An Expert Says Political Extremists Are Taking U.S. to Civil War | Hacker News Reader

An Expert Says Political Extremists Are Taking U.S. to Civil War

washingtonpost.com

25 pointsandrewl20 comments

I believe this. I have been saying this myself. I didn’t say civil war but I fully expect strife and gun violence if the R party loses the upcoming election. What I don’t get is why the party is being so shortsighted. The polticians are anyway making bank why weaken the democratic foundations? They must know that the nation’s wealth generation will stop if we are not a true democracy.

There has been growing violence and intolerance. Ignoring the issues on your own side to blame the other is part of the polarization. Such positions are symptoms of what is coming.

Neither the violence nor the rhetoric have been equal on both sides. The right wing is deliberately ignoring that fact, because it lets them continue to escalate their behavior.

Highly recommend the podcast series It Could Happen here if anyone's interested in this topic

Only season 1 though. For some reason it turned into a weekly show later. The original season was specifically a deep dive into the possibility of Civil War in the US based on a book the author had written.

It was made in 2019 and, to be honest, it's been a little terrifying how many of the predictions have come to pass. Definitely gives you some perspective though. I listened as someone who initially wrote the idea off as far-fetched and have to admit I'm much more receptive to the possibility after listening

https://open.spotify.com/show/3KNdniw6YDpgDuwrhcpSXw

Really? It’s not the media?

Or the extremists themselves?

Political, religious, and ideological extremists have always been there, throughout all of human history.

The extreme, relentless, rage baiting polarization of the media, however, is a more recent phenomenon. It was not like this even 10 years ago. We can blame the algorithms or the readers or the advertisers. It’s still the one thing that stands out to many of us old enough to remember when you could read the same story on Fox, CNN, WSJ and the Times and it would be almost identical.

Are the media not supposed to report on political extremist?

You present zero evidence of the relative frequencies in reporting.

We will know soon enough right

That combined with the corporate capture of government

They count as political extremists even if to sell more whatever.

Just the extremist ones and all the problematic ones are categorically right wing/GOP.

there are certainly strong forces dividing the populace and turning them against each other...the media is one of those forces, the primary force...but one big question is whether the media is just a tool in the hands of the corporations that fund the media via advertising purchases? Would these corporations want the populace divided? Yes, of course they would...divide et impera, aka divide and conquer has long been the preferred tactic of the elites...the USA was created under the guiding rubric of divide et impera: see Dr Woody Holton's book Unruly Americans, where he shows how the founding fathers created the enlarged federal voting districts and separation of powers/checks and balances form of federal govt in order to prevents the proles from uniting against the elites...

the current propaganda regime directed by the media implements divide et impera by demonizing the largest demographic bloc and using propaganda (starting with the educational curriculum) to turn the the smaller demographic blocs against the largest and most powerful demographic bloc....the elites are using divide et impera and racial diversity as its tool...

That it is "politically extreme" to say we should limit our Federal Government to the activities described in the Constitution, maybe we need to adress how we're defining the faults?

Besides, it's always the other side's extremists that are the worst of the problem. Our extremists are just harmless nuts exploring the fringes of possibility, not people somehow setting party policy that requires the suspension of belief for frank, objective facts as a condition of membership.

It’s the side that raided the capitol building and is trying to convince everyone it wasn’t a big deal

>That it is "politically extreme" to say we should limit our Federal Government to the activities described in the Constitution, maybe we need to adress how we're defining the faults?

the degree of extremeness (extremity? lol) depends on the degree to which you believe we should limit it, and how many Americans agree with you

Hey bud do you believe in numbers?

• In 2021, far-right terrorism accounted for 38 of the 77 (49%) domestic terrorism events in the US meaning far-right attacks remained the most frequent type of domestic terrorism[0]

• The far-left accounted for 40% of those. However, of the 30 actual fatalities from these events 28 of them were due to far-right attacks (93.3%). Only 1 of the remaining 2 fatalities was due to the far-left[0]

• This brings up another issue. One of the core beliefs of the far-left is that categorizing damage against property as "violence" and equivalent with violence against humans is a result of the elite class controlling our language and cultural categories. Previously this dataset even counted things like vegans freeing farm animals as "terrorism" and still includes attacks against pipelines as "far-left terrorism"

• Since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities, the data shows. At the same time, attacks and plots ascribed to far-left views accounted for 66 incidents leading to 19 deaths.[1]

• In the past 6 years, at least 15 far-right attacks were against Black churches (e.g. New Shiloh Christian Center in Melbourne, Fla), 16 against mosques, and 13 against synagogues (e.g. Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel in Chicago).[1]

• 15 anti-immigrant-related incidents since 2015, resulting in 27 fatalities and dozens of injuries[1]

• Police officers, government officials and politicians also were targets in 2020 in at least 15 right-wing[1]

[0] https://www.csis.org/analysis/pushed-extremes-domestic-terro...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

I've noticed that often in sports, it's the guy who reacts to a foul that gets called instead of the cool, collected, nefarious originator.

What movements/teachings/oppressions in society are causing the pressure that results in these kinds of outbursts?

The amazing thing about the Constitution and the men who wrote it was they predicted what we're seeing now and provided built-in safeguards against the rule of men. Rights are derived from God and not from a temporary agreement amongst men who one day will be on your side, and the next day not. Our entire legal system originated from and reinforces these principles. That some people don't wish this were so does not make it so, no matter how many down-votes are issued or tantrums thrown.

"Safeguards against the rule of men" were not built into the Declaration of Independence (which I assume you're referring to given your mention of God) or the Constitution until the 13th Amendment of 1865. Congress deleted criticism of the slave trade from the Declaration before final approval (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal)

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