Civil War 2? (1 Viewer)

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    Optimus Prime

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    Very sobering article
    ================
    If you know people still in denial about the crisis of American democracy, kindly remove their heads from the sand long enough to receive this message: A startling new finding by one of the nation’s top authorities on foreign civil wars says we are on the cusp of our own.

    Barbara F. Walter, a political science professorat the University of California at San Diego, serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force that monitors countries around the world and predicts which of them are most at risk of deteriorating into violence.

    By law, the task force can’t assess what’s happening within the United States, but Walter, a longtime friend who has spent her career studying conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Rwanda, Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere, applied the predictive techniques herself to this country.

    Her bottom line: “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” She lays out the argument in detail in her must-read book, “How Civil Wars Start,” out in January. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war,” she writes.

    But, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.

    And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”

    Indeed, the United States has already gone through what the CIA identifies as the first two phases of insurgency — the “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” phases — and only time will tell whether the final phase, “open insurgency,” began with the sacking of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6.

    Things deteriorated so dramatically under Trump, in fact, that the United States no longer technically qualifies as a democracy. Citing the Center for Systemic Peace’s “Polity” data set — the one the CIA task force has found to be most helpful in predicting instability and violence — Walter writes that the United States is now an “anocracy,” somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state.

    U.S. democracy had received the Polity index’s top score of 10, or close to it, for much of its history. But in the five years of the Trump era, it tumbled precipitously into the anocracy zone; by the end of his presidency, the U.S. score had fallen to a 5, making the country a partial democracy for the first time since 1800.

    “We are no longer the world’s oldest continuous democracy,” Walter writes. “That honor is now held by Switzerland, followed by New Zealand, and then Canada. We are no longer a peer to nations like Canada, Costa Rica, and Japan, which are all rated a +10 on the Polity index.”…….

    Others have reached similar findings. The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance put the United States on a list of “backsliding democracies” in a report last month.

    “The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself," the report said.

    And a new survey by the academic consortium Bright Line Watch found that 17 percent of those who identify strongly as Republicans support the use of violence to restore Trump to power, and 39 percent favor doing everything possible to prevent Democrats from governing effectively……



     
    Very sobering article
    ================
    If you know people still in denial about the crisis of American democracy, kindly remove their heads from the sand long enough to receive this message: A startling new finding by one of the nation’s top authorities on foreign civil wars says we are on the cusp of our own.

    Barbara F. Walter, a political science professorat the University of California at San Diego, serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force that monitors countries around the world and predicts which of them are most at risk of deteriorating into violence.

    By law, the task force can’t assess what’s happening within the United States, but Walter, a longtime friend who has spent her career studying conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Rwanda, Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere, applied the predictive techniques herself to this country.

    Her bottom line: “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” She lays out the argument in detail in her must-read book, “How Civil Wars Start,” out in January. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war,” she writes.

    But, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.

    And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”

    Indeed, the United States has already gone through what the CIA identifies as the first two phases of insurgency — the “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” phases — and only time will tell whether the final phase, “open insurgency,” began with the sacking of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6.

    Things deteriorated so dramatically under Trump, in fact, that the United States no longer technically qualifies as a democracy. Citing the Center for Systemic Peace’s “Polity” data set — the one the CIA task force has found to be most helpful in predicting instability and violence — Walter writes that the United States is now an “anocracy,” somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state.

    U.S. democracy had received the Polity index’s top score of 10, or close to it, for much of its history. But in the five years of the Trump era, it tumbled precipitously into the anocracy zone; by the end of his presidency, the U.S. score had fallen to a 5, making the country a partial democracy for the first time since 1800.

    “We are no longer the world’s oldest continuous democracy,” Walter writes. “That honor is now held by Switzerland, followed by New Zealand, and then Canada. We are no longer a peer to nations like Canada, Costa Rica, and Japan, which are all rated a +10 on the Polity index.”…….

    Others have reached similar findings. The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance put the United States on a list of “backsliding democracies” in a report last month.

    “The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself," the report said.

    And a new survey by the academic consortium Bright Line Watch found that 17 percent of those who identify strongly as Republicans support the use of violence to restore Trump to power, and 39 percent favor doing everything possible to prevent Democrats from governing effectively……




    I don't know how we have an actual civil war though. Whichever side the U.S. military decided to back would immediately win. It is far more probable to have a autocratic take over, ala Trump 2020. The EC already sets up a precedent for this by somehow having the popular vote winner lose elections in our country. You only need to take this a step further, and just don't certify vote totals you don't like. It's wild how long Democrats have been asleep at the wheel on this issue.
     
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    I think a lot of people are actually hoping for it
    =============================
    Mike "Wompus" Nieznany is a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran who walks with a cane from the combat wounds he received during his service. That disability doesn't keep Nieznany from making a living selling custom motorcycle luggage racks from his home in Gainesville, Georgia. Neither will it slow him down when it's time to visit Washington, D.C.—heavily armed and ready to do his part in overthrowing the U.S. government.

    Millions of fellow would-be insurrectionists will be there, too, Nieznany says, "a ticking time-bomb" targeting the Capitol. "There are lots of fully armed people wondering what's happening to this country," he says. "Are we going to let Biden keep destroying it? Or do we need to get rid of him? We're only going to take so much before we fight back." The 2024 election, he adds, may well be the trigger.

