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  • At current, this is all posturing. If Biden does engage the military to stop them. Perhaps lock up the governors for treason, maybe it could escalate somewhat. If something did happen that was in the line of being more serious, it wouldn't be a long incursion as long as the military obeyed the commander in chief. The national guard is absolutely no match for even a small slice of the might of the US military.

    If something does happen, hopefully they'll shut it down quickly and bloodlessly, maybe finally gather enough strength to enable some Germany type of anti-fascism laws.

    We need to fix gerrymandering, we need to fix people screwing with elections. We need to put some strong protections against the propaganda and opinion pieces flowing out of all the news outlets. We need to force free non-political basic education to the entire f****** country so people can make some informed decisions about s***.

    I'm tired of everybody looking at politics like it's a f****** football game.

    • And if Trump gets in again? All the people not crazy going to along with him, or will he be to deploying the army? At what point does the apparatus of state start to split as people within it don't all go with crazy orders?

      If I was Putin, or CCP, helping the crazies is the best money spent.

    • What are the chances of China attacking us during the civil war? Or taking Taiwan (we NEED Taiwan for our silicon production)

    • We need to put some strong protections against the propaganda and opinion pieces flowing out of all the news outlets.

      Something tells me this one is a non-starter, as any new laws will slam up against the Constitution, over and over again.

      Having said that, I would love to at least seen a real-time label, in a large font size, on any monitor/tv that specifies that what's being shown is an opinion piece, and not a factual article/show.

      • If we go into a civil war, the Constitution's going to slam up against a lot of changes.

        GOP is ignoring the shit out of the Constitution already why should it protect them? They already tried to dismantle the executive branch and turn the presidency into a dictatorship. Now they're going after the judicial branch. Nah, they're going to game the Constitution until the US is forced to change it. It's either going to happen slowly over time, or quickly after a pretty substantial bloodbath.

        We can't just sit here and go oh look It's Hitler incarnate, but you know first amendment, oh damn, they ignored some laws and found some loopholes I guess we had just better conform to oppression by the minority. We better all get some swastikas.

        This country isn't going to go quietly into dictatorship for fear of failing to make everyone happy. The Democrats are weak because they try to follow the rules, They try to give breaks to the people that f*** them over because they don't want to hurt the other people, but like everything else there's a line. When Americans are shooting each other over propaganda, The propaganda's going to have to f****** go.

      • Something tells me this one is a non-starter, as any new laws will slam up against the Constitution, over and over again.

        The first amendment states that congress shall not abridge freedom of the press. In reality it needs to be strengthened because speech and press isn't free anymore, it's overwhelmingly controlled by interest with huge amounts of economic power. The reason for freedom fo speech and press is that dissenting ideas and thoughts are heard in order to have accountability. Which the current interpretation is doing the opposite of.

        For example you could pass laws that any journalist has the right to voice his own opinion and not be fired or discriminated against by his employer (as long as he doesn't discriminate himself or uses hate speech). That would not abridge the freedom of the press. Basically give the journalists more freedom from their owners.

        Or you could make a law that forces owners to sell their media empires into trusts that are democratically controlled by the journalists / workers, and finance it through a bank. This would not abridge the freedom of the press (which is not the same as the owner).

        Of course this is unthinkable and the current supreme court would never allow it. But we shouldn't accept the degenerate view that freedom of the press is the same as turning speech and news into a commodity that is owned by the elite. And especially in a plutocracy that basically is state owned media.

        You could appoint a 100 young people as new supreme court judges and then pass these modern laws and election reform also limiting the future excesses of the supreme court. There isn't really anything stopping the Democrats from doing that.

  • This is exactly why DeSantis wants to revive the Florida State Guard.

    Biden should ignore Abbott right until the point he signs an order to interfere with Federal agents on duty. Then it's a conspiracy & the Insurrection Act can be brought into play to clean house.

    • Florida State Guard

      I had to search for that and it sounds kinda bad for states to have their own armies. I mean it's practically the definition of raising an army in opposition to the Federal government. Looking at Wikipedia it was first activated in WWII to make up for the national guard going to war.

      That bit makes sense.

