While everyone is watching the world stage and some are predicting WWIII, isn't there a good chance that the USA is getting close to some kind of civil war?
All the ingredients are there and it won't take much to put it all together.
First of all, disclaimer, I'm just a random weirdo on the internet. I don't have a law degree, I'm not a politician. I'm probably naked and masturbating while writing this.
Are we going to have a Civil War 2: Now With More F150's where it's the north vs the south? No.
Are we going to reach a point where the US sort of falls apart into separate little countries after a lot of unpleasantness? I'm not as confident in saying "No".
I think what will happen first is less "civil war" and more "societal collapse". There are very few places in the US where someone can rent an apartment by themselves, and have a decent life with nice hobbies, while only having one income. Buying a house by yourself is even farther out of reach.
But I am noticing something that is a lot closer to everyone than real estate: food is getting expensive. A hamburger at a fast food joint used to be a quick and cheap, although not healthy, way to get lunch, but now a combo meal basically anywhere is $15. For one person. So cook at home, right? Ignoring the difficulties of cooking for oneself after working both jobs, or working all day at one job, that isn't much cheaper. Making a healthy meal for yourself and your family is a skill that not everyone has, and groceries aren't cheap either. I think the first thing that is going to happen is going to be mass food theft, followed by food riots. It's already starting in fact, how many memes have popped up with variations on the saying "If you see someone stealing food, no you didn't"? Stealing food from a large company is acceptable for a lot of people. With rising COL, we will approach a point where a majority of people cannot afford food, and food isn't a house or a shiny new car. Food isn't a choice.
There will be hysterical articles in NYT about how these poor struggling retailers are losing SO MUCH money (but not really) from theft, and you'll start seeing two squad cars parked outside of every grocery store and walmart - even in "nice" areas.
And that's where things will start to escalate. Not everyone likes police now, and seeing a neighbor thrown on the ground and arrested, if not just killed, in walmart because she was trying to get food for her family isn't going to make them more popular. One or two cops cannot fend off everyone in a walmart. Oh, the cops have guns? That's adorable, so do some people in a walmart. Political feelings about police won't matter when it's your stomach growling, when it's your children going hungry.
I expect this would be the point where food would get locked up, only distributed by employees. Which would make it cost more, and more time consuming to acquire. There will be lines. There will also be people who will grow food - but not everyone can do that, and I'm cynical enough to think that some locales will pass laws against "backyard farming" in the name of "food safety", pushed by grocery stores trying to get that extra .025% profit this quarter.
What will happen once people can't get food, will be the local PD being completely unable to enforce anything.
Remember that it's bread AND circuses.
There will be hysterical articles in NYT about how these poor struggling retailers are losing SO MUCH money (but not really) from theft
Now the only reason to park two squad cars outside of every Kroger is to determine minorities into doing what they were already doing, i.e.: going grocery shopping.
backyard farming was plan ..
My wife and I tried it this year, and we ended up with a lot of food from a spot ~110 m2 in size. We also have a couple of chickens, they are mostly pets that eat ticks and clear the ground while giving us eggs.
I say we need more backyard farms.
Tensions are definitely higher than last decade and the decade before. The collapse of the Soviet Union and relatively good economy of the 1990s relieved a lot of tension.
But we're still a ways from WW3. We're back into a pretty normal range for the Cold War. We know China and Russia have the will and the means to try and expand. But they know we have the will and the means to stop them in certain places. That's important because the first two world wars have very different start points that we aren't close to meeting.
World War 1 was started by chains of alliances between countries. They were meant to keep balance but they were decentralized. So there was no committee ruling on Article 5 or bringing new members in. Which is how anarchists in Serbia set off the alliances like a chain of explosives. Both the CSTO and NATO contain rules preventing such a thing. WW1 was helped by cultural views on war. Europe hadn't had a proper industrialized war yet. So everyone thought it was going to be another affair with picnics and a couple large set piece battles.
