Ask Lemmy

Locked for rule 6

Two of my state's democratic politicians were shot this morning, one killed, in a targeted assassination. I think it's already started.

All my life I have watched movies where the all American hero stands up to the baddie, the facist, the bully, the greedy. I seen so many celebs virtue signal to their political values and causes that help others. The whole gun thing, we keep them to protect our rights.

But when there is an actual threat the passive acceptance is astounding. It’s quite bizarre to see. My brain can’t reconcile the USA I have watched vrs the USA I am seeing.

Will it be civil war, the old logic says yes. What I am seeing tells me no.

This does not have the seeds of a civil war.

Look back to 1861. The US was split between slave and free states. Both regions had different economic models that were in conflict. The slavers of the south controlled most of the nation's capital. The slaves were worth more than all the railroads and foundries of the north. They had oligarchic control of the southern states.

When Lincoln was elected, it was the first time that an outspoken abolitionist became president. It was clear, that the demographics of the US were changing in a way that would lose their power and status. So they started a war.

Those weren't the uneducated racists that you find waving confederate flags today.

The US has seen presidential lawlessness before (notably Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson). It also has seen lawlessness by state politicians (eg Harry F. "Massive Resistance" Byrd or Governor Orval "Blood will run in the Streets" Faubus).

The only way I could see a civil war is, if Trump directly threatened the Middle Class and/or the Wealthy Elites.

I think we are still trying peaceful protests and hoping upcoming elections will change things. There is little appetite to escalate to violence yet.

It is inevitable that ice and ice barbie will encounter violent opposition when they raid a wrong address sometime soon. But it will be localized to that location.

Most of the radical groups of self armed wackos are working for ice now and reveling in their racism.

Nope. They're headed straight towards jackboot dictatorship.

If nothing else, Trump and his henchmen are proving day after day that the Americans talking big about their god-given Second Amendment right that keeps the government in check as the reason to own so many firearms and overlook so many deaths by firearm was basically a pretense: this is literally the scenario when they swore right and left they would exercise it and they aren't.

All a bunch of phoneys, is what they are. And they're getting the nasty dictatorship they richly deserve.

I think that for a civil war, you need an armed force on the protesters' side, which they don't seem to have. All radicals who are willing to spill blood are on Trump's side. I'm not an expert, of course, but if you needed one, you wouldn't have asked here.

The focus on immigrants is insufficient. The problem is the circumvention of law, due process, civil rights. The problem is circumventing the law to do so much harm, whether it’s to dark skinned people, the general instillation of terror, fraud and corruption, national leadership holding themselves above the law, enforcement agencies in contempt of the law, harm to our economy, harm to our neighbors and friends who relied on us, harm to our future and our environment, harm effective running of government functions. There’s just too many reasons to be offended beyond mistreatment of our fellow humans and the common thread is violation of the law and constitution.

I don't know. People have found ICE facilities and are harassing them there and while they are out on operations. That is great but the Trump administration is likely going to keep over-escalating the response while continuing to ignore laws. He is a "results for my side at any cost" person.

I don't think Americans have the stomach for a civil war, had a Trump been elected in France, they would have crippled the country long ago.

Where would the front(s) be? Seems like in USA CW 1.00, the north/south division made it easy to figure out where the enemy was. Nowadays, the ideological disagreement is much more geographically woven everywhere, with a battlefront possibly existing between every couple of houses in some neighborhoods.

Yes. But the part that non-violence allows is that we can set it up to fight on our terms rather than theirs.

They want gun battles. Charging into enemy formations. Units vs units. They want to make themselves heros of battle. But they will do it only if they convince themselves they will always win.

That's not how the modem organized military can be defeated. They will be defeated by guerilla tactics. Assassinations. Sabotage. Economics. The first thing that needs to happen is for the population to witness just how much they support each other.

The DNC may be useless, but as long as they keep MAGA thinking the opposition is weak, they will massively underestimate their own vulnerability.

Idealism is the privilege of elites. Maslow's pyramid puts the majority of people into survival mode or comfort, and the US has been boiling the frog towards expanding the bottom of the pyramid for a long time. By the time people noticed that an open revolt (even so much as a work strike) would destroy their lives, it was too late. There are so few charismatic, moral and idealistic elites that the government could take care of them as soon as they threatened to become leaders of a real opposition. I don't believe there would be a civil war, and I don't believe there is a way back. The US will become a neofedual country, with a lucky few who have the means to move elsewhere. The best case scenario is for the rest of the world to isolate from the US, both economically and militarily.