Civil War 2? (3 Viewers)

Users who are viewing this thread

    Optimus Prime

    Well-known member
    Joined
    Sep 28, 2019
    Messages
    8,563
    Reaction score
    10,346
    Age
    47
    Location
    Washington DC Metro
    Offline
    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 never thought I would have to do this, but I'm going to define "piece of arse" for a grown adult man.

    piece of arse (plural pieces of arse)

    (US, idiomatic, colloquial, vulgar) An act of intercourse, especially a one-night stand.
    (US, idiomatic, colloquial, vulgar) A very attractive woman, when considered as a sex object.
    (rare, US, LGBT, idiomatic, colloquial, vulgar) A male prostitute.

    Great. Thanks!
     
    I think Ivanka Trump is an attractive woman with a flat arse.

    I have a daughter. I think she's beautiful. There will never be an instance in this life where I will say that I think she's a "piece of arse" nor will there ever be a case where I would state that if my daughter wasn't my daughter, I'd date her. The reason is that she IS my daughter and I find the idea that a man could look at his own daughter and have thoughts about dating her and the things that go along with "dating" her reprehensible.

    I'm not certain of how your family views incest so to each his own.
    You are truly a great person. Your find incest gross. Such a rare thing. I bet you think pedophilia is bad too. Thanks for sharing our views on incest with the group. Not sure why you felt you needed too but to each their own.
     
    You are truly a great person. Your find incest gross. Such a rare thing. I bet you think pedophilia is bad too. Thanks for sharing our views on incest with the group. Not sure why you felt you needed too but to each their own.
    Since most MAGA-moos think all Democrats are groomers I guess he was erring on the side of caution not knowing where you stood.

    A side note on Ivanka, most of her good looks come from plastic surgery. The nose job alone transformed her whole face.
     
    Last edited:
    What do you think Trump meant when he said he would date his daughter if she wasn't his daughter and that she is a "piece of arse"?
    I have no idea and don't really care to know. What do you think he meant by it?
     
    I have no idea and don't really care to know. What do you think he meant by it?

    You don't care that he made sexual remarks about his daughter? I thought you were against that sort of thing, Farb.
     
    You don't care that he made sexual remarks about his daughter? I thought you were against that sort of thing, Farb.
    He's already on record saying that he would be attracted to Ivanka if she was his daughter. That tells me he has no problem at all with that sort of thing. Maybe incest was more accepted in his family.
     
    a-young-ivanka-trump-strokes-her-dads-face-720x540.png



    ..He wishes he could fork his daughter.
     
    I am sure that is what he meant by it. You don't think your biases might be fogging up your judgment just a hair?
    Sure. Definitely one of those things where it's more fun for me not to give him the benefit of the doubt however my comment was also based upon what he's previously said and the existence of those weirdly sexualized photos of him and Ivanka from when she was a teenager.
     
    I am sure that is what he meant by it. You don't think your biases might be fogging up your judgment just a hair?

    No. His whole life has been a long orgy of self-gratification. I know he wants to screw his daughter because he wants to screw every single attractive female he sees. Married or single, he'll "move on them like a birch" because he's a narcissist and they have zero filters for that. She's not a human being to him, no one is.
     
    No. His whole life has been a long orgy of self-gratification. I know he wants to screw his daughter because he wants to screw every single attractive female he sees. Married or single, he'll "move on them like a birch" because he's a narcissist and they have zero filters for that. She's not a human being to him, no one is.
    Yeah, pretty much this.
     
    No. His whole life has been a long orgy of self-gratification. I know he wants to screw his daughter because he wants to screw every single attractive female he sees. Married or single, he'll "move on them like a birch" because he's a narcissist and they have zero filters for that. She's not a human being to him, no one is.

    Consider the person being responded to thinks its perfectly A-ok that a young girl (as young as 10-12) should be forced to carry a baby to term after being raped? He really doesn’t think they are human beings either….
     
    Frances Fox Piven has a warning for America. Don’t get too relaxed, there could be worse to come.

    “I don’t think this fight over elemental democracy is over, by any means,” she said. “The United States was well on the road to becoming a fascist country – and it still can become a fascist country.”

    The revered sociologist and battle-tested activist – an inspirational figure to those on the left, a bogeywoman for the hard right – is sharing with the Guardian her postmortem of the 2022 midterm elections and Donald Trump’s announcement of a 2024 presidential run.

    While many observers have breathed a sigh of relief over the rout of extreme election deniers endorsed by Trump, and his seemingly deflated campaign launch, Piven has a more sombre analysis.

    All the main elements are now in place, she said, for America to take a turn to the dark side. “There is the crazy mob, Maga; an elite that is oblivious to what is required for political stability; and a grab-it-and-run mentality that is very strong, very dangerous. I was very frightened about what would happen in the election, and it could still happen.”

    That Piven is cautioning against a false sense of security in the wake of the midterms would not surprise her many students and admirers. The co-author, with her late husband Richard Cloward, of the progressive bible, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, has for decades sounded the alarm.

    She has raised red flags over the vulnerabilities of the country’s democracy, the inequalities baked into its electoral and judicial systems, and how poor Americans, especially those of colour, are forced to resort to defiance and disruption to get their voices heard. Now, with the Republicans having taken the House of Representatives, she foresees ugly times ahead.

    “There’s going to be a lot of vengeance politics, a lot of efforts to get back at Joe Biden, idiot stuff. And that will rile up a lot of people. The Maga mob is not a majority of the American population by any stretch of the imagination, but the fascist mob don’t have to be the majority to set in motion the kinds of policies that crush democracy.”………….

     

    Create an account or login to comment

    You must be a member in order to leave a comment

    Create account

    Create an account on our community. It's easy!

    Log in

    Already have an account? Log in here.

    Advertisement

    General News Feed

    Fact Checkers News Feed

    Sponsored

    Back
    Top Bottom