World War 2 was started by a specific ideology in a country run by meth heads. Hitler was as high as he was crazy. There were a lot of problems left over from World War 1 that gave him an opening but at the core of it all, if he had made a level headed assessment he'd have known he could never win against the US/UK/RUS alliance.
Neither Russia nor China wants the economic devastation that would result from a World War 3. They aren't meth heads and the glory of war is long dead. There's some rumors too that the Chinese are looking at what western equipment can do in Ukraine and they're currently purging some officers who insisted we were exaggerating our capabilities. (They built plans and bought equipment over decades on those recommendations). Russia couldn't invade a cardboard box much less a NATO country at this point.
Now, American Civil War 2. It's not likely for two reasons. One, fighting a war is far more complicated than it used to be. You could gather a bunch of rifles and cannons to have a serious force in 1861. Now days whoever the Army sides with will win in hours. It's not an exaggeration to say a militia could run off a town's police force, set up checkpoints, and take over. But while they were celebrating they'd get hit by air to ground missiles and 25mm rounds from a single helicopter they will never see or hear. And they certainly won't see the special forces team in the woods designating targets. If for some reason they did need to be engaged by the regular infantry it would not go well for them at all. They need to deal with drones, snipers, mortars, artillery, and light tanks. Furthermore there have been head to head practice fights between veterans and militias. (Reality TV in the 2000's got wild.) It never ended well for the militia. They would be outmaneuvered, pinned down, and dead, in about 5 minutes.
Two, the modern model is terrorism. In a Civil War you need a large percentage of support. You have to field whole divisions and the logistics therein. But for political violence you need support from 10 percent of the population in a region to have places to hide and logistics. Also, you can cause havoc with a force the size of a company.
I would say it's highly likely we'll see more political violence before we either come back together as a country or we allow a region to become autonomous or even independent.
Furthermore there have been head to head practice fights between veterans and militias. (Reality TV in the 2000's got wild.)
A British youtuber hired a few retired SAS to play paintball with him and his friends. Spoiler: the SAS guys won every round
You sometimes hear about the paintballers winning, but when you're not actually at risk of death you take more chances.
I played a little paintball, and the most impressive game was when I had sprinted along the perimeter to get a sniper angle on a path, wait 20 seconds, and have a Marine Recon AD barrel roll from behind a tree 30 feet from me that I never heard and put a single round in my goggles before I knew what was happening. It bounced but I wasn't about to call that anything but legit AF.
I saw the military haircut and asked him after the round.
I'm great against paper targets...but that's not the same as combat and I am crystal clear about it.
whoever the Army sides with will win in hours.
And what if the army splits in two? That happens in civil wars ya know!
Unlikely. The military has a weird culture. It's far more likely to stake out a position in the center for as long as possible. Going after violent extremists on both sides. In the end though it will choose the Constitution over anything else. So if there's one side still trying to use that, that's whose going to get the military. For reference, the military was so supportive of Trump and his anti Constitution rhetoric that they voted blue in 2020. That's not because it suddenly had more progressives or liberals. It's because the conservatives in the military are Constitutionalists.
All I an interested in is this....
Reality TV in the 2000s got wild.
Now I am familiar with the dystopia masterpiece that was kids Nation.
That was an episode of preppers. I can't remember if it was Discovery or History that ran the show. But yeah they thought they were going to blind night vision with flashlights. It didn't work.
I was also trying to generalize personal experience where someone would bring their "friends" to mandatory fun paintball. Well now that became a lot more fun real quick.
Well there's civil war with actual armies and military actions and such. That's really not likely to happen.
Now civil unrest? Yes that may happen.
Not really: for context, the civil rights movement in 50's and 60's was far more violent, like actually violent with military being called in across many American cities.
Civil wars happen when people are hungry, lack shelter and jobs. None of that is happening here right now. Protesting and rioting is nothing when people have homes to return to and McDonald's to pick up on the way home.
Uh, lots and lots of people are hungry, lack shelter and jobs. Almost 600,000 people in the US right now are unhoused, and one in eight homes are food insecure (roughly 44 million). The only area where the US is doing good right now is the unemployment rate, which is currently sitting at an ideal 3.7%.
