Hard Questions: Civil War Between The Left and The Right

In some abstract sense. But whoever controlled the information, which would likely be elite/wealthy/corporate interests would likely be framing the situation and the military would be following that framing.

An excerpt from a 2017 article in the Washington Post:

[i]"How would Trump’s hardcore supporters react to the removal of their president for a high crime or misdemeanor that fell somewhat short of a triple ax murder? Not with equanimity, you can be assured. Does that matter? Maybe not. But the “civil war” cited in the New Yorker article was not of armies marching across fields, but of civil unrest — a lot of angry people causing a lot of mayhem.

The precedent may not be America from 1861 to 1865, but pre-war Europe. The recent skirmishes here between ultra-nationalists on the far right and the so-called antifa on the far left are reminiscent of the brawls between fascists and communists that weakened German democracy in the 1920s and 1930s. The extremes sucked the air out of the center. In Yeats’s enduring words, things fell apart. The center could not hold."[/i]

Many of your answers are about, “it depends”. Yes, there are many variables to consider in such a scenario of conflict. But whatever they may be the overriding reality would be as the quote says, ‘a lot of angry people causing a lot of mayhem’. If one happens to find themselves dealing with angry people and mayhem then ‘it depends’ would still be an element in your decisions but with very little of the ease which we can discuss it here on a forum in times where the center is still holding.

If you see a tornado in the distance and it’s coming in your direction your decisions have to be quick and underlying them there has to be a sense that you will succeed. The strength of that sense is the chance that you give yourself. Some will say 50/50, others will go more in one direction or the other. My bet is that those who keep it at 50/50 or higher in their favor are going to do better than others. If that is wild speculation, then that is what is needed to increase your chances of survival.

In this conflict the only immediate framing would be to stabilize the situation. As to how much the military, and for that matter the National Guard and police, would follow the framing intended for stability is also of concern. Just because they’re wearing uniforms and badges does not mean that some of them won’t themselves be, “people causing a lot of mayhem.” Look at history and you’ll find numerous examples of the protectors becoming wolves.

One can armchair as much as they want about actions depending on this, that, or the other, but when the pilot light triggers the flames it’s time to get up from the chair and act with the sole purpose of survival.

Here’s an article about what might happen if Trump is defeated in 2020. Read it.

“Those who assume otherwise haven’t been paying attention.”

Promethean, you are flexible. :slight_smile:

But if the military were there to stabilize things (one would hope), then I wouldn’t be against them. They have a lot more experience, personnel, and ammunition.

I’d be more concerned about other characters.

If Id live there id be armed

Sure

Id make sure to stay the hell away from big cities, nothing to be gained there

So many different sections.
The airforce would maybe not be on the same side as the navy. But in general command centres wouldn’t be in control of their forces per se if the chain of power is broken. Army people would also consider the chaos and the necessity to strategize, and everyone would be paranoid. Its hard to imagine the sheer amount of ideas that would be floating around in different station heads minds about what is going on and what is going to be the case.

An idea would win, eventually, not a party. Because you cant kill an idea.

A lot. We’ve all been through the same shitstorm, it has been incredibly powerful as a furnace forging unity. I think 90 percent on the right are in fundamental agreement about the purpose of not having a social order that controls our thinking, and an absolute readiness to do whatever it takes, because we have seen how little reason is worth to the others.

Since it is the right, everyone would know that you have to merit others to have a safe spot in the hierarchy, to not be expendable. There would be very little bureaucracy about it, no shared ideals, except commonly known Christian ideals which would apply in useful ways. It is a guerrilla religion.

By all means… what can you say to this…

Id not fight my own brothers

If they’d be fighting me, obviously

Logically one would expect it.

Well their victory in the first place would be a violence, the laws they’d set would mean that what I want to do (think and speak freely) would not be allowed. Since I would be breaking these rules, Id not be very optimistic.

China and Russia for sure, they’d have to. And yes all others who think they can get a piece also, but China and Russia would be brutal in preserving their first right to usurp.

Canada would become even more interesting that it already is.

Yes. I can’t say no to this. It can still happen.

Maybe it would come down to which side the Canadians are on. Because all runaway options would be north. Canada would either fall apart or not, I don’t know about its military structural integrity. But its people in the north would have an enviable degree of autonomy from anything, the outposts around the bay of Hudson would become important.

