I posted something when I was new do DU saying I was concerned about a second civil war.

[redstatebluegirl]

I can't find it, but I remember getting slammed by the community here. I had people send me messages saying I didn't belong here, saying that I clearly didn't understand history and other lovely things. Overall everyone pretty much felt it was not possible and I was wrong. I wish I could find it, I would post it again and see what the reaction would be.

We are sitting here looking at a new civil war or a coup of some kind, that is very clear to me now. It was pretty clear to me when I posted that a few years ago.

How do all of you feel about that possibility now?

[Elessar Zappa]

1. I don't see a civil war happening.

I do think we could become an illiberal authoritarian society if we don’t do something about voter suppression. As far as violence goes, I see a moderate possibility that we could become similar to Northern Ireland in the previous century. Basically, random, frequent acts of domestic terrorism.

[CrackityJones75]

55. We are in the middle of it right now.

No it isn’t a shooting war. At least not yet or not on the level that we think about shooting wars. But we have republicans calling fir it. And we had our capitol attacked in an attempted coup.

I would say if it isn’t already in motion that ball is starting to roll right now.

[70sEraVet]

2. In the words of America's poet Bob Dylan.....

"Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now."

[FBaggins]

3. I don't remember the earlier post... but happy to "slam" you here

There is no danger of a second civil war.

[Atticus]

7. "---or a coup of some kind." We had one of these attempted on January 6th. Is another try so

unlikely?

[FBaggins]

10. "We had one of these attempted"

But without any plausibility of success.

This is really no different from the right pointing to some BLM protestors explicitly saying that they want to overthrow the government.

Those are indeed illegal actions, but there is no danger of an actual civil war or a "coup of some kind".

[Atticus]

14. I think your comparison of the January 6th criminals who invaded the Capitol with the expressed

intent to murder the U.S. Vice President and the Speaker and overthrow the U.S. government with the BLM protestors' marches for racial justice is not just wrong and misguided, it is ludicrous.

How about rethinking that?

[FBaggins]

17. No need to rethink - both are ludicrous

There was no possibility of murdering the VP just like setting up a guillotine for Trump was never plausible despite protestors shouting "off with his head".

And I'm not comparing anyone to those who marched for racial justice (nor did any significant number of those on 1/6 plan to kill anyone or start a coup). I'm talking about the tiny minority who actually call for getting rid of the current system.

There is no possibility of another civil war... nor a coup attempt succeeding.

[Atticus]

21. The "Confederate States" did not "succeed", but the American Civil War was not

what many would term "ludicrous".

Clearly, you are unconcerned with traitorous attacks on our government and its leaders as long as the attacks fail. You are certainly entitled to your opinion.

Others disagree.

[FBaggins]

23. Yet another ludicrous comparison

There is no rational comparison between the two events. 1/6 was outrageous (and in many cases illegal) - it was not in any sense the start of a civil war nor a coup.

Others disagree.

And those "others" deserve the "slamming" that the OP received a decade ago and should receive now.

Those few who may have actually intended a "coup" are criminals and nutcases and should be treated as such. They are not a credible threat to the nation.

[Atticus]

25. Bless your heart! nt

[Treefrog]

29. Thank you for this sensible post.

I think some people just enjoy being in a panic all the time, envisioning doomsday scenarios.

[Sympthsical]

53. Some people think the news is just another television show

Something to watch on TV and get invested in, with cable news playing show runners.

That's why people can say such outlandish, unrealistic things. None of it is actually real! Then they hop on message boards or Reddit or Twitter and theorize, like government is just another episode of Westworld.

If a Civil War did break out, and troops rolled through their town, I'd almost like to be there to see the look on their faces. "What? You said it was coming. Why do you look so shocked?"

People wouldn't know what to do with themselves.

It's easy to root for plot lines that you feel have no direct bearing on your life. That's why I get so irritated when I see people online rooting for riots. "No peace! Burn it all down!" Yeah, you say that, because you feel quite safe in knowing that it's not your house or business that is getting burned. The people whose lives are getting wrecked? Betcha they're not on social media saying that shit.

