An expert on civil war issues a warning about America, but exaggerates
economist.com
economist.com
Edit: My comment was a knee jerk reaction to a misleading post title. In reality the Economist is in agreement with me here, they are reviewing a book that is predicting a civil war and calling it very hyperbolic. Good to see there are still some outlets with journalistic integrity.
That takes an enormous amount of brainpower. Not in terms of being particularly intelligent, but just in terms of time required to form a position on every single issue.
This isn't a good time investment, considering the duopoly of politics in the United States. At best you'd be able to get a slightly bigger overlap on your issues by going with one party or another, since independents are unlikely to win in the foreseeable future.
That being said, your position is admirable, if only for developing critical thinking skills and exercising them, something that modern politics is in dire need of.
Before each elections there are even online tools to help you verify which party is best aligned with you.
It has a form of a poll. If responses that party gave match the once you gave then the fit is higher.
If ya'll want to remember 1/6 as some hate-driven event, I want no part in it.
the left has become obsessed with authoritarianism under the guise of "liberalism". i don't think any of them know what the word means anymore. they rile up imaginary "injustice" to distract and sow discord. people who would do that are far more traitorous than grandma going on a larp in the capitol.
An expert on civil war issues a warning about America - But Barbara Walter exaggerates
Submitted title was "Is America headed for a civil war?"
The difference between social unrest and civil war is the latter has organized military forces on both sides. In the US it will never be militias going at it, it will be state national guards and other branches of military. Things would need to get very bad to where for example nebraska blocks trains and California blocks trucks to opposing states.
I am not saying the whole blm vs white supremacist b.s. has no place, I am just saying that social unrear would need to be very bad with state gov/police support causing other states to intervene.
One way or the other, a state would need to refuse to cooperate with fed gov even with military intervention.
For perspective, when JFK sent troops to let the first black kid attend school with white kids, the governor did no command his military to resist. Things would need to get worse than that.
Even with the internet, this can't be less than 8-10 years away, by that time the population will change significantly. Boomer deaths but also post 9/11 kids who only knew crisis after crisis either very hungry or repulsed by the idea of an internal conflict.
Meanwhile China, Russia and pals are working very hard to undermine the US economy. My guess is they will somewhat succeed before any serious social turmoil. Also, keep in mind, terror works very well against the US population (sorry NSA guy monitoring this), be it 9/11, afghanistan or vietnam, events that get the people overhwelmed and upset will have lasting and effective change. If that were not the case the US would have invaded pakistan and afghanistan leaving them in ruins very fast and getting out, vietnam would have been a proper invasion instead of supporting south vietnam and it would have lasted as long as it needed to, the military would be much more brutal and cruel like most other non-western military forces (rape, murder,etc... rampant). My point is the US as a whole country is not the same as 156 years ago, serious conflicts will not persist due to weak stomach. It will take a lot (hunger, national shame,etc...)
Horrible things to think about.
After '08/'09 there were daily steady decreases in unemployment through to the 2016 election and steady market increase to ~historic highs by the 2016 election.
I thought the context was the 2016 election? (Or I misunderstood). It didn't seem apparent in 2016 that a depression was looming (to me).
Even our dictionary definitions are moving more extreme, someone pointed out a few weeks ago that the definition of anti-vaxer for example now includes anyone that opposes any vaccine mandate.
There's very little engagement on ideas or push to get closer to truth.
Lol.
Most liberals are good people. Some aren't. The same thing goes for conservatives.
That we have sitting members of Congress openly call for secession and the suppression of voting rights without their party condemning them indicates to me that we have tilted too far to the right for common ground to be found.
Which countries allow voting by mail and/or without ID?
We don’t have a national ID system in the U.S. In Wisconsin they mandated voter ID and promptly closed a lot of places to get said IDs. They made it harder for people to get it. In some states Polling places get closed down in poor areas or make things like 1 drop off location per county regardless of population size. Some places put in enough poll workers to make voting fast while limiting the number of poll workers in less desirable locations to make voting slow.
