6 Reasons Why A New Civil War Is Possible And Terrifying

[smirkymonkey]

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2403-6-reasons-why-new-civil-war-possible-terrifying.html



"Over the last few weeks a growing number of people have started wondering, "Is it possible the United States is heading for a new civil war?" Granted, most of those people are writers for sites like Russia Today or the Huffington Post, and thus slightly less credible than a handful of Bazooka Joe gum wrapper comics. But Donald Trump has made a few tinpot dictator-ish statements recently.

Every time I wanted to dismiss those headlines I thought about my visit to Ukraine last year, to cover their ongoing civil war. The most common sentence I heard was, "It's like a bad dream." Up to the minute the shooting started, almost no one thought civil war was a serious possibility.

So instead of waking up one day and screaming, "Holy shit, I can't believe I didn't take this possibility seriously," I decided to take the possibility seriously. I talked to David Kilcullen, former Chief Strategist in the State Department's Office of the Coordinator of Counterterrorism. He helped plan the successful "surge" in Iraq, and he's seen a lot of civil wars in his time. He didn't consider a new U.S. civil war likely ... but he was also pretty damn far from ruling it out: "I think what we're seeing now is, what I would describe as a proto-insurgency situation ... the ingredients are out there, if somebody knew what they were doing, [they could] pull together an effective movement."

So in the unlikely (but possible) event the U.S. broke out in a new civil war, what would it look like? I rounded up every civilian and military expert I could find and asked them that question. To my surprise, they all got back to me, and with the terrifying thought of me now definitely being on a U.S. terrorist watch list for doing this research, I learned ..."

Ok, so I'm getting most of my news lately from traditional comedy websites, but they are making a lot more sense to me than the MSM these days. I could honestly see this happening.

[Coyotl]

2. Ludicrous click-bait crap.

[smirkymonkey]

11. I didn't write it, but I don't think it's outrageous.

I don't know why people think that the US is so exceptional. That is can't happen here. We have had a civil war already. It can happen again. It won't look the same, but it's very possible. 10 years ago, I never imagined that this country would look the way it does now. I never imagined it would be as extreme as it is now or that there would be death threats against a sitting president or a democratic presidential candidate, but it's happening.

You can bury your head in the sand if you like, but I really don't think the divide we have in this country is going to resolve itself peacefully.

[mshasta]

3. I doubt it

Most of the Pro Republican people I know have a level head, the only wackos are the Trump followers and those would be rounded up by the authorities in no time at all.

Get out and Vote Democrat

[Orrex]

8. I would very much like to meet the Republicans you describe

We certainly don't seem to have many of them here in western PA.

[Bear Creek]

39. Surrounded

By trumpers. All wanting an overthrow of the government. They think they are Patroits. And this bit with FBI and the GOP thinks they don't need a supreme court. They have been spoiling for this scenario for awhile. Now Trump is hollaring that the constitution is in danger.

[thejoker123]

5. Lol, well it would be a short one.

Last edited Tue Nov 1, 2016, 03:56 PM - Edit history (1)

Right wingers little guns are cute, but they are the equivalent to nerf footballs compared to uncle SAMs arsenal.

But seriously, the vast majority of Americans don't want that and would support it.

But I can see more bundy stand offs.

[philosslayer]

7. Uh, really?

You do realize who constitutes uncle Sams army, correct?

[thejoker123]

21. I think you need to get off the CPU for a while. :)

[smirkymonkey]

41. +1000

For once, I think I agree with you!

[Jason1961]

9. Clickbait fearmongering

If anything this is a great case for gun control!

[smirkymonkey]

13. Yes, it is, but it's not going to happen in this country.

Not as long as the NRA has the political power that they have.

[Jason1961]

14. It's past time to take them on

We have the most successful political movement in the history of the world. Time for us to focus on gun control

[Eleanors38]

30. If we are moving toward some "proto" insurrection, then gun-control/bans are too late...

Even as corrupt and ineffective any prohibition is, such measures require viability, efficiency and will.

They ain't there.

[haele]

10. Wouldn't be a Civil War, it would be a Coup attempt.

Even in strong red states - well, except for maybe Kansas and Oklahoma, you have a diverse enough demographic and enough economic reliance on Federal assistance, subsidies, or other programs (i.e., military bases, national parks, etc..) that a Civil war is impractical.
The coordination required for a Civil war requires a homogeneous enough region that can economically sustain the majority of it's partisan base separate from the other regions that it is attempting to split off from.

Once you start talking about "well, we kick the military bases out, and get rid of all those socialist Medicare and Social Security programs, and those Farm Subsidies, and that Highway fund, and take over those National Parks and Federal Lands, and then all those Federal Contractors go away, and we cut taxes on the rich, so we don't have enough revenue, and....ummm, ummm,

No, if you want a "Red State Rising" in this country now-days, there are two methods: political infiltration from within, or the purchase of legislative powers and legal processes.
For political infiltration, you need to get an active public approval by a majority to marginalize or otherwise criminalize about 2/3rds of the citizenry of the country, because that's what it would take to overthrow the Constitution. The problem is that historically, getting majority public approval for anything is difficult to begin with and almost impossible now, what with instant communications and access to information (no matter how accurate or factual that information is...). A "Pearl Harbor" event is the closest type of event that can solidify a political coup, but such events are short-lived, and the effort to keep a 400+ million people in enough of a state of rage and terror to hand over the reins of power to authority figures in a false-flag based coup attempt is very tricky to pull off successfully without getting really messy and committing mass atrocities to maintain the position of power.

