Posted on 11/08/2018 8:39:26 PM PST by blam
Strong rhetoric and violence on both sides of the political spectrum are reaching a fever pitch
Is the United States on the brink of a new civil war?
According to Newsweek magazines polling, a third of all Americans think such a conflict could break out within the next five years, with 10% thinking it very likely to happen. Plenty of experts agree. Back in March, State Department official Keith Mines told Foreign Policy magazine: It is like 1859, everyone is mad about something and everyone has a gun. He rated the odds of a second American Civil War breaking out within the next 10-15 years at 60%.
Octobers awful events pipe bombs sent to leading Democratic politicians and supporters, the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh have only amplified these fears. We are now nearing a point comparable to 1860, my Stanford University colleague Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote in the National Review.
The historian Niall Ferguson, another Stanford colleague, suggested in The Sunday Times of London that if someone were to design a Civil War Clock comparable to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock, the designer would probably now be announcing that it is two minutes to Fort Sumter.
Ferguson himself is more upbeat, thinking that the time on the civil war Doomsday Clock looks more like 11.08 than 11.58. It seems to me, though, that all these speculations are deeply misleading so much so, in fact, that the main thing they illustrate is how not to use the past to understand the present.
Similarities, differences and broad patterns
There are certainly some striking similarities between the American political scene in the late 2010s and that of the late 1850s. Both periods saw extreme polarization over issues of intense economic and emotional importance.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Should the rest of us just accept them stealing power and do nothing but whine to politicians that will do nothing?
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That isn’t what should happen but that is exactly what will happen until we are looking at structural collapse that directly affects people. That may be inevitable (is, IMO) but is not proceeding that quickly.
So, boys against the girly-boys?
You can't squash "the Left", since many are our own family, friends & neighbors, how would you "squash" them?
Remember this: Democrats were not always raving insane.
If you go back to, let's say, Presidents Truman or Kennedy, both pretty sensible men, both today might feel more comfortable amongst Republicans than their own party's lunatics.
Where did such Democrats go?
Most are now Republicans, but just suppose the Left's tiny minority of lunatic fringe were somehow "squashed".
Would that not make remaining Democrats more attractive to today's Reagan & Trump Democrats?
In other words, without their lunatic Left, Democrats would go back to being what they were before... to put a fine point on it -- before the summer of 1964.
Or, to put an even finer point on it -- before November 22, 1963.
In other words, the Lunatic Left drives many good citizens to the Republican party, citizens who might otherwise be attracted to candidates like Democrats used to field.
So be very careful what you wish for, you might not like the results.
wardaddy: "Our war would make Rwanda and Biafra and Zanzibar and the Congo look like a skirmish"
Nooooooo
just look at the map in my post #211 above.
Now just as a thought experiment, imagine taking the "blue" side and attempting to defend their strongholds.
That's why there's never going to be another Civil War, at least nothing like what the US & other countries (i.e., England) saw in centuries past.
Congratulations to you and your expanded family Windflier!
Exactly my point dumbass,
Nobody om our side has the stomach for it
Look at history. You win by braking the other side especialy in civil conflict
Thats funny
You just proffered in that post what weve said for two decades here that most south bashers like you always deny
And I mean always
You failed to catch yourself
I betcha pelham sees it
Funny. Apparently he’s been absorbing what we’ve been saying while arguing against it. Which is fine by me.
“Everything depends on your definitions of “civil war”
I was thinking specifically of a shooting war.
If we want to broaden it to something less than that, then we are certainly in a cold civil war. Or a simmering civil war.
I dunno your age, but the decade from say 1965 to 1974 was more violent. We aren’t having hundreds of riots in the cities, we haven’t had assassinations and murders (yet). Antifa hasn’t resorted to gunfire and bombings and bank robberies like the Weather Underground and the SLA.
You could argue that the current situation is more ominous in that the Democratic Party has been captured by the same political wing that once produced the Weather Underground and the SLA. Like Obama mentor Bill Ayres. These aren’t Kennedy-Johnson-Humphrey cold war liberals. Some are arguably criminals and communists.