      But you're not at war and you just reactivated it in 2020. Why? Why would Florida need it's own army? That'd be like the Wales FM creating it's own guard. By it's nature it's in direct opposition to the national (British) military. There's no other way of looking at it.

      That feels like a major thing. Am I taking crazy pills - why is no one screaming? This is bad!!

      • Am I taking crazy pills - why is no one screaming? This is bad!!

        This dog stays barking every single year and hasn't bit anyone yet. Getting tired of hearing about it. Either they're going to do something or they won't, if they don't, then they can shut the fuck up and life goes back to normal. If they do decide to finally do something about it, Texas gets razed to the ground and we rebuild NASA somewhere else. There is no situation here in which any significant percentage of people, except Texans, are going to be in danger. They will not take on the greater federal US and win, it's not gonna happen. If they secede, they die, after losing all federal safety nets and trade agreements and then getting invaded by cartels. If they attempt an actual shooting war, they die, as 25,000 cowpokes show up with surplus AR's just in time for Lockheed Martin to put a warhead on their foreheads.

        I want to be clear that I'm not in any way looking forward to this. It's going to be rough and innocent people will die. But there is no legitimate path forward in which Texas doesn't, at best, eat its hat. However that won't stop them from threatening secession constantly. Any time something doesn't go their way - "oh, oh, but I'll leave the union! What then??? What'll you do without Texas??" Fuck off Texas. Either shit or get off the pot but I'm tired of hearing about it. Texas brings nothing irreplaceable to the table and while I definitely do not think that turning Texas into glass is the good ending, it sure is one ending, and might be the one Texas chooses. Regardless I'm not that worried about it. The Gravy Seals wouldn't stand up to an actual well-regulated militia let alone the full force and might of the United States Army. And there are a lot more leftists with guns than the Gravies think there are.

        Edit: just realized this was intended in the context of the Florida State Guard - that I know almost nothing about. But Florida is perhaps even less threatening than Texas, and since DeSantis has been in charge they've been doing a lot of nearly identical toothless posturing. All arguments also apply to Florida, except that at least 21% of their population is retirement age or older so they don't even have that many fresh bodies to call on when their state guard gets turned into burger meat within two days of declaration of war.

  • I don't think the conservatives are sufficiently unified to form a single opposition army. The problem with basing your appeals on hating "outsiders" is that you end up with a lot of internal hatred too. There's also a strong undercurrent of "no one can tell me what to do" that makes central control unlikely.

    What seems more likely are terrorist incidents, carried out be individuals and small groups, without any overall communication or strategy. We're already seeing some of that. The lack of coordination won't prevent it from happeing, but will prevent it from achieving anything.

    I don't think there are very many people within the MAGA movement who honestly want to resort to violence, whatever they tell themselves. The ones who are actually willing are the ones who wanted to hurt someone anyway. Politics provides them with an excuse, not a motivation.

    I think we're going to have a nasty time for a while, but I don't think a right-wing takeover by violence has any chance of happening. I'm much more worried about a political takeover that then turns into an authoritarian coup. The left-wing has a much better chance of organizing as a whole, but I don't think there are that many people ready to fight from that side either, but that could change as conditions get worse.

    • The right has been used, and steadily intensifying stochastic terrorism for a while now. You're right, it's not a strategy for a military takeover of the US. It's just one step in the political takeover.

  • I read how most experts agree that there will be some kind of "constitutional crisis" within the next decade. The impeachment 1, impeachment 2, and January 6 attacks already show the rumblings of what is to come.

    Personally I find it doubtful that a full civil war would be the means though bc of the disparity b/t military resources at the federal vs. lower levels. Thus, probably something else, perhaps extremely mundane e.g. Trump runs for President, and bc of the Israeli conflict in Gaza and whatever else Russia manufactures between now and then Biden loses, then Trump simply declares himself Emperor.

    Or maybe even that much paperwork will not happen and the government will simply never pass another federal budget again, thus ending the federal level by default of obstruction.

    So probably not Civil War, at this time and over this event (no matter how much the clickbait media tries to get its clicks), but even so... something is coming indeed, down the road in some form.

    • Honestly, it'll probably wind up becoming an American version of The Troubles. Republicans are cowards, and I doubt there are very many who are truly willing to fight and die for their cause. However, there are plenty of people willing to commit terrorist bombings and acts of sabotage if they think they can get away with it, and the US is huge. There are still plenty of places to hide if that's the case.