[msfiddlestix]

41. If you're trying to assert a balance of reasonable perspective..

Maybe test your theory out with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and the Capitol police officer Schitnick and the families who lost their family member trying to protect the Capitol that day? Tell them that what occurred wasn't an attempted coup?

I disagree that it isn't possible, but I'm completely happy to be totally wrong about that. Maybe if we can manage to get through this surreal period in our history, it can be said some of us were worried about nothing and be factually true.

But right now, you don't know that. And neither do I.

In a number of threads posted in the past couple of days, I'm seeing a startling number of comments playing down Jan 6th and the ongoing threat of a repeat a la Mike Flynn/Qanon et al and it's very hard to read those comments as anything less than a bit of revisionism, peppered with ridicule and condemnation.

I'm never going to forget January 6th, 2021. Not EVER.

I see that day, those events leading up to it, as a crystal clear indicator of potential events laying in wait. I'm seeing and hearing all of the same signals and rally cries to rise up again from a lot of the same players.

And because what is being done to address the events of that day is woefully slow, delayed/obstructed and/or inadequate so far, I'm not confident we will not see something similar play out in the near future. If I'm wrong, glory be and hallelujah.

I have often made a point of reading your comments on legal questions, and respected them because I appreciate being able to refer to those legal backgrounds and acumen on a number of matters which come up at a staggering pace.

But even I can see that maybe a perspective could be skewed for any number of complicated reasons.

For me, January 6th, 2021 isn't a day to down play, or underestimate the forces which enabled it to occur in the first place.

[Crunchy Frog]

43. Bookmarking for later. nt

[CrackityJones75]

56. It was actually very close to being successful.

They were just down the hall with the chambers not emptied. Do you think that it wouldn’t have become an extreme tragedy had they gotten into the chambers and the politicians. They brought a working gallows fir christs sake. I think underestimating these people is a VERY foolish thing to do.

[FBaggins]

61. No it wasn't

They might very well have endangered the lives of some in Congress or even the VP (though such a belief would be more plausible if they had brought guns with them)... but that couldn't have resulted in changing the outcome of the election... or a successful coup... or any sort of "civil war". It merely would have resulted in more heinous crimes.

They brought a working gallows fir christs sake

No they didn't. What they did bring was offensive enough, but wasn't anywhere close to a "working gallows". Have you even seen the photos? A tree would have been closer. I wouldn't trust the designer to build a deck.

[MineralMan]

13. How did that work out for the insurrectionists?

Not too well. The vote to confirm the electoral college still took place that evening. The attempt failed miserably, frankly.

It should have been stopped earlier than it was, but it was stopped.

[LanternWaste]

59. Prophecy is bemusing.

I simply wish people would state up front reading tea leaves is their thing, instead of the irony that pretending our diaphanous speculation is absolute... but I get it-- it's fun and self-validating to hold others to a higher standard than we hold ourselves to.

[Atticus]

4. It is nice to be popular, but it's better to be right. Sometimes you just have to

"color outside of the lines".

Thanks.

[redstatebluegirl]

5. Thanks Atticus, I have always been told I color outside the lines :-).

[Sympthsical]

54. Telling me a circle is square is certainly outside of the lines thinking

But it doesn't mean it's right.

Literary tropes and bumper slogans are too often mistaken for actual wisdom.

[Atticus]

57. And strawmen are useful distractions. nt

[Ocelot II]

6. A civil war like the original one is highly unlikely, since that involved a conflict between

two groups of states organized as entities with governments and military forces. The current ideological conflict isn't between discrete geographic areas except to the extent that it seems to be loosely but not entirely rural vs. urban. What might happen instead is something more like the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the '60s through the '80s, with repeated instances of attacks against government buildings and officials and other prominent targets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

[StarfishSaver]

8. This.

I do fear we're in for a lot of this kind of unrest/insurgencies now that the Trumpism mindset has metastisized into the right wing militia sphere.