And Alaska becomes the centre of the world.
Russia would need a military buildup at the Bering strait, people mobilizing for the North Pole, Greenland occupied, the whole western world will go Eskimo.
Then, in the utter lack of direction in the conflict, and the expansion into the true connection of modern man with the earth, it will likely be found that the conflict is utterly pointless, irrelevant completely.
but there will be no leadership to call it all off and the different sections of army and militia will remain in a headlock, and irreducible scrimmages will be frequent and determine the landscape of human nature for a good while, until some form of politics organizes from the new necessities and possibilities.
Ultimately the predators from outside will cement a new unity. By that time squatters will be living in the freedom tower living off birds that fly into windows.

You do know that if I were to take your quote and replace ‘right’ with ‘left’ that it would also accurately express what the left feels about the situation in general? That we don’t want the Right’s idea of a social order to control our thinking as it seems intent on doing? That addedly we don’t want to go back to things of the past like racism, Christian authoritarianism, the taking away of women’s rights, the taking away of voting rights and a whole lot more?

From my point of view, I do not wish to convert your views to mine. I do not wish to tell women on the right who are pro-life that they should have abortions. I do not wish to tell you to dismiss your religious beliefs. What I do declare is that there is that if freedom of expression is to be a reality for everyone, then everyone has to recognize that it means allowing the space for that freedom.

But the Right does not think of it that way. The right wants their views enforced overall as LAW, it wants those who do not accede to those views to be punished. The Right is not interested in equal space, it wants DOMINION.

You may see all of that as a political view but I and many others see it as logical with respect to cooperation, the cooperation which without it there would be no civilization. I don’t want to tell the right what they should do in their acre of endeavor. Why is the Right so intent on telling the entire acreage of a country what to do, how to behave, and who to believe?

Why does the Right not realize that the more things are fucked up between ourselves, that it makes it easier for outsiders to come in and attempt to fuck us over permanently?

Why are the reasons from the Right better than the reasons from the Left? Why can’t there be, CENTER REASONS?

Why is that, Mr. Horde?

The right wing is not a real party in the United States, it is a control group that panders to blok groups to win elections. Tax cuts for the rich doesn’t win elections, appealing to evangelical Christians and displaced whites does.

Actually, I take most of that back. The United States in a brainwashing program has actually convinced people that their votes are even being counted…

Oh gasp, the Russians hacked two districts in Florida … that’s called a straw man, the government in conjunction with mind control programs has hacked its own elections for over 20 years, but yeah, we should focus on Russians … what a fucking joke!

No, I see leftists as snakes with no loyalty.

Then you ought to come to the right.
Its the people on the left who prevent expression.

Oh my … youve been been reading too many Facebook posts and newspapers.
What you think the right is is precisely what the right is not.
The left projects its own shadow.

See above.

See above.

Ask your hyena hordes that, mr Ivers.
People could have just respected American democracy and worked with the president. But instead news networks threatened to kill him. That was the end of civil society, and the beginning of the civil war.

Unless the left finds some self-criticism, some notion of how it has threatened us into war-readiness, it will find the consequences of its actions in the old ways.

The lefts seem to have no idea what they’ve done to us yet.
(I changed “you” to “they” as I have no beef with you personally at all and Id welcome any reasonable person into the moderate right, of which I see myself as an extension, after finally having left the left after it had shown its true face to me personally.)

Moderate left is very rare. It would require the leftist to condemn the fascistic FBI bureaucracy, the fascistic CNN machinery, and a lot more stuff which seems perfectly normal to all leftists.

All in all it is cruelty which brings down the left. Savages who bring down whole nations (such as Libya) while virtue designating to their own electorate, this is something nature simply won’t be able to support for very much longer.

I work a lot with bodycount. I simply count the corpses that a regime has on its conscience. Ive yet to talk to a leftist who even considers this a factor. They’re more concerned with the immense personal hurt of not being addressed with the proper pronoun.

Regarding one of the questions:

There is no case ever in which civil war has led to resolution, where one side wins. In this sense, the US civil war really wasn’t so much a civil war as a war between to distinct alliances of states. The country USA didn’t quite properly exist. This was the achievement of Lincoln. People forget just how independent all these different states were. Texans considered themselves Texans, not United Stateseans.

