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Comment by CSMastermind | Hacker News Reader

Yeah it's really hard to imagine a full blown civil war just because of what the battlelines would be in a right-left split in the country.

I've heard people jokingly say, "One side collects guns and the other collects mental disorders."

That's obviously an unfair shot but there's some truth to it.

Left leaning areas tend to be centered around city centers where right leaning areas tend to be rural and control things like shipping and food production.

The police and the military all have a noticeable conservative bend at least at the lower levels.

This wouldn't be a north vs south situation where each side would be roughly equally matched.

In a true right vs left civil war, at least as the politics line up right now, the right faction would win by simply isolating and choking off the cities.

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> In a true right vs left civil war, at least as the politics line up right now, the right faction would win by simply isolating and choking off the cities.

I don't think it makes sense to draw up a hypothetical war this way based on how interconnected and interdependent the economy is.

Firstly, a tremendous amount of American food is imported and threatening the food supply would draw the ire of Federal forces, which would be counter-productive to a militarized movement. Secondly, raw food ingredients tend to travel very far distances in order to be processed for consumption. If supply chains were disrupted this way, you'd have a lot of raw food going to waste that can't be consumed on its own (most commercially produced corn in the US cannot be eaten on its own because it's designed to be converted into corn syrup). Third, global shipping hubs and large airports tend to be in urban areas, not rural. Rural shipping centers tend to be secondary or tertiary.

> The police and the military all have a noticeable conservative bend at least at the lower levels.

I think this is the gist of of it, i.e. what the leaders of the forces holding the monopoly on violence really believe, no matter if the lower levels are right-leaning (and I agree with you on that). If the majority of those leaders (both at the federal and at the state level) are pretty much on the same page I don't see any chance of an actual civil war, no matter the actual political hatred between the civilian factions.

But, and it's a very, very big but, it those US military and police leaders were to get divided, like really divided, the same as it happened in Spain in 1936 with Franco, then all options are on the table. Again, I don't think there's any remote "chance" for that happening, but imo that's the only way a civil war can start (in the US and in most other places). If it matters I'm not a US citizen, but I am interested in US politics.

If enlisted soldiers revolt against the officers, I don't see that working out the way you're describing. If loyalty fractures along party lines, there will be two chains of command, and I don't think it would be remotely difficult for the two structures to reorganize themselves. The police do have a strong and unified party preference, even in the most left-leaning cities.

The money is in the cities/suburbs. Any attempts to choke them off will inevitably hit everyone hard. At least those in cities will be close to aid delivery. Modern rural life is completely non-viable without copious amounts of gasoline.

Plus, there's a lot that happens between farm to table in modern agriculture.

COVID showed us just how sensitive our lifestyle is to disruptions.

Rural areas also tend to be at least as dependent on domestic shipping as cities, and not a lot of rural dwellers are growing enough of their own food to avoid starvation if that's disrupted. Not like back when a really high percentage were farmers who grew both cash crops and varied crops & small animals for their own consumption. If all the crops for a 50 mile radius are soy beans and feed-corn, and there are no processing plants for either nearby, and you're not close to a large port... you're gonna have a bad time if the trains stop running and gas gets scarce. It's not like any but a small percentage of rural folks would be sitting back well-fed while the cities starved. The best-off of all might well be the coastal cities, in fact. The notion that mostly-empty red counties can just deliberately starve out the cities and win seems extremely far-fetched to me, in this our modern economy.

Respectfully, this totally ignores that the funding for most things in this country comes right out of the cities. To use your terminology, "left leaning" places are ~70% of GDP.

Also, just because some guys in rural areas collect guns compulsively doesn't mean they are remotely capable of becoming an organized militia.

But it's the right leaning majority that's ruling the country.

The idea of a "right leaning majority" is pure propaganda.

Right-leaning majority of the land, not the people, is closer to true.

> I've heard people jokingly say, "One side collects guns and the other collects mental disorders."

> That's obviously an unfair shot but there's some truth to it.

No truth to it at all really. I'm pretty much a full-on socialist and I own firearms. In fact, I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't own a firearm.

There are more firearms in the US than there are people, so what kind of fool honestly believes they are all in the hands of less than one half of the population?

> so what kind of fool honestly believes they are all in the hands of less than one half of the population

Seeing as how only 30% of Americans own guns [0], all the guns are literally in the hands of less than one half. So it’s not foolish to believe that. But it’s true whether I believe it or not.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem...

Even that source has half as many democrat-identifying people owning firearms as republican-identifying people, which is very far from "one side collects all the guns".

But yes it would appear that "less than half the population" is actually correct.

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