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 ...
Pretty much nil without a deep economic crisis or military humiliation, either of which is unlikely in the next decade.
if the libs only knew . . .
the next CW won’t be about money or pride; it will be about principle. IMO
One can hope.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
And the tree goes very weak.
The flashpoint will be an issue one side has designated as "a hill to die on."
For conservatives, it's likely the 2nd Amendment. It could be something else....maybe an assassination and some uncouth movement afterwards.
For liberals, they are already at war with us. That was apparent during the Kavanaugh hearing.
Low. The Civil War was a war for independence, a war between the states. There’s no geographic separation today.
I’m looking forward to it.
There are some people who just need to be cleaned up and out.
Generally speaking, the left won't voluntarily stop their march toward totalitarianism. They will take as much of our freedoms as we allow them to take.
Really?
That long?
The only realistic question at this point is “When did the present CWII begin?” Was it the weaponization of The FBI in relation to Presidential candidate Donald Trump or something else? Maybe Steve Scalise has an opinion.
It doesn't take over a minute to reload a gun in 2018.
America disunion bump for later...
I keep telling people, peaceful secession is the surest path to peace. Its obvious we have two broad “tribes” which have completely different world views and which cannot stand one another.
As of today, that certainly seems to be going on to steal several elections. Should the rest of us just accept them stealing power and do nothing but whine to politicians that will do nothing?
“Erring sisters, depart in peace.”
100%.
It cannot keep going this way with the socialists.
Gonna have to figure out identifying insignia or uniforms.
There’ll be a ton of friendly fire if folks can’t tell their own from the other side.
Libs, probably want abortion to be the issue.
If we can repeal off hate crimes laws or get rid of special protected classes and actually treat everyone equal under the law, that would probably trigger them as well.
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