[Atticus]

16. Yet some will insist that unless "we" wear blue and "they" wear gray, it won't really be a

"civil war", so the OP is wrong.

[Ocelot II]

22. A civil war can take many forms.

One might argue that The Troubles was a civil war. The English civil war of the seventeenth century, which also did not involve pitched battles between defined states, was another variety; we could wind up with something like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War

[Hortensis]

36. As you say, but if a far-right authoritarian government took over

it's likely most of our nation would fairly quickly be brought under the control of a government with formidable assets to quash troubles it didn't approve.

So far we do seem to have a currently blocked coup in process and some dispersed, domestic terrorism troubles that serve the insurrectionists. If we win, imagine they will continue for a while.

Speculating more, it seems likely that various points some states would resist, refuse federal authority where it was unacceptable, and if necessary ultimately military force would be used to gain control. That would qualify as civil war, but federal military consolidation of power would be much, much, much faster than the first one and involve few civilians except as collateral damage.

[Haggard Celine]

9. I certainly think that a civil war is possible.

It all hinges on how many Q people and other Trump supporters are out there and how many of them are willing to take up arms against the government. I don't think there are enough of them to be a match for our military. Some people think that part of the military would join the rebels, but I don't think there would be many of those, either. Anyway, I think a civil war could happen, but it probably wouldn't last long.

[Crunchy Frog]

46. But what if *their* side regains power in the next couple of elections?

What if there are big protest marches in the streets, like last summer, but there are no more restraints on the police or the military? What if some blue state governments resist? What if we're the ones who are the rebels?

That's the scenario that I really worry about.

[Haggard Celine]

50. That is why we have to kill the filibuster now!

If we wait and can't get it together in order to stop them in Congress, they are almost assured to win the next elections, and then it will be over. We have to get all of our people on board so that we can get legislation passed before it's time for elections again. I don't want to think about the alternative because, for one thing, I'll be deep in enemy territory.

[blm]

11. It's been apparent for a few decades. Dylan Roof should have

opened the eyes of even the skeptics. Not likely a full-on civil war, but, numerous attempts to trigger one, possibly igniting small scale battles.

[MineralMan]

12. How do I feel? I don't go by my feelings about such things.

Instead, I look at numbers of people who might think about doing something like that. Then, I look at our institutions that are designed to prevent such a thing, and their numbers and capabilities.

After doing that, I conclude that no civil war is on the horizon. Just some isolated events that involve violence of some kind.

We will not have a "second civil war." And that's not base on my feelings. It's based on carefully considered facts.

[Treefrog]

30. This. Another sensible post.

Smh with the panicky posts.

[MineralMan]

32. Well, there IS unrest from the far right.

We saw that in action on January 6, although I didn't watch much of that, since my parents both died that day.

However, the invasion of the Capitol was strictly amateur hour. They didn't bring firearms, because that wouldn't have worked out well at all. One insurrectionist was shot and killed by someone defending the Capitol who used his pistol to shoot her. One. There were some injuries and deaths on the defending side, but not many.

Once the backup forces showed up, the insurrectionist fled the scene. Apparently, they were not ready to give their lives for the battle. A bit later, Congress went back into session and confirmed the electoral college vote. The evacuation plan for the members and the VP worked, and everyone stayed safe and returned to their work.

Since then, what we have seen is an occasional outburst, mostly by individual Trump supporters bearing arms. But, we have not seen any large gatherings of armed idiots out there since January 6. Why is that? Well, January 6 went poorly for the moron brigade. A fully-armed gathering with malice in mind will end even more poorly. The "militia" knows that and is keeping its head down.

A "civil war" would require much more organization AND MUCCH MORE BRAVERY on the part of the insurrectionists. The trouble with the "militia" types is that they're only brave when they are not opposed by an armed force superior to them. They don't want a fight; they want to intimidate unarmed people. They are cowards, poorly-trained, and unorganized, at best. They have no real plan, just "feelings."