      And if Trump wins reelection, I can't imagine many blue states putting up with it, and the same thing will happen from the opposite direction.

      • If it does go down, it'll be rural people driving into cities to shoot them up, plant bombs, or drive people over with their trucks. That's what it'll look like.

      • I don't know how liberals will react tbh. Usually they try to work within the system, but if that should ever prove to become impossible... I haven't studied enough history to get any kind of accurate impression, but it's worth noting that nothing like it has been needed (within the USA) in the last hundred years or so, so whatever might come seems hard to predict.

        I should add that Democrats are also cowards too, as are most individuals - neither side holds a monopoly on that. That's what makes this all so dangerous: if something could be accomplished behind the scenes, then 99.9999% of Americans will simply go along with the flow. Exactly like within Russia, even the thinnest vernier of respectability would be enough to forestall a large-scale conflict. So the "constitutional crisis" might take the form of a fairly bloodless (in the wider sense) coup.

        Or Republicans could just keep turning the ratchet, making steady gains wherever they can, then locking in those gains and turtling, obstructing as best they can whenever they do not hold a majority, as they have been doing for decades now. In one sense that's even entirely fair - a democracy should reflect the majority will of the people - except Republicans are aware that white people are becoming in the minority now and so have been changing more and more over time who gets to be counted as "people". e.g. gerrymandering, with the stacked Supreme Court members not opposing it so now it's "legal". Though even that is becoming not enough lately thus they are having to adjust the stakes higher, possibly doing away with voting altogether (yes they are literally talking about that, hence all this discussion about Civil War). They have already been allowed to push that far, which leaves fewer options for them to move forward with short of something drastic.

        The trick is that to the uninitiated, much of it sounds reasonable at first - e.g. "states rights" means that we all get to choose our own paths, and what is wrong with that, isn't that "freedom" in the truest sense of the word? The trouble is how the lie is delivered along with the truth: for one, the means by which those gains were achieved has enormous implications, which feeds into two, it was actually always a lie bc they never stop there and always push forward after people accept the first push. i.e., if only appeasement would ever actually work! However, like that famous saying "first they came for...", where even if you don't care about those first few that were come for, eventually they will come for YOU too, and if you had been paying attention then there would be no need to be shocked, shocked I tell you, shocked! Leopards eat faces off, and just bc one hasn't eaten YOUR face off, yet, doesn't mean that it never will. They tend not to change their spots, only their current targets. Like Brexit, many people in the USA won't know what's happening anytime before, during, or somehow even after it has happened.:-(

        And some are even joining in with the leopards, neither realizing nor seemingly caring that they are just being saved as future meals for those who are true predators. These "facilitators", together along with the much more numerous "collaborators", collectively are bringing literal (neo-)Nazis back into power.

  • From what I've heard, the supreme court decision was mostly about the feds having access to the border, and the ability to cut down the razor wire, rather than any specific opposition to the razor wire existing in and of itself. I would wager this whole deal is mostly just a kind of political play, to try and egg biden into doing something stupid, while simultaneously keeping up the appearance that everyone at the head of these states is doing something dangerous, anti-institutional, and counter-cultural, even though they're all kind of inherently unable to do anything along those lines just as a matter of their positions.

    Everybody's correct when they say that the political divides in this country are less clear-cut, but I also don't think that the radicalization that we've seen, as a matter of perspective from being in online space, necessarily reflects reality. I think if you look at most people, most people want social security of some kind, and want healthcare of some kind, and want drug legalization of some kind, and want us to stop fighting wars in some form. Those are all kind of generalities, because the specific mechanism by which people want those things achieved differs from person to person. It's very fractured as a matter of course, as a matter of how our political system and society is set up, and the ruling class has taken advantage of this to enact a divide and conquer strategy, where they can selectively promote whatever ideological positions benefit them the most, and cordon everyone off into a relatively small set of solutions over which they have a high amount of control. Rather than, you know, what a good democracy might do, which is come to a compromise solution, that everyone but the most extreme propagandized radicals might be kind of okay with. There is a reason why lots of conservatives like communism, as long as you use the right words. Both parties attempt to be mostly "populist" parties. This is all kind of obvious, right, but people understate the degree to which it's a deliberate thing, and the overstate the degree to which it's been successful, you know, which isn't surprising, because, again, serves the interests of the powerful. People aren't, broadly, morons, people have realized that this is all the case. That's mostly what the "radicalization" that you've seen online has been, people just realizing that they hate these shitass solutions that aren't really compromise solutions. See how everyone is cripplingly disappointed with the democratic party, and also how, likewise, conservatives are consistently disappointed with their own party, as well, and for many of the same reasons, barring the extreme radicals.