As for causes of civil war, economic inequality plays a large role, as does political deprivation, both of which are rampant (you can thank late-stage capitalism for the first, and the far-right for the second). There are other factors at play, of course, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility for the US to go there.
Gonna put it simply: No lmao
Yeah, there will be some domestic terrorist cells that pop up, but my bet is 90% of the people who want to participate would shit their pants and run the second bullets start flying.
I know I'm not trying to participate in a war.
Love how people don't know our history and presume that things are somehow more divided now than all the other times.
It's always been like this.
The first Civil War was started when slave states sent squads up north to round up "escaped slaves" which frequently included all black people in a town, even if they'd never been enslaved. The free states tried to stop this, and then the traitors threw a hissy fit and got their shit kicked in.
I can definitely see red states sending cops to arrest women fleeing to get an abortion, and free states trying to stop them and that leading to violence.
slave states sent squads up north to round up "escaped slaves" which frequently included all black people in a town
Wow never heard of this.
Robert Evans did a great series on how it might play out called “It Could Happen Here.” https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/the-second-american-civil-war-30751081/
Is that the Behind The Bastards Robert Evans? Love his work.
The same guy yes.
Civil War? No. What is possible and already happening at State levels is following the direction of Hungry. Authoritarian judges, politicians are being installed across the US and progressive and even moderate laws being challenged. Roe vs Wade comes to mind. On the federal level we see the installment of far right federal judges and Supreme Court justices. All coming together to help install far right authoritarian in the executive and legislative branches. Yes, socially, Americans have been more divided in the past, but this time there's is a deliberate attempt to change the governance of US from the inside through brute force.
The US has a pretty severe urban / rural divide in most of its states, but I don't think it's enough. You'd usually need a pretty clean split along territorial lines for that.
You don't need a clean territorial split for a civil war. You just need clean lines of separation between different groups. There have been civil wars based on ethnic lines, religious lines, and even ideologies.
The wars without clear territory get messy. Like genocide messy.
Can't afford to take the time off work to fight a war. Unless the corporations will sponsor us.
You know they would. They'd love to be the next government.
There is a movie coming out in a few months about a US Civil War: https://youtu.be/aDyQxtg0V2w?si=oRudiMaKVQmBy2R
Nice, A24. I'll see that one in the theaters!
Oof, that was more chilling than I expected.
Kind of ruined my day
I mean, the gravy seals may try and overthrow the government again in 2024, but they’ll be embarrassingly squashed within a half a day.
No civil war. The transition to dictatorship and religious totality seems to go smoothly.
It's already underway and the cold civil war between Republicans and everyone else is one of the battle fronts. Ukraine is another.
You don't need the USA to be involved for a World War to start. If anything, a civil war in the USA could help spark one.
The peace built after World War II was mainly founded on American and Soviet force not intervening with each other, then American military dominance. Without a USA like power acting as a guarantor of the current international system, it is very likely that decades of pent up aggression will start to spill forward across the globe, including between other major powers.
Almost fucking did happen. If the Capitol Riots achieved what they were meant to, it almost certainly would have ended up with civil war, as factions of the government and military would divide between those who saw the coup as it was, and those who believe the big lie. Both of them would see eradicating the other as doing their duty to their country.
Nowadays? it's still a shitshow but it's the usual shitshow. It's moving away from the possibility of civil war.
This. Another Jan 6th is the best we can hope for at this point. If Trump wins, it will be much worse than the first time. If he loses, but wins the coupe, then we get a civil war. I don't like how 2 of the 3 options are a national shit show as opposed to a failed insurrection (best scenario at this point).
I don't think Trump has the political capital to stage a successful coup at this point.
Even those that still believe in the big lie would be hesitant to join another coup attempt. They've seen how the Jan 6th attempt failed and how the participants have fucked around and found out. Donny did not protect them like they thought he would. Not to mention he only uses his own Truth Social now, which kneecaps his reach when compared to his old Twitter account.