So, I'm not seeing it. Not now. Not in the near future, either.

[Treefrog]

51. Exactly. And when I read about them in court, they either deny being there or say they were

swept up in the crowd. Hardly brave patriots who intend to really make a stand.

I take January 6 very seriously, but as you point out, it was amateur hour.

Sorry for the loss of your parents. That’s not easy no matter how old they, or we, are. Nor how prepared we think we are for the event.

[Johnny2X2X]

15. That's what Q wants

A Civil War, doesn't mean they'll get one, but it's appropriate to discuss.

DU has been overly cautious about moderating hyperbole for a long time. I appreciate that we would rather stick with the facts as we can prove them. But this is something we need to be discussing. The rhetoric from the Right was leading up to this for several years and we ignored it at out own peril.

Several years back I started a thread on how conspiracy theory loving Cons would be obsessed with child sex scandals that they would try to pin on powerful Dems. I even took it to the next completely logical and predictable step that they'd claim there was child porn on the laptop of a candidate or the family of a candidate. And low and behold, that's exactly what they claimed was on Hunter Biden's laptop. Those threads got flagged for moderation and removed.

January 6th was not surprising in the least, they had been planning it for a long time. The crap they tried to invent with Hunter Biden's laptop was also predictable. The Democratic Party has done a poor job of anticipating what the Reps and Trump will do next, hopefully we start entertaining just how crazy they are to be able to protect the country.

[MineralMan]

37. Q is not an organized quasi-military group. It is just an idea.

January 6, for example, was not a centrally-organized thing carried out by a single organization. It was a hodge-podge of small groups of would-be warriors, who didn't even bring firearms to their "revolution." Oath-Keepers, Proud Boys, and other splintered little gaggles of individuals showed up, but there was no real plan. There was no real strategy. Most of the people who actually entered the Capitol looked puzzled on camera, and seemed to have no idea what to do next.

There were a few small groups that seemed to have a plan in mind, but they all numbered under a dozen, and could not get much traction, given the number of people who didn't seem to know what to do.

Q is not an actual group. It is just an idea, or a bunch of wacko ideas. It has no real leadership. It has no large group of members. It holds no training sessions. Without organization, leadership, training, and tactical exercises, there is no chance for a successful operation in real life.

It is a Militia of Morons. That is all. We just need to be ready to back down such events with enough force to frighten the morons into going back to their mothers' basements. If they start shooting, then we need to kill a bunch of them right away. They will scatter immediately, because they are incapable of carrying out anything actually like a warlike skirmish.

There is no Q. There is only an idea.

[JI7]

18. There isn't going to be a civil war

[Paladin]

19. I sure as hell didn't slam you, then.

And I'm not about to slam you, now. I think our political enemies give daily evidence that they are horny for a civil war. We're not dealing with sane people, any more. They want trump back in office, they have the weaponry to make a serious attempt at doing it, and we're not doing nearly enough in the way of preventative measures. I hope that you and I are wrong about this

[redstatebluegirl]

20. Me too but I think the threat is real.

[Paladin]

27. Where did I state that the threat was not real? I was agreeing with you. (nt)

[redstatebluegirl]

33. Sorry I know that I didn't state it correctly. I was stopped in traffic and trying to hurry.

[Paladin]

47. No problem. Thanks for the clarification. (nt)

[RegularJam]

24. I don't see it as a current possibility.

I'm not even sure who the two or more sides would be.

What would need to be further destabilized in order to have a civil war:

Police
Military
Local and federal governments
7 Eleven


The insurrection was an all out push by the right and they were only able to get around a thousand or so couch commandos to show up. The overwhelming majority of people in DC that day would have zero to do with any war, much less a civil war.

I think the thought alone shows that one is unaware of what is going on in this country today.

[BannonsLiver]

28. The same as I did when you posted it the first time.

Unimpressed.

[JCMach1]

34. A Trumphole Putsch attempt is not a Civil War

[I_UndergroundPanther]

35. I wrote a post about it

Long ago too. Sank like a stone.

