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Opinion: What Are The Chances That America’s Disunion Turns Into Civil War?
Market Watch ^ | 11-8-2018 | Ian Morris

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 magazine’s 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%.

October’s 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 ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: civilwar; cwii; cwiiping; left; obamalegacy; right; violence; war
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To: blam

Slightly higher than zero. But not much.


141 posted on 11/09/2018 3:14:48 AM PST by Vermont Lt
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To: blam

When people think Civil War, they think about military groups fighting each other with military weapons. We are already in the civil war (small letters). It is Antifa. It is elected representatives telling people to be uncivil to the opposition. It is threatening crowds around people’s houses as happened with Kavanaugh and Tucker Carlson. It is riots where the police stand down and rioters loot.

There may be terrorist bombings but there won’t be any large scale assaults to take territory. Both sides have their territories and the last thing liberals want is more territory they can’t support. Instead, they want a tax base which they get by stealing elections that they can’t legitimately win.

The weakest, yet most visible to the average person of the assaults against liberty are the virtue signaling famous people. They have declared themselves on the side of “The Rebels.”

I don’t see an end to this war as “The Rebels” never lose any actual people. But, they do, by their actions, achieve notoriety and “satisfaction.” The end will come only when it becomes uncool to be a rebel; when Saturday Night Live plays the Star Spangled Banner and every cast member salutes. (I will be long in my grave by then.)


142 posted on 11/09/2018 3:15:38 AM PST by Gen.Blather
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To: MadMax, the Grinning Reaper

I’d say 70% chamber within 7 yrs


143 posted on 11/09/2018 3:17:59 AM PST by YankeeMagic
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To: YankeeMagic

*70% chance


144 posted on 11/09/2018 3:18:50 AM PST by YankeeMagic
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“I keep Hopeing,,”


145 posted on 11/09/2018 3:37:44 AM PST by Big Red Badger (Despised by the Despicable!)
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To: Pelham
The separation is city v. country rather than by state boundaries. From the article: "Royalists accused Parliamentarians of blasphemy and corruption, while Parliamentarians replied that Royalist corruption was even worse, and was magnified by the royal court’s sexual deviance and willingness to sell the country to foreigners."

Replace "Royalists" with "Current self-styled ruling class" and "Parliamentarians" with "the rest of the country" and you'll get pretty close to today's picture. We all remember Hillary selling 20% of our uranium, don't we?

I don't want a civil war and I'll not fire the first shot, but I may fire the last shot.

146 posted on 11/09/2018 3:40:39 AM PST by Pecos (Better the one you have with you than the one you left at home.)
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To: WildHighlander57

The United States was arguably almost as divided and haunted by political violence in the 1960s as in the 1850s, yet it too escaped civil war.

We didn’t escape war so much as benefit from the fact that the war-like had to leave school and get jobs. Get jobs they did. 50 years of fanning the winds of war. Given that they are, in their own minds,the top possible moral authority and given that they are driven by a sort of blind rage my guess is that in under 2 years they will have pulled down Trump or pulled down America. WE understand that there are consequences to ‘taking action’for which WE are responsible. THAT have no such formulation in their heads. For them there is action and the outcome. Period. Since they are unrestrained by any morality or law THEY are driving the bus and we go where they take us.


147 posted on 11/09/2018 3:57:18 AM PST by TalBlack (It's hard to shoot people when they are shooting back at you...)
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To: blam

Civil War is already upon us. there will be a great struggle in the next 50 years, a return to Democrat Slavery and Jim Crow Racism and Violence, or a return to the Republic and the Rule of Law.


148 posted on 11/09/2018 4:11:24 AM PST by TonytheTiger7777
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To: ConservativeMind

I totally agree


149 posted on 11/09/2018 4:46:50 AM PST by Dont tread and Live (waso)
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To: your other brother

I am hoping for a single military unit to take control, rip up the constitution, install marshal law and imprison all democrats in concentration camps. That should straighten things out.....LOL


150 posted on 11/09/2018 4:50:48 AM PST by Dont tread and Live (waso)
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To: blam

Letting California go independent would peacefully relieve a lot of political pressure in the rest of the 49. #CALEXIT is a great idea. I am for it.


151 posted on 11/09/2018 4:53:14 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: Pelham
Low. The Civil War was a war for independence, a war between the states. There’s no geographic separation today.

I guess you haven't heard about #CALEXIT or the Texas Independence movement. It will be physical and geographic.

152 posted on 11/09/2018 4:55:45 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

FYI: It takes 15 seconds to reload a Springfield/enfiladed rifled musket. ROF is 4 rounds/min. 3 rounds/min when nervous under fire.


153 posted on 11/09/2018 4:57:38 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: Skywarner; Salamander
Actually, in a real sense, there is geographic separation: rural/semi-rural vs the de facto city-states.

This is wrong headed thinking. Think like the founders, think little 'r' republic, think states. Breaking the USA up into 4 or 5 independent countries with a mutual defense treaty is the way to go. Or internecine bloody civil war. I am good either way.

154 posted on 11/09/2018 5:02:58 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: Jack Black

Ping.


155 posted on 11/09/2018 5:06:08 AM PST by TADSLOS (I hate Russian Dolls. They are so full of themselves.)
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To: blam

First, the Interstates to the cities will be cut off. Trucks entering or transiting will stop. Immediate panic will set in and rioting will begin as all shops and stores are looted.

There wll be no money. ATM’s will cease functioning as banks horde their physical $$$.

In the cities, chaos will prevail

Meanwhile, outside the cities, weapons will be oiled and readied


156 posted on 11/09/2018 5:10:33 AM PST by bert ((KE. N.P. N.C. +12) Invade Honduras. Provide a military government)
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To: central_va

We can trade off and get the state of Jefferson which is eastern Washington and Oregon.

Probably some of northern ca would join them.


157 posted on 11/09/2018 5:10:50 AM PST by Chickensoup ( Leftists fascists today plan to commence to commit genocide against conservatives soon)
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To: central_va

We can trade off and get the state of Jefferson which is eastern Washington and Oregon.

Probably some of northern ca would join them.


158 posted on 11/09/2018 5:10:51 AM PST by Chickensoup ( Leftists fascists today plan to commence to commit genocide against conservatives soon)
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To: central_va

We can trade off and get the state of Jefferson which is eastern Washington and Oregon.

Probably some of northern ca would join them.


159 posted on 11/09/2018 5:10:52 AM PST by Chickensoup ( Leftists fascists today plan to commence to commit genocide against conservatives soon)
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To: Windflier

Problem is this war is not geographical - well, it is in a sense.

Let them have the NE from DC up including its surrounding counties in VA, the Great Lake states except for IN, OH, and PA, and the Left Coast. And CO. That’s it.

Scary part is half of AZ, AK, GA, AL, TX and FL are now leftist....those states might indeed have a CW.......

And every year the Marxist gov. schools pump out millions more of dumbed-down brainwashed idiots......and it won’t be long before we are totally outnumbered.


160 posted on 11/09/2018 5:13:00 AM PST by Arlis
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