You can get a passport via mail and can file taxes via mail. Selective Service is done by mail. There isn’t any evidence of voter fraud beyond an extremely small number of cases. There are plenty of sources to give you the information on the ways voter suppression is accomplished. They are easy to find.
You can renew by mail in certain circumstances. However, the initial application requires an in-person check.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa... https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/have-pa... https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...
> There isn’t any evidence of voter fraud beyond an extremely small number of cases.
There are a fair number of cases, which is amazing because we actually don't look for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_co...
I don’t believe there are a fair number of cases in which voter fraud caused the wrong candidate to win. I’m all in favor of week long voting, with plenty of well staffed polling places, and plenty of readily available places to acquire free state IDs.
Continue with your belief that voter suppression is not a thing.
This just isn't a path toward finding common ground. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/29/1011253354/california-bans-st...
Some republicans definitely seem to have ramped things up but actions like this on the democratic side are nearly as concerning.
Who has the Right deplatformed?
Articles like this significantly help his 2024 run.
To regular folks, Trump is like a car accident. He's awful but you tend to be interested in the goings on, despite the distaste.
Back during the beginning of the pandemic, no one would have thought it would be framed as xenophobia had the US closed it's borders by restricting incoming international flights from Wuhan China but some policymakers got it in their heads that that was the case. As an Asian myself, that would've been the simplest of preventative measures that they could have done.
You do realize Biden recently banned travel from 8 African countries?
>"build that wall"
Type into any search engine "kamala harris says do not come"
The irony here is off the charts.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-biden...
You don't pull minority votes over to republicans as a white nationalist, unless I'm missing something.
At any rate, I did not call Trump a racist. I said that he catered to the white nationalist sentiment. Trump is a charlatan and an opportunist. His politics are self enrichment and aggrandizement and if catering to white nationalist sentiment gets him fealty the he desires then he will do so.
Trump is a liar and devoid of redeeming qualities. It is easy to find the ways he is flawed and only deliberate ignorance can explain someone not being aware of the many, many character flaws the man has.
Consider that Trump is despised in White nationalist circles. Hated and mocked perhaps even more than among radical leftists (with the exception that we appreciate his occasional humorous moments). Yet another grifter, and a traitor to his people.
It will be very interesting to see how his White vote fares next time around.
Edit: oops, you used the term 'TDS' in another comment. The jig is up, seems you're not a disinterested party, and you're just here to troll.
TDS is a term also used by actual, you know, leftists. Like Bernie voters:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/ext4tn/bernie...
I've seen plenty of people on the left on social media also use "Let's go Brandon", do you think those are trolls too? Just because they don't believe in "the lesser of two evils" which leaves them unrepresented in politics?
And while that was for the win in 2016, the fact is Trump got more votes in losing than either Obama win. Yet look at how the media paints each. I don't like Trump but the majority of the narratives spun around him are nonsense, which only fuels the idea that The People are not being served by the system.
Trump targeted the discontents. Full stop.
Like it or not, that's what good marketing does. Like it or not - and the status quo still refuses to admit it - those numbers are significant. Significant enough to get Trump elected.
The fringe subset narrative of white supremacists is just that...spin. Unless of course all those who went for Trump in 2020 are white supremacists. That doesn't seem likely, not based on the numbers we're talking about.
It's also important to realize the fact is, the same actors who push the white supremacists narrative are the same who crafted and front lined the Russian narrative, and as we know that was a lie.
There is definitely a white nationalist backlash at a grand scale. America is changing demographically and the infrastructure is declining. Women are dominating in terms of college degrees now and in terms of graduating from college. Russia and others have done a great job at sowing dissent. Corporate media too have done a great job. Humanity is not prepared to be manipulated at the scale Facebook enables and the cost doing this manipulation is cheap.
The U.S. is in a long term state of imperial decline. We are not ready for the social changes that are occurring. All of these things suggest to me that the country is ripe for authoritarianism. It just takes a demagogue with an ounce of competence to install it. Trump, fortunately, is devoid of competence and he failed. The next demagogue will likely succeed.