[Hortensis]

38. "Civil war" by some definition as Ocelot describes does seem more possible.

A period of "troubles," i.e., domestic terrorism flaring more than now possible, in worst case brief period of military consolidation of power to deal with a few recalcitrant states.

However, I think most imagine it as involving large numbers of citizens, as in the original civil war; and in spite of the scary hostility on the right and occasional physical attacks, I don't see that.

For the most part, I imagine the vast majority of people would go to work, home, raise their kids, play, and generally keep their heads down and accept whatever was won or lost by those battling the future out now. As the 100 million who didn't bother to vote in 2016 did, and 80 million in 2020.

In this era we are all completely dependent on 'the state," whatever form it takes, for life. And I'm remembering an expert saying that in authoritarian states almost everyone is a collaborator in the oppression of all because that's how you get to continue on working, raising your kids, etc, under those conditions.

[Irish_Dem]

39. We have been in a psychological (psy-ops) civil war for quite awhile.

Not hard to determine who started it, who keeps it going, and who benefits.

[SoonerPride]

40. The right wing is more agitated than ever.

Violence will continue

[Crunchy Frog]

42. Got your post right here! Now I just have to read it.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10022203883

Things can get pretty ugly around here when you express an opinion that's contrary to the popular consensus, whatever that is at the moment.

I'm pretty sure that I never would have argued with you over that, but it was a long time ago.

[redstatebluegirl]

48. Thanks!

[Crunchy Frog]

49. It was in your journal BTW. Just had to go back far enough.

[WarGamer]

44. Still no.

There will never be a ground war with the 101st Airborne out of KY facing off against the 1st Marine Div out of California

[LetMyPeopleVote]

45. Why so many Trump supporters crave apocalyptic bloodshed

I converted to Judaism a long time ago but I have been watching various christian sects who are pushing concepts like support of Israel will hasten a second coming

Link to tweet

As a Jew, I do not care why these groups support Israel and I know that Israel needs such support.

What scares me now is that there is a subset of the groups who want a second coming who also support the Former Guy and believe that reelection or reinstatement of the Former Guy will hasten a second coming. For example

Link to tweet

Now these supporters are evidently advocating or praying for violence to restore the Former Guy

Link to tweet

Fact is, lots of Americans believe they are God's chosen people. They believe the end of the world is coming, according to God's divine plan. They believe the US Constitution is a covenant with them only, and that a genocidal purge will preface Christ's return.

This is the End Times I'm talking about, a story about global events culminating in apocalyptic bloodshed that "reinstates" the King of Kings to his rightful place. It's a story millions of Americans tell themselves and their children. It's a story in which the messy and hard-to-understand world around us is no such thing. Instead, it is polarized as conflict between God's friends and God's enemies. The only difficulty is decoding the signs and symbols God lays out. Reality isn't real. Reality is a sinful illusion. What's real is the trail of secrets leading the chosen safely to The End. Argument, language, reasoning—they don't matter. Only they can know The Truth.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that religion is off-limits. Therefore, the conventional wisdom in Washington does not see, because it will not see, that tens of millions of Americans already believe democracy is getting in the way of God's plan, that democracy is—and I mean this seriously—desecrating the sacredness of the US Constitution. As one critic put it, the Venn diagram showing the overlap of QAnon believers and white evangelical Protestants (and related groups) is actually a circle. When you stand with God against His enemies, you have God's permission to hate.

That's their religion. No, it's not a cult. It's more than that. It's deeper than that. The hate felt by the former president's supporters during four years' worth of political rallies is the same hate for America as it stands, not as they desire it to stand, that right-wing religious radicals have felt since post-Civil War America. That's when Charles Darwin's theories and what they determined about humanity's place in God's divine scheme first gained traction in the United States. Every single intellectual development—from evolution then to Critical Race Theory now—has been met with such hate. I don't understand why the conventional wisdom looks away from history.