There won’t be a civil war with the left. There will be a battle WITHIN the left that will fracture it, the hard-left turning on the elite with such savagery that the elites will flee to the right to save their *sses. We’ll take them in (perhaps foolishly, but we will) and together we’ll put down the hard left without a shot fired.
The elite only indulge left-wing nonsense because they feel so secure in their power and privilege that they can indulge the nonsense to feel cool and nice.
But that can’t hold. The hardcore left can’t stop with Exxon and Raytheon — they will go after Google, Facebook; Goldman Sachs and Bank of America; and the corporations that control Hollywood. It will go after the private schools, and test-selected public schools, and nice suburban schools, that enable the elites to live in metropolitan areas. It will go after Israel. It will continue to “decriminalize” and “decarcelize” until nice rich liberals are once again getting bricks to the back of their heads if they take a wrong turn on a Saturday night.
Thank you, Rocky!
His name is Matthew. He's amazingly robust for a newborn. The midwife said that he tested 8 out of 8 on the newborn healthiness scale. She told us she has never seen nor heard of a newborn testing at 100%. I didn't even know there was such a test.
Anywho, mom and baby are doing great. I've been told that he latched on and started nursing like a pro, right out of the gate.
We're gonna give the new family a couple more days to recover, then we'll all go for our first visit.
Thank you again,
Windy
This is why we need to cut the large metro areas loose. Let them have their socialist utopias in their very own city-states. BTW, it’s not PC to say, but minorities are a large part of the destruction of this country by voting consistently for the worst candidates.
No, wise guy, but nobody wants to go to full-blown Defcon 5 when a few extra guards on the graveyard shift will keep bad guys at bay.
wardaddy: "You just proffered in that post what weve said for two decades here that most south bashers like you always deny
And I mean always"
I have no idea what you're talking about here.
You got me.
Which part of your Lost Causer myth did I inadvertently confirm?
Old enough to remember November 22, 1963 quite well.
Pelham: "We arent having hundreds of riots in the cities, we havent had assassinations and murders (yet)."
Agreed, but in those days we saw none of today's mass shootings.
The first was the UT tower in 1966, then 18 years before another such at a San Ysidro McDonalds in 1984.
Now we see them every few months!
Sure the perps all seemed insane but more often than not there's a political message too, often 2nd Amendment or just anti-country music!?
The '60s radicals are in charge and seem to find mass shootings more politically effective than burning down your own neighborhood.
Pelham: "These arent Kennedy-Johnson-Humphrey cold war liberals.
Some are arguably criminals and communists."
At the time I was no fan of JFK.
In retrospect he seems a pretty good model for what you'd hope for from a "conservative" Democrat.
Your post #228, my views exactly.
Welcome to your new little cowboy.
Ive got a Hanoverian and a rescue Thoroughbred literally out my window right now looking at me while they munch alfalfa and they are thinking ...20 degrees in first of November...dayum
Their winter coat aint all in.
Again congrats
I believe in children....I make em...I raise em
Five
Which is low for freeper standards
We have many plus 10s here
Salute to momma
Can't happen, that's like saying "I need to cut my heart loose" or liver, or stomach, doesn't work.
Pining_4_TX: "BTW, its not PC to say, but minorities are a large part of the destruction of this country by voting consistently for the worst candidates."
Our ancestors were all minorities at some point or another, it's why they came here.
Many different minorities crowded together in big cities, often for generations before moving out to something they liked better.
And when their lives improved then their political outlooks often flipped towards more appreciation for our Founders' constitutional heritage.
The goal of Democrat politics is to delay that day of political maturity, of Republicans to speed it along as fast as possible.
But I’ll never get an internecine bloody civil war.
They won’t even make it past Braddock Mountain, much less 40 miles west of there.
:D
I’m just hoping we’ll be graced with pics of the beautiful family, some day.
:)
>> Im just hoping well be graced with pics of the beautiful family, some day.
And please keep me in mind too ;)
:)
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