The "ongoing shift" narrative turns out to be quite illusory. Hispanics are increasingly joining the "white" bandwagon, so "whites" will not become a demographic minority any time soon. Yes, this also means lots of potential voters for either party: there will be no raw demographically-based prominence for either Republicans or Democrats.
This has been debunked by non-corporate journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, etc.
After 1.5 years of investigation, unlimited subpoena powers and 10s of millions of dollars spent, nobody can name 1 american citizen who has been convicted under the original premise of the Russiagate, which was criminally conspiring with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election.
EDIT: While we're at it I'll also address this comment you've made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29776626
>Regardless of whatever happened in the past the fact remains that the government was almost overthrown on January 6 and the instigators (the top leaders) have not been brought to justice.
700+ people are charged with crimes associated with Jan 6. Not a single one, not one has been charged with insurrection, inciting an insurrection, attempting to overthrow a government, sedition, treason, etc.
They're all just common crimes: Trespassing, violent assault for the ones who used violence, interrupting government procedures/processes, etc.
If this was an actual insurrection, or a seditious act, or a coup, why is the Justice Dept. under the control of the Biden administration, not William Barr or Donald Trump, not charging anybody with those crimes that are alleged to have taken place?
Why are they charging them with common crimes that happen at protests and riots instead?
Could it be because that was all that event was?
January 6 was an insurrection. Why DOJ chooses to or not to pursue charges is not something I’m privy to. Biden, Pelosi, Garland and others are governing as if the political norms haven’t drastically changed. While DOJ is headed by a moderate Republican it’s not as if he can control the rank and file to do his bidding. He has great influence but he’s not a dictator. Trump couldn’t dictate exactly what he wanted DOJ to do either. We haven’t reached that point yet.
Politics are involved and those in power do what they think is right considering their personal moral views/ambitions and their reading of what is politically feasible. That it isn’t being treated as an insurrection indicates to me the fragility of the system. The precedent has been set. Don’t like the result of a Presidential election and you have an army of fanatics willing to assault the Capitol then you may have them do so with impunity.
That reasonable people such as yourself don’t see the danger in this tells me that we are past the point where we will ever return to normalcy in governance. Eventually one side or the other will lead us to authoritarianism or secession.
EDIT: Capone was never charged with murder. Do you think he was never guilty of murder or being the cause of murders? One must disassociate the actions/intent of a person from the charges used against them. Perhaps prosecutors think Republican jurors will balk at the notion of insurrection and will never convict on this charge despite the evidence. You appear to ignore the plain evidence of insurrection and refuse to use that term.
"Cheap and easy" != effective.
The alleged Russia intervention appears to have been on the order of several hundred thousands of dollars worth of Facebook ads. The exact figure differs depending on what sources you read, but a Pres. election operates on the scale of billions, not < 1M.
And if it is so effective, how come Mike Bloomberg, who spent some $560 Million on his election campaign, had nothing to show for it? Surely he could have hired all those Russian political campaign savants with that much money, no?
>Don’t like the result of a Presidential election and you have an army of fanatics willing to assault the Capitol then you may have them do so with impunity.
An army of... unarmed fanatics? The wanna-be insurrectionists killed nobody, there were no weapons brandished in the Capitol. Do you want people to take seriously a claim that around a 1000 unarmed men are enough to overthrow the most militarized and powerful government in the history of mankind?
The Feds were also well aware of it, just type into any search engine "NYT Jan 6 informants".
>Republican jurors
Republican jurors in DC, that voted 93% for Clinton in 2016? Really?
This is the line of thinking that lead good people, but who consumed too much media, to believe that Jussie Smollett really was really assaulted in the dead of night in very blue Chicago in freezing temperatures by Trump supporters with a noose and bleach, yelling "This is MAGA country". At some point you have to rely on Occam's Razor and start questioning the most basic of premises without being afraid of appearing a conspiracy nut.
> Capone was never charged with murder.