Because it's easier, I guess. It's easier to maintain the myth of the civic religion; to be shocked by Americans talking about a military coup; to blame the former president for imperiling the world's oldest democracy. It's easier to respect religion without scrutinizing it too much, and risk discovering it's steeped in hate, which might force the conventional wisdom in Washington to take responsibility. On this one-year anniversary since Trump gassed Americans out of the way for a photo-op of him holding a Bible in front of a church, we need the truth. And that's never been easy.

The idiots who support Israel for the sake of a second coming scare . The trump supporters who want a revolution really scare me. We came close to a full blown civil war on Jan. 6 and there are a good number of trump supporters who are still praying for such a civil war to reinstate their leader/messiah. There are still risks of a civil war or other attempt to reinstall trump.

I hope that the prosecution and conviction of trump may help but I may be wrong. We live in scary times

[Sympthsical]

52. The notion is totally preposterous. It's dramatic hyperbole.

Violent civil unrest, which we've seen plenty of in our history, and a full-fledged civil war are vastly different things.

The Civil War occurred when the state governments were getting in on the act. And they'd been fighting with the federal government for decades before it all fell apart. When the states start threatening to secede, then I'll worry.

As it is, America is a very, very different place. The states are geographically separated - no Mason Dixon Line. And while we talk about red states and blue states, you'll see that much of all that red comes from rural areas, while the blue rests mostly in the cities. I'd love to know how any right-wing army would field an actual war when all our major urban areas, many of which are scattered across red areas, wouldn't want to go along.

Look at Texas. Do you think Austin and Houston want in on that shit?

What are we going to do, fight each over the Internet? The average American citizen has no stomach at all for any kind of actual fight. The right-wing can barely get people to show up to protests. Suddenly they're going to be fielding an army?

The U.S. military would wreck anything it had a mind to. And the military will not go along. The generals hated Trump. Hated, hated, hated. Hated how he wiped his ass with the Constitution. It was offensive to them.

This Civil War nonsense is a lot of people, sitting on the Internet, wishing real life were far more interesting and dramatic than it actually is.

Real life is not a TV show, despite the very best efforts of "journalistic" media.

We're a boring, lazy people living through shitty, TV ratings-driven times.

I think the people who are forever saying, "There's going to be Civil War!" are mainly people who kind of want one, just so they'll have something to watch on TV. Because god knows, they won't be out there on the field. "This week, on Season 4 of America . . . "

Yeah, nah.

[Hekate]

58. In the days BT (Before Trump), I would have said no. BT I believed that CivilWarI settled the issue

...of whether states could secede, among other things.

Four years of Trump has taught me to see the divisions in our society differently. There are people for whom the Civil War never, ever ended, and they are not confined to the former slave states. They are ignorant — some are stupid, to be sure, but even the intelligent are ignorant, thanks to the elimination of Civics classes from our high schools. Dropping Civics is like dropping English and then wondering why the next generation can’t spell or even read well.

General Ulysses S Grant said that the next civil war would not be between regions or states, but between intelligent, educated patriots and...those who aren’t. (Someone’s been posting a good meme on that one; very apropos just now)

Right now, I think we are in a Cold Civil War. I really do.

[Kaleva]

60. Here is the post that you made in 2013

"Are we getting close to a civil war?

I feel the question has to be asked. Our public discourse has become so vile and divisive, our government cannot function due to the divide and it all seems to be red state, blue state, north south in nature. I am from the north and now live in the south, I can tell you it is like night and day and can be very uncomfortable at times. I do not talk politics much with neighbors and coworkers (when I was working), we are afraid to honk at a bad driver, you never know if they are armed and angry.

We need a two party system, it keeps both sides honest, but we need a two party system that works for the good of the country not the good of the Koch brothers, the big banks and the NRA. My Grandfather always said Democracy will die when you have an uneducated electorate are we there?"

https://democraticunderground.com/10022203883

Your comment:

"I can't find it, but I remember getting slammed by the community here."

Reading the responses, it appears your memory is fuzzy as I didn't see anything like "being slammed by the community".