We won't have World War 3 but there will be wars happening.
All I'm going to say in regards to any kind of American civil war is this: Whoever fires the first shot loses.
That's the primary issue everyone is up against. They don't want to be the ones to fire the first shot because that will justify the national guard being rolled out and a massive escalation.
It's not going to end well for the loser.
On Jan 6, armies of magats attacked the Capitol Building with the explicit goal of lynching the vice president and Congress. The president was actively targeting the vice president and it was pretty much the premise of like twelve different Gerard Butler movies and is pretty much the reason that we pretend that soldiers are supposed to question the chain of command and so forth.
The military and national guard actively sat on their hands and waited to see how things would shake out. As much as I hate to acknowledge it, the Secret Service and The Boys in Blue are the ones who saved the country that day.
So no. The first shot doesn't matter and there is no guarantee that there would even be an escalation in the face of a violent insurrection. Because there wasn't.
From an outsiders perspective. I think USA is heading there, though probably way up there like 20-30 years from now. My reasoning, both side of parties refusal to compromise, government shutdowns, and radicalization of the both parties. Then there is Trump egging to be the first dictator. There is proud boys and antifa given time will eventually militarize. There is also increase in inequality. Eventually in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcers table.
Can't see it. People who own guns are the most cowardly people on earth, change my mind
You should probably take your meds.
and make anyone making any sense look like a conspiracy nut.
You're not making any sense and still look like a conspiracy nut. The system must be rigged or something.
Please leave Lemmy, your kind is not welcome here.
Fucking hell. Take your pills. Like seriously. Get help.
,>make anyone making any sense look like a conspiracy nut.
You're telling on yourself here that you think conspiracy nuts make sense.
For there to be a civil war there needs to be an army on both sides.
There isn't
Yeah, somehow all my gun-owning friends get all awkward and quiet when I ask them how it's gonna feel to shoot at the 18yo army recruits and national guard when they finally "come for their guns." I haven't even gotten to ask what anti-drone measures they have.
Not one of them is ready for the realities of a shooting war with the American Military.
The answer will be "none" because unless they're ex-military, their entire contribution to any militia is usually "gun".
Most of them wouldn't pass fitness requirements nor take orders. Few of them have other skills such as first aid, communication tech or drone piloting.
Even when contributing their gun, you can't assume they know how to safely and usefully handle a weapon, or that they're mentally fit for combat, because none of that is a requirement for buying a gun.
It's a hero fantasy they've literally never thought critically about, but it's supposed to make all the mass shootings worth it.
What if some subset of the US military were to split off and join a hypothetical rebellion?
The most likely scenario is an action that causes the majority of the military to rebel such as what happened in Syria. That's partially why the military swears an oath to the Constitution and not the standing government.
For that to happen you need an inciting incident that is at least perceived to be against the Constitution by the majority of the military including a significant portion of the top brass.
We almost got there with all the January 6th shenanigans but the inciting incident involved the military sitting down and not listening to the Executive branch's unethical orders.
I was with you all the way till right here.
The system does not work when corruption is pretty standard especially in the higher levels.
National Guard isn’t going to fight
Yeah there isn't a National Guard unit out there that stands a chance against an Active Duty unit of the same size. They do important work but the get a train up when they're federalized for a reason.
Do the states have aircraft carriers?
No offense to the fat patrol but the Ukrainian military is having trouble with the Russian military, and they both have heavy ordnance.
A grenade launcher and a couple of miniguns vs national guard would be more like another Waco than a civil war.
You know the size of the US military. Even in the extremely unlikely scenario that those militias manage to band together, right under the FBI's nose, they wouldn't stand a chance.
And even if they did, it would hardly be a nation split. Most people would just see it as "our military vs. some extremist crackpots (or terrorists)"
Just tells the infantry where to call in mortar fire. Nobody has anything to say when the 120 rounds start landing from a mile away.
Wars are won with logistics. What resupply infrastructure do these guys have in place?
There's huge numbers of armed Americans who would be on both sides.