Yes, but those who carried out his orders were. And if a murder takes place there's a body, or if the body was moved or disposed of, there's at least evidence of struggle or evidence that the victim was at the crime scene. And there is also evidence that the criminals were at the crime scene at the time the crime itself took place.
I talk about sowing dissent as the specific form of mass manipulation that is easy and cheap to do. You then bring Bloomberg’s failed Presidential bid. Winning an election requires support and buying support is hard to do without rallying the base. Bloomberg spent that money trying to manufacture a base and that is hard to do. Sowing dissent is easy and cheap. You provide a great example of this when bringing up Smollet. Look at how easy and cheap it was to get people all upset and angry over something that didn’t actually happen.
You ask why the insurrectionists aren’t charged with insurrection and I say that I don’t know. I give an example of how sometimes prosecutors bring charges they think they can win and not necessarily with the full extent of what they think the person did. It is obvious this is so and there are lots of examples of this. But you ignore the broader point and get stuck in the minutia of the example I used. That’s fascinating. It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C. By your own admittance at least 7% of the electorate are Republicans. Prosecutors need unanimous verdicts. Not just 93% approval. But like I said I don’t know the thinking prosecutors used on this case to determine what charges to bring.
The U.S. is not the most militarized government in the world. North Korea is. Unarmed rebellions have successfully occurred many times. In Romania thousands of unarmed people stormed the seat of government and that led to the overthrow of the government. What happened a year ago was an insurrection. It was poorly thought and incompetently led but the precedent has been set. It’s now known how fragile our system and society are.
You make assumptions about me because you yourself have bought into narratives that you have been fed. Try to look at things dispassionately. I suspect you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that my vote for Trump in 2016 was the first time I voted for the winner in a Presidential election. I’ve voted for Republicans for President more than I have Democrats. In fact, I’ve never voted for a Democrat for President.
Wikipedia says[0] it was "the only violent overthrow of a communist government". Violent does not sound unarmed to me, since punches and kicks only take you so far.
"As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timișoara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. The revelation that Ceaușescu was responsible resulted in a massive spread of rioting and civil unrest across the country.[3] The demonstrations, which reached Bucharest, became known as the Romanian Revolution—the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the course of the Revolutions of 1989"
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu
>The U.S. is not the most militarized government in the world.
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/07/the-united-states-spends-m...
>It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C.
It is a thing. It's also a thing that an average Republican in Texas and an average Republican in NY or DC are not quite the same. Even if we put forward the very unlikely premise that they are super MAGA Republican, peer pressure is a thing. Simply going by the numbers, chances are a significant chunk of their friends and family are Democrats, and it's not like an average person can easily hide they were on a jury. Also, consider how many juries there would be for that many defendants, will no one be convicted?
But great job at ignoring all the broader points and ignoring the fact that you originally claimed that unarmed rioters can’t possibly overthrow the government and now write that Romania was the only violent overthrow of a communist government. This means that some communist government were overthrown by unarmed people. So you must now agree with me that unarmed people can overthrow a government.
The U.S. spends the most money in absolute dollars on the military. It is not the most militarized nation in the world. That would go to a nation that spends the highest percent of GDP on the military or one that has the highest percent of its population in the military. The U.S. is not first in any of these categories.
You would benefit from taking a course on statistics and economics.
If not of free media coverage[1], he would be a failed right wing fringe politician. Because of this coverage and his polarizing policy, he created conditions where even moderate republicans needed to vote for him. He successfully hijacked the Republican Party, from party working on immigration reform helping Mexican immigrants to party that want to build a wall.
I think if Trump managed to maintain women support, he might win again.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-t... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/12/sabota...
And yet she got more votes than the other guy...
To some extent, she lost by very little in states where it mattered and won by huge margins in some states where it didn't.
Certainly not because Trump was significantly more popular.
What’s really scary is the quiet coup happening. All across the country the GOP is gerrymandering in its favor, putting forward Stop the Steal acolytes for key positions so that when the time comes to not certify they can.