    Nieznany is no loner. His political comments on the social-media site Quora received 44,000 views in the first two weeks of November and more than 4 million overall. He is one of many rank-and-file Republicans who own guns and in recent months have talked openly of the need to take down—by force if necessary—a federal government they see as illegitimate, overreaching and corrosive to American freedom.

    The phenomenon goes well beyond the growth of militias, which have been a feature of American life at least since the Ku Klux Klan rose to power after the Civil War. Groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which took part in the January 6th riot at the Capitol and may have played organizational roles, have grown in membership. Law enforcement has long tracked and often infiltrated these groups. What Nieznany represents is something else entirely: a much larger and more diffuse movement of more-or-less ordinary people, stoked by misinformation, knitted together by social media and well-armed.

    In 2020, 17 million Americans bought 40 million guns and in 2021 were on track to add another 20 million. If historical trends hold, the buyers will be overwhelmingly white, Republican and southern or rural.

    America's massive and mostly Republican gun-rights movement dovetails with a growing belief among many Republicans that the federal government is an illegitimate tyranny that must be overthrown by any means necessary. That combustible formula raises the threat of armed, large-scale attacks around the 2024 presidential election—attacks that could make the January 6 insurrection look like a toothless stunt by comparison.

    "The idea that people would take up arms against an American election has gone from completely farfetched to something we have to start planning for and preparing for," says University of California, Los Angeles law professor Adam Winkler, an expert on gun policy and constitutional law..........

     
    I don't know how we have an actual civil war though. Whichever side the U.S. military decided to back would immediately win. It is far more probable to have a autocratic take over, ala Trump 2020. The EC already sets up a precedent for this by somehow having the popular vote winner lose elections in our country. You only need to take this a step further, and just don't certify vote totals you don't like. It's wild how long Democrats have been asleep at the wheel on this issue.

    posted in Loyalist Thread

    Terrifying stuff
    ===============

    As we approach the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, we — all of us former senior military officials — are increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military, which would put all Americans at severe risk.

    In short: We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time.

    One of our military’s strengths is that it draws from our diverse population. It is a collection of individuals, all with different beliefs and backgrounds. But without constant maintenance, the potential for a military breakdown mirroring societal or political breakdown is very real.

    The signs of potential turmoil in our armed forces are there. On Jan. 6, a disturbing number of veterans and active-duty members of the military took part in the attack on the Capitol. More than 1 in 10 of those charged in the attacks had a service record.

    A group of 124 retired military officials, under the name “Flag Officers 4 America,” released a letter echoing Donald Trump’s false attacks on the legitimacy of our elections.

    Recently, and perhaps more worrying, Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, the commanding general of the Oklahoma National Guard, refused an order from President Biden mandating that all National Guard members be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

    Mancino claimed that while the Oklahoma Guard is not federally mobilized, his commander in chief is the Republican governor of the state, not the president.

    The potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines — from the top of the chain to squad level — is significant should another insurrection occur.

    The idea of rogue units organizing among themselves to support the “rightful” commander in chief cannot be dismissed……..

     
    I don't know how we have an actual civil war though. Whichever side the U.S. military decided to back would immediately win. It is far more probable to have a autocratic take over, ala Trump 2020. The EC already sets up a precedent for this by somehow having the popular vote winner lose elections in our country. You only need to take this a step further, and just don't certify vote totals you don't like. It's wild how long Democrats have been asleep at the wheel on this issue.

    I certainly hope you're right

    But how many other failed democracies also said, "that can never happen here"?

    I've read enough articles by people from other countries saying this is EXACTLY how it starts and EXACTLY what it looks like

    Read something recently saying that too many democrats saying, 'it can't happen here' and too many Republicans (politicians and voters) who know it's happening and actually hate that it's happening....but it's happening in their favor so they're willing to let it happen
     
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    No Nuclear power will ever be allowed to get to the point of civil war.
     
    Not sure what a 'Civil War' would look like in modern times.. but I'll just say that on the heels of Trump and his minions attempt to overthrow the government.. sad reality is that most of the supporters on that side just don't give a shirt about how truly anti-American and anti- democratic everything involved in that was.

    I know that I'm different post January 6th.. my tolerance for the ones who claim to be patriots that support Trump and his efforts has waned to nothing and all that's left from me towards them now is severe, unwavering contempt.
     
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    ummm...new here trying to figure out how to post. is this the only lil box to post in?...idk...

    how do i...post it....save cancel...how to post...um....idk....
     
    sorry guess it posted.

    im new here in case its not apparent.

    so this lil box is where all text and copy gets posted. okay.
     
    sorry guess it posted.

    im new here in case its not apparent.

    so this lil box is where all text and copy gets posted. okay.

    Whenever you are in a thread, you can go to the bottom of the page to find a box that says "Write your reply..." in faint gray text.

    You can also find links at the bottom of individual posts that allow you to do things like leave a reaction or quote them directly (the Like and Reply options).
     
    As the federal government grows and become more encompassing in its power, you will have sections of the country not want to be a part of it.

    I don't see how a country this divided can share a government.

    A mutual divorce will probably happen in our lifetime.
     
    When Trump loses and if the election isn’t certified and he is declared the winner by a Republican Congress I could see the West Coast leaving.

    Southern states can’t afford to leave. They need California and can’t survive without it
     

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