ITT: people who think the armed forces wouldn't split in a civil war, and that hundreds of millions of civvy owned guns wouldn't be a factor.
The armaments held by private citizens are laughable in the face of the weapons in the Military.
Any “civil war” in the US would likely be in the form of constant terrorism, not all-out gunfights.
I don't get why people think this is an issue. armed Americans are generally shown going against incompetent, untrained police officers. Not the Military who is also just armed better than Americans are legally allowed to be.
Most gun law defenders also tend to overlook this too in fact. If the government wants to make armed citizens stop, they will do it.
A bunch of uppity, rag-tag civilians with handguns, even the handful of clown shows that call themselves “civilian militias” don’t have the resources, logistics, or numbers to combat the National Guard, let alone the rest of whatever armed forces may be brought to bear against them.
Don’t be silly.
That's just called rioting
Okay. Let's assume that you and your buddies are a trained militia. Not "I play paintball once or twice a year" or "I spend every weekend at the range shooting". I mean you actually have a command structure, know how to move as a unit, and are dedicated enough that you will lay down your life for the person next to you.
What are you going to do against an armored vehicle? Or a drone? Or even just indirect fire.
Because... any "reasonably" equipped military can kill millions of people with minimal effort. Just look at what is happening to Palestine.
Just because this topic interests me due to being the intersection of history, military history, "guns are cool even if I don't think civilians should have them", and "the thing that comes after social activism":
Even in the 1700s, a farmer with a gun in the shed was pretty much useless. Battles were won by large groups of people and the only reasons the US managed to beat the Brits were a combination of more or less "stealing" the British military structure that had been set up to defend ourselves coupled with most combat boiling down to sheer number of people who could sort of hold up a gun and maybe fire it. A couple angry farmers might be able to kill even twice their number of soldiers. But they would be up against ten or twenty times that number and one person going down doesn't stop the volley. And if you were actually an amazing shot with dozens of muskets and Heath Ledger to reload them for you so that you could constantly unload on anyone who approached your house on the hill? That is when they get the cannon or mortar.
It was largely the late 1800s to mid 1900s where the idea of a militia could actually fight against an army. Particularly the time around World War 2 when we saw a fundamental shift on the battlefield to where even an individual soldier, let alone a squad or company, had enough firepower to make a significant difference. Line of sight was still essential, even for indirect fire, and armored vehicles could still be consistently negated by bottles of gasoline. This is why we even famously saw things like the Wilmington insurrection of 1898 where a relatively limited number of people could cause widespread damage and be "not worth" the army intervening (racism helps a lot too)
But the tail end of the 20th century has largely negated that. Because yes, the individual soldier has more firepower than ever. But satelites and drones mean that you don't even need line of sight to devastate with indirect fire. And those individual soldiers likely have MUCH better gear than civilians (by design and law). For example, there is a lot of talk about whether the US "still owns the night" now that consumer grade night vision is "good enough". And that does make a significant difference in terms of raids. We likely will never be able to walk around double tapping helpless brown people (without prep work involving tying them up, cop style...) ever again. But it still means we can maneuver at night when most countries would need to take a break because their eyes hurt or they are nauseous from the FOV. Same with body armor and, probably, optics if the new rifle is any indication.
Which, funny enough, puts us back to the 1700s. A bunch of farmers/klansmen/activists/whatever can equip themselves and even train into a cohesive unit. Sure. And they'll kill maybe even ten to one in terms of infantry. And then an artillery strike or a missile or even just someone with a joystick inside of an APC will slaughter them and there will be nothing they can do.
Which is why the successful insurgencies are more about unrest and trying to outlast an occupation than anything else. And... that doesn't work when the country occupying your country is... your country.
It's the exact war we spent 20 years fighting already. You don't want your face on a network chart in a Battalion ops center. And the military wouldn't split down the middle. It's 50/50 blue/red but most of the conservatives in the military are wholly unimpressed with the far right. You shoot at an American and call it a war? They're going to respond negatively.