Is Civil War Possible? Pew Poll

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

A link from Drudge caught my eye:

PEW: 91% Dems see violence coming...

So, of course the clickbait gets me and I click on it taking me to a Washington Examiner article:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wash ... r-of-words

They basically just repost the Pew poll with a bit of commentary. The stat that they cite is this:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 ... -violence/



Given the wish fulfillment fantasies Ajax has posted a few times, ANTIFA violence, and the radicalization of Left and Right does anyone here honestly believe civil war is a possibility, or will we just experience low-level spates of violence here and there as our country fractures into ideological Baltic states?

What do you think?

- Doc

[_MeDotOrg]

I think you might find some flashpoints. Portland always seems to have both ANTIFA and alt right groups. Detention centers could be flashpoints, but they are usually away from populations centers.

Virtually everyone who hangs out in Paradise has some strong political views. What would make you go to the streets? There are groups on the edges of the left and right that could clash, but I don't think most Americans would do so.

There is a big effing cloud on the horizon though, the election of 2020. And not just because of the rhetoric that will be used. What happens if the election is razor-thin, with recounts that are questioned? What happens if the President claims voter fraud elected the Democratic candidate or vice versa? I could see people in the streets in that scenario.

The lack of preparation for outside influence greatly worries me. If Putin makes Americans question the validity of their elections, it would be a tremendous triumph.

[_honorentheos]

More existentially, suppose climate change predictions hold and what we are seeing at the border now is simply a prelude to mass migrations of people fleeing natural catastrophes such as droughts, famines, repeated destruction of their homes and communities beyond the capacity of insurance or governments to rebuild?

[_Bond James Bond]

I don't imagine a civil war beyond individual acts of violence. Long before a civil war I imagine the country breaking into pieces:

1) The Left coast and Hawaii leaving and maybe taking Nevada (and Colorado and New Mexico as exclaves)

2) New England, New York down to Maryland including Washington DC, maybe Virginia ()with Illinois or maybe just Chicago as an exclave)

3) The remainder

[_Kevin Graham]

Someone remind me again how many people have been killed because of "antifa violence?"

And when antifa shows up to get their asses kicked in a lame attempt to defend people from the Proud Boys, why is it still called "Antifa violence"?

[_Kevin Graham]

This could never happen because the few dozen idiots on the left (not really the left, but for sake of argument let's say antifa is Left) who laughably pretend to be armed and dangerous, don't warrant a theory that they could engage millions of heavily armed Right Wing nuts in anything that could pass as a "war."

The poll above is probably a reflection of what Democrats think it terms of the direction we're headed because of the way the President is escalating the dangerous rhetoric. It doesn't indicate their willingness to engage in violence.

According to the Washington Post yesterday, "Terrorism does increase with immigration — but only homegrown, right-wing terrorism"

The two sides aren't even close to being equal.

[_moksha]

I think part of Steve Bannon's political theory was that the US needs to be broken via civil strife for a new 1000 year Trumptopia to arise like a giant ground sloth from the ashes.

[_EAllusion]

Civil Wars require a split in the military. That doesn't seem on the horizon. I guess you can imagine a scenario in which Trump loses the 2020 election and refuses to leave office with some Republican backing on ginned up claims of vote irregularities. That would require him to be deposed which could theoretically cause a split in the military. But that's still way down the likelihood of possibility. A civil war isn't going to be fought between backyard militias.

Instead, we're dealing with a poll where people think that hateful, dehumanizing language from political leaders risks increased violence towards their targets. That's a common belief and also has literally happened, so it wouldn't be surprising that you'd get widespread agreement with that assertion. The interesting part is the partisan split on such a straightforward assertion. It occurs because of implicit recognition that Donald Trump is using aggressive language regarding groups of people with Democrats thinking that's bad and Republicans, some of them anyway, wanting to defend it. Still, most people agree.

[_EAllusion]

Doc - Your antifa violence link contains a who's who of dishonest alt-right personalities. Aside from not seeing James O'Keefe show up in the links, it was a rogue's gallery of dishonest figures in conservative media. It's not that antifa violence doesn't occur, but you're making your point with about as shady of a source as is possible.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

EA,

I can only do as well as a Google search provides. The point is there seems to be a galvanizing of political extremism resulting in aggression to one degree or another. I was curious to see if anyone thinks this will result in a continuation of escalating violence, or if we just remain at low-level flashpoints.

This website, that I got from that Twitter feed, will purportedly catalogue 'far Left' violence or extremism:

https://farleftwatch.com/

Left-wing YouTuber: “I’ve moved full on to the real violence level when it comes to conservative people”

Whatever the case may be, I think Honor probably hits the nail on the head. Years ago I read about climate change causing mass migrations of people from one stressed environment to another. I don't know how much climate change right now is playing into mass migration from Central America to the US; I tend to agree with him regarding the points he made on the other thread about the elite amassing wealth and detaching from their countries and forming an allegiance with others who've amassed great wealth and want to retain their connections with one another, and the, in my opinion, immoral control of resources and wealth is certainly causing unrest (along with terrible government, overpopulation, and other causal factors).

I can see populist movements causing the US to fracture into regional states. Aztlan in the Southwest, Trumptopia in the Southeast, Cascadia in the Northwest, so on and so forth. Perhaps, and this is just rambling speculation, once the federal government overextends itself through debt it'll become essentially powerless to stop the 'balkanization' of the states.

- Doc