff, broke stuff assaulted police absolutely deserve prosecution(I’m not some Jan 6 truther). Absurd to think civil war is likely because a bunch of uncoordinated idiots followed the crowd.

Uncoordinated idiots following a crowd is exactly how civil uprisings start.

I mean literally following a crowd into a capital.

>uncoordinated idiots followed the crowd

That's one of the most dangerous things in history.

> Absurd to think civil war is likely because a bunch of uncoordinated idiots followed the crowd.

Not a bunch of uncoordinated idiots, but multiple insubordinating military, and law enforcement units, with one general ready to subvert the primacy of civilian leadership.

This is way more scary than "a bunch of uncoordinated idiots."

> they got an insurrection which was few hours away from something way more serious.

From what?

Even if they took over the building they would not have accomplished anything anyway. What are you thinking they would have accomplished in a few hours?

Let's say for the sake of argument they decided to just let them be - no police move in, no military, just let them be in the building, what would have happened next?

> Let's say for the sake of argument they decided to just let them be - no police move in, no military, just let them be in the building, what would have happened next?

That's exactly the catastrophic scenario: multiple military, law enforcement units wilfully insubordinating, for the whole country, and other people in uniform to see.

Imagine what were to happen if that lasted for a few more hours? More military units, and more people in uniform would've reneged on their duty.

What will happen then when somebody finally will comply with orders, and turn guns on those who didn't? They will shoot back.

If the history tell anything, this is how civil wars are often started in Americas: the 1828 Colombia civil war, second Venezuela civil war, Bolivian civil war, the 1000 day war, Chilean civil war.

It almost always the same — One group of riled up soldiers comes to the square, another sent to flush them our, but it reneges too. More, and more soldiers are sent, snowballing until somebody fires the first shot, starting a massacre. And then nations break along the lines of loyalty to the official government, and an alternative one.

That's quite an extrapolation.

You think there was even a remote possibility that the military would have joined them? I don't.

To me these were a bunch of hooligans or rioters, not an organized group that anyone else would actually think of joining.

You seen multiple national guard unit commanders evading orders, bidding their time to see who comes on top of that mess — in the history of US military such conduct is unheard of.

I suspect we aren’t, but at the same time a bunch of republicans did try to use force to interrupt the peaceful transition of power that was meant to be a defining characteristic of the United States.

This back and forth will continue to escalate into an actual civil war until both sides can come to terms with their misdeeds and meet at the bargaining table before the country is torn apart. The events you are referring to were inspired by violent attacks on the US capitol (as well as every major US city) only months prior.

Did you see the presentation Trump's chief of staff had to hand to Congress? The events OP is referring to were nothing less than a failed coup d'état. Diminishing it is only giving an excuse to the perpetrators, distract from their ongoing preparations to stack the system in their favour, and fuel their next try

This is what I'm talking about: things will continue to get worse until we drop the "my side is blameless while the other side is literally <your choice of Stalin or Hitler>" charade. What happened was terrible, but months earlier demonstrators tried to force entry into the White House so they could execute a sitting president.

While the fallacy you're describing is an apt description of 90% of political bitterness, it is effectively impossible to force people - even reasonable people who acknowledge the sins of both sides - to ignore the nigh-universal opinion that "one of them is worse". I honestly am not sure how to get around that, especially considering that it's almost certainly true by many metrics, regardless of "which side" it is, since it would be an amazing coincidence for both sides in any context to express goodness and evil in effectively equal amounts. The tendency to take binary sides on a gradient issue is just too strong - even people who see and acknowledge the gradient still effectively choose sides in most conversations.

Edit: It's almost as if you have to let each side feel that they are correct that "the other side" is indeed worse, but also communicate to them that it doesn't matter in the big big picture, and pursuing any manifestation of that opinion is counterproductive.

> nothing less than a failed coup d'état.

No it was not. Go watch that famous YouTube video about the keys to power.

They had nothing, no source of power at all. At the bare minimum they would have needed the military on their side. Or 20 million people. They had neither. (Yah - even with all the people voting for Trump, only a fraction of a fraction were willing to use violence. The overwhelming majority were unhappy, even very vocal, but they accepted the results.)

It was basically a riot. A bunch of idiots making a mess and destroying things. Even if they had "succeeded" they still would not have had any power.

Just because you estimate their chances of success to have been low ( personally i disagree, there are probably enough nutjobs in the military and police forces, and they had non insignificant amount of federal and state political power), doesn't make it something else than a coup d'état. Did they attempt to seize power and overrule the results of an election or didn't they? Their miserable failure at it isn't an excuse.

Trump was still president at the time. Who were they seizing power from?

Your description would make more sense if they had done it after Biden was president, but they didn't.

They tried to seize power by overturning the pending confirmation of election results. The legitimacy of Trump was him getting elected, him refusing to let go would be seizing power.

There's this thing called an "auto-coup". It's where the one currently in power seizes power that he does not legitimately have, in order to avoid handing over power to the one who beat him in an election. Trump either was trying to do that, or came very close to trying (depending on how you draw your lines).

Which in turn, were inspired by the government murdering citizens in the street. My description or your description or the parent's description may all be oversimplifications/biased/provocatively worded, and, while focusing on whether or not these events were each "justified" and to what degree is a fine exercise, it is also counter-productive to the conversation of coming to terms and meeting at the bargaining table, as you say.

The defining characteristic of the United States is that it didn't work.

The SYSTEM (the US Republic) worked. The system is resilient by design and performed as expected to deliver the appropriate output on the input it was given.

As people in finance are fond of saying, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Did it not work for any identifiable reason that makes us immune, or due to non-replicable acts of bravery on one side, incompetence on the other, and good old luck in between? It's not hard to imagine the insurrectionists turning the other way in a hallway and finding Pence, or getting into the rotunda a moment earlier. Or a few election officials in Pennsylvania or Detroit bowing to pressure, allowing the valid election results to be overturned. Republicans are working very hard to make sure that they have people on election boards who will make a different choice next time. So no, I'd say the system just barely worked because of people within it, and can not be counted on to save us again.

There is no deus ex machina. This isn't a movie. People have to work to save democracy.

This. Thank you. So many people believe that we got lucky, or something. It's like they believe good things are fated to happen. That's not how this works. Good people need to prevent the bad things or the bad people win. And these are really, really bad people. In the case of Pennsylvania, Judge Matthew Brann, an extreme right-wing Republican, dismissed the Trump case that attempted to throw out the mail-in ballots, and saved Democracy. Judge Brann loves Democracy more than he loved Trump. But is he still there? Or will someone offer to pay off his debts and his mortgage next time? We are teetering on the edge of the precipice, folks.

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