But it’s good, that was a righteous war, to end slavery. There were other goals and things at stake, but that was the only one that mattered. All others were noise. All due respect to Texans, who I like better than almost any other gringo.

But anyway, no, civil war is not a means. It is an end.

I wonder in todays case if the left has any idea why the right is preparing for war.

They seem to think it is because we want to dictate peoples minds. Whereas I don’t think we’ve ever expressed any desire in this direction. It is foremost because we have been classified as legitimate targets for attacks, because we’ve been dehumanized and thus severely threatened in mainstream media.

There is no one on the right now who trusts the lefts will to uphold the social contract, and there is no one on the left who speaks out on behalf of respecting democracy. All is about overthrowing our president and making sure we will never again get to elect one. Thus we are prepared.

The worst civil war on record is said to be the 30 year war of Germany, of which our 80 year against the Spanish is considered a part. Go figure with these numbers.

Anyway the bad reputation of this 30 year war is always tied to the fact that it came into families. Families got divided by this war, where this isn’t normally the case as much, not even in civil war.

So this war we’ve got brewing right here has at least this characteristic in common with the 30 year war, that it cuts right through families.

Um, actually, it is a hallmark of all civil wars.

I hesitate to accept Germany’s as a civil war, for similar reasons as the US’s. Was there a Germany? If anything, that it split families makes the case that it was in fact.

I remember my father, in a period where he became obsessed with the Spanish civil war, always highlighted that aspect most. How terrifyingly destructive civil war is, for that very reason.

“Brothers turn against brothers,” he would always say.

I agree that things have changed in these last 3 years. We were expecting some resistance, but also perhaps were expecting the clear sanity of the ideas to eventually win over hearts. That the left only dug in, crazyfied, showed a disease we didn’t realize was so progressed.

We, the defectors, the Trump lovers (for this includes defectors from the Republicans, lest you forget), felt like Obama betrayed us by using his good promises to expand the fascist state. We thought this would be made clear to all, or most, but it turns out most people wanted precisely that. It is precisely that which they loved about Obama.

We still haven’t fully wrapped our heads around it.

But I want to be the dude that says it here, there is not even civil war on the horizon. The disease is real, but the “war” is already being fought. They want to destroy Trump politically, as you say. But they haven’t yet. And I put the odds against them, for sanity gives a clear strategic advantage.

Just look. Take a cold look. We have suffered set-backs and disillusionments, but Trump has tectonically shifted the direction of things. He has established a new normal, still imperceptible to most, certainly to leftists. Also to the loonies on the right, who think it will be their time.

Negus.

What Trump is doing will not be fully felt until the earthquake is over and the plates have settled.

Sorry, did some wikipediaing. Forgive the standard foreigner’s indolence.

The 30 year’s war does constitute civil war, for it was an inward one within the civil society, not between rival kingdoms per se, where ideas split members into bands. It’s hard to describe why, but it is a civil war.

In Venezuela there is a period, between the fall of the Great Colombia and about 1900, about 100 years give or take, that isn’t even actually studied in school. It is just glossed over as the “Federal Wars,” because the chaos was such that historiography is impossible. It was basically a 100 year civil war, of brothers against brothers. Until it was mostly mothers left. Some say that’s why we are so matriarchal.

I know civil war. It is in my DNA. It is literally not possible to discern sides, much less choose them. There are ideas at the very beginning that split people, federalist vs centrist, conservative vs liberal, democrat vs autocrat. But in very short order it devolves into looting bands and vendettas. Like, fast.

I’m actually counting from 1810, when the independence war started. That, too, was brothers against brothers. Literally.

Simon Bolivar’s sister was a Spanish loyalist.

I may have simplified some things, but the literature is out there. On the Spanish war, for example, volumes. From both sides.

In the past, with sabres and black powder rifles, it was easier for chaos to take hold. And in Venezuela, we never had the discipline to constitute an army, which was what gave the fascists in Spain the advantage needed to win. If left to the communists and anarchists, the sheer disorganization and lack of discipline would have ensured the state I described of bands and vendettas.

That is the actually only serious reason to avoid civil war. It is a no brainer win for the military. Some may defect, some always do, but the core always remains intact. And when the coins fall, the army is always on the army’s side. See: Spain, Egypt, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, France.