Especially if it were to take place following a presidential plane crash.
Looking for some hint that this is a tongue-in-cheek comment, or less obviously sarcastic. Hmmm.... coming from someone with posts generally informative and sensible, I've just gotten goosebumps.
Please do clarify who would be the Vice-President who would assume power. Hillary ?
BTW, I'm one who considers it likely that the US will break up, or break out in Civil War, sometime during my life. We are as polarized in this nation as we were in the 1850s.
Looking for some hint that this is a tongue-in-cheek comment, or less obviously sarcastic. Hmmm.... coming from someone with posts generally informative and sensible, I've just gotten goosebumps.
We have a ping list of 65 FReepers who think it's a possibility worthy of very real and serious study and consideration; you're welcome to be added if you wish. But I wish it were just grounds for a flip or throaway comment rather than the reality it appears to be in an age of increasing national polarization.
Please do clarify who would be the Vice-President who would assume power. Hillary ?
A possibility, or worse, one with the cunning and skill to depose or eliminate the competition from a Hillary. But don't assume that the power available would be all that usable, given Newton's Third Law.
BTW, I'm one who considers it likely that the US will break up, or break out in Civil War, sometime during my life. We are as polarized in this nation as we were in the 1850s.
That's one possibility; another is something akin to the city-states of Renaissance Italy, or of the Greek city-states 500 years B.C., metroplexes and uni-gov conglomerates of interlocking communities or urban sprakl.
Take a look at some of the past postings and response comments and see if you figure the further considerations would be of interest to you: Civil War II list post keyword: CWII
BTW: the casualties of the 4-month long Finnish civil war amounted to somewhere between one to three percent of the population of Finland at that time. You are invited to extrapolate those percentages in a nation of 281,421,906, [2000 Census] in which any such bloodlettig that begins is most unlikely to conclude after only 4 months of activity.
Outcome
Lives Lost Whites Reds Other
Killed in action: 3 279 5 324 484 Executed, shot or murdered: 1 321 7 207 392 Concentration Camp deaths: 6 11 785 500 Capital punishment: - 125 - Died after release: - 597 2 Missing: 42 1 818 116 Other causes: 173 695 536 Total: 4 821 27 426 2 030 Source:http://vesta.narc.fi/cgi-bin/db2www/sotasurmaetusivu/stat2
The civil war had ended, but it left the Finnish society divided in two groups. A "Red terror" campaign against the right wing was followed by a "White terror" against supporters of the revolutionary movement. Disease, hunger and maltreatment killed thousands of detained in the concentration camps. The conflict and its immediate aftermath are considered to have killed more than 30,000 out of a population of three million.
In addition, an unknown number of Red children were orphaned or sent to foster homes and institutions, as their parents were either interned (as most 75,000 Red internees) or deemed unfit to raise patriotic children for the independent Finland.
Many Red children suffered from the social stigma of being representatives of the defeated treacherous proletarians, but in particular those children who were separated from their parents.
A lot of Finnish Reds fled to Russia at the end of the Civil War, and in the following years. Most of them were lost in Stalin's "Great Purges". Their number is unknown.
While the Whites celebrated the "War of Independence" against Russia and Bolshevism, the Left refused for many years to participate in commemorations of Finland's pre-Civil War independence. The communist party was out-lawed in 1923 and 1930, while the Social Democrats remained in opposition for most of the inter-war period. Svinhufvud became president 1931 to 1937 on the program to keep the Social Democrats out of the Cabinet, no matter what.
Finland, the first Nordic (and European) country to adopt universal suffrage, became the last to adopt parliamentarism.
The Civil War, and the pre-war polarization, did directly and indirectly lead to Finland developing a mentality more like 19th century Prussia, with the Military forces and Conservative ideologies having earned great prestige for its success, and less akin to her Scandinavian brethren where popular movements and Liberal ideologies had won that prestigious position.