Purchase of a government and theft of civil rights and the Constitution is much easier, with less complicated pieces to keep track of. That's pretty much the way the current GOP has been operating since Nixon - theft of government through privatization. The problem with that is that thieves always fall out when the profit becomes too large to resist, and starts impacting a large majority of people who are otherwise perfectly happy if they remain secure in their social positions.
There's also the problem of the echo chamber and the risks inherent when purchasing one's own realities. Once the majority come to the realization that they are no longer a citizen in the eyes of a corporate government, there's nothing left to lose. And the citizenry always outnumbers the ownership class.

Haele

[smirkymonkey]

33. Thank you for your post!

If Trump ever becomes president, there is no limit to how low we can sink and how fast it can happen.

[Kilgore]

15. Somebody ripped off the Onion.

Ain't happening.

[smirkymonkey]

16. It's a comedy website.

Also, the Onion is more on target than the MSM these days.

And I wouldn't be so sure about it not happening. Nobody I know is going to revolt, but those on the far right are ready to explode, and I have no doubt that they are a lot more organized than we think.

[Yavin4]

17. No. Things were far worse in the late 1960s. Far worse.

We were on the verge of a civil war because of Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement.

[MicaelS]

19. The article is right about one thing.

It would be rural vs. urban, and they would try to starve the cities.

[ScienceIsGood]

20. This is nutty stuff, delete it. Impossible. N/t

[smirkymonkey]

34. Not highly likely, but not all that far fetched and certainly not

impossible. I never, ever in my life thought someone like Trump could even come close to the office of the presidency. Nor did I think he would have so many die hard true believers in his camp. I just thought people in this country were too reasonable, too comfortable, too good-hearted basically. Obviously I was wrong. A lot of us were.

[Amonester]

22. Impossible. President Obama is still CIC until mid-January.

Military guys get paid in Uncle-Sam's dollars and cents.

Very unlikely they would betray their vows and engagements to the United States of America.

These nuts with their muskets would first face Police forces. And then, if that wasn't enough to discourage them... (cowards watching Faux News all day, and Football the rest of it), then guess who they'd be faced with? Drones, then tanks, warplanes... like they obviously have no idea, up to the how-many-thousands of nukes??

Edit: inserted "have" in front of "no idea"

[smirkymonkey]

35. One thing you are forgetting - a lot of these nuts ARE the police force and

the military. Would we actually bomb our own people? Why aren't we just nuking the Middle East and Afghanistan?

[Amonester]

40. I think you skip the Police part, because there are laws that don't permit...

anyone to murder anyone for any motive, including revolution dreaming.

Police 1st (if anyone or a group starts murdering anyone or a group).

You know, the Court system, Attorneys and all that jazz. They exist for a reason.

THEN if the police forces just cannot contain the nutjobs using stuff like remote control bombing robots & stuff...

THEN the CIC might have to ask the Pentagon to present him a PLAN to contain them...

And you really think the military will not obey the High-Command for a bunch of lying murderers and white supremacists??

Really???? Who would pay them every payday? dRumpf?

[sofa king]

23. If it happens, we'll finally have something to thank GWB for.

In a matter of hours we'll have mapped their Facebook, Twitter, and Free Republic relationships, and be recording their positions via the GPS on their phones and cars. Their bank accounts will be monitored and their credit purchases logged. Even if they manage to root out and destroy all the electronic devices that have spied on them for years, their history and habits will make it easy to lie in wait for them.

In a matter of days, there will be a minimum of ten trained assassins and interrogators in each of the 435 Congressional districts in the country, all veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, but with easier jobs because of no language or cultural barriers. Special operations and recon forces will be photographing and identifying people who congregate in places where the insurgents are known to be. Drones with hellfire missiles will destroy those places, and helicopters will be hovering above the tree-lines, waiting to finish off anyone who escapes. Dissenters within the armed forces and counterintelligence communities will be quickly identified and neutralized, with convenient cover stories provided to explain their untimely deaths and imprisonments.

After a couple of weeks, truckloads of bodies will be dumped in Wal-Mart parking lots around the country. The ringleaders not murdered outright will be secretly tried in FISA courts and executed, their assets seized to pay for the operations. Or, they'll be held in secret prisons and subjected to interminable psychological and physical torment.

Soon, the ones left will be holed up like bandits in their homes while their friends and family die and disappear around them.

The public at large will hardly know a thing about it thanks to the ability to legally muzzle and intimidate the press and defense attorneys.

And we'll all be able to thank George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney for making it possible.

[Blue_Adept]

25. I'd suggest watching the Shin Godzilla movie

The new one out of Japan this year; it's an interesting look at how modern governments look at reacting to disasters and the way responsibility is passed, time spent looking at the legality of any action, and just the whole convoluted structure that exists with so many departments. Similar would happen here if we had multiple "uprisings" around the country. Look at the Malheur thing to see just how long it was coddled and contained. This vision of sweeping cleanup on any who dare to defy is not something that would happen as it would really shatter the national psyche.

[sofa king]

28. Shattering the national psyche would be the objective.

The Bush Administration built the surveillance state for exactly this purpose, and it's only thanks to their own domestic incompetence that they didn't put it into action: taking over the country, murderously quelling dissent, and continuing their own disastrous domestic policies would have caused them a major financial loss, so they gave us our country back without a fight, because they had already soaked it for all the profit they were likely to get.

The surveillance state hasn't gone anywhere, and they know better than most how easily it could be used against their political allies. That's a big part of the reason why Dick Cheney lives in Dubai, now.

The ultimate point is that, sometime shortly after 2001, we all became suspects. We all became enemies of the state, to be watched suspiciously and, if necessary, dealt with. There ain't gonna be a second Civil War because the leadership of the other side will be dead before they can pull a trigger.

[Blue_Adept]

24. I love that so many