    Most people are focused on how the internet divides people into radicalized swaths and conspiracy theorists, which is true, but even the mainstream monopolized internet is kind of a good tool for mass mobilization. See the occupy movement and the arab spring for older examples, for more recent examples, maybe the george floyd protests, or the french retirement protests. The only risk of these is kind of that they more easily get co-opted as a result of their visibility, i.e. "defund the police" gets turned into an argument for "fund the police". If you were an asshole, you could cite charlottesville, or jan 6th, for examples of internet mobilization, but those are relatively smaller scales of things, compared to the others, which were more popular, they just got disproportionate media attention relative to their size, and had disproportionate political effects.

    I think if we're looking at the true, extreme political radicals, we're seeing them come about as a result of a kind of well-oiled engine. I'm not gonna say that this is an institutional kind of thing, and it's maybe more of a third level effect of active decisions, but it's still something that, nonetheless, has been deliberately constructed. 4chan is funded by a japanese toy company and a hands off japanese internet techbro, and is administrated by some former american military freak who's deliberately organized the site. The more radical offshoots, that use the same source code, tend to be funded by oil money, and political action committees, but through second-level effects, where they fund some small level conservative actor, and then they prop up the space. Which churns out some radical terrorists that are capable of your more fucked up bombings, and shootings, and controlled and coordinated protests. And then you kind of get military people at almost every level of this, in lower numbers, who act to control the space.

    I dunno what I mean to extrapolate from all of this, but yeah. There's probably not going to be a civil war.

  • Could they not at least bunch up a bit so it's easier to build a wall around them?

  • All of the recent news surrounding Texas tells me we need to return to a more literal reading of the 10th Amendment. Bring back dual federalism.

    • Neither an American nor knowledgeable about constitutional and amendment law - would you mind elaborating please?

      • Context: The United States government has a federal structure, unlike most governments. This means that the federal/national government and the state governments have distinct divisions in power and responsibility. For example, the highest level of law enforcement that can legally exist is at the state level. Rogue Supreme Courts have made illegitimate and tyrannical rulings to grant the federal government some police power, even though the Constitution and Bill of Rights clearly reserve police power to the states.

        That only the states have police power was implicitly understood prior to the ratification of the Tenth Amendment, the final amendment in the Bill of Rights. The Tenth Amendment states that whatever powers and rights are not expressly granted to the federal government in the Constitution shall be reserved to the states or to the people. Since police powers are not expressly granted to the federal government, only the states may enforce laws. Again, illegitimate rulings by rogue Supreme Courts have granted this power to the federal government with no legal basis.

        Dual federalism is this divide between the power of the federal government and the state governments. Over time, especially since the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, dual federalism has been eroded without meaningful constitutional amendments. Most people are generally satisfied with this, but when a state has significant differences with the federal government on the enforcement of the law or on matters of authority, the easy solution without having a civil war is to return to the state that which rightfully belongs to it: The powers implicitly reserved to it by the Constitution.

        Other than those illegitimate Supreme Court rulings, only Texas has the authority to enforce border laws in Texas. The federal government, technically speaking, has no authority to enforce border laws anywhere, unless a constitutional amendment is ratified granting it such power.

  • “take over texas” as if the federal govt wasn’t already in control of the states. the states pay federal taxes, and they receive various federal benefits. texas isn’t some separate nation. it’s just one of the regular 50 states.

    • They will refuse to hear this, Texans do believe they are unique little butterflies. They don't understand that after the Civil War the Federal Government solidified its hold on the states. Probably for the better.

      • That's a bit of an overgeneralization, buddy. I've lived in Houston most of my life and almost nobody I've known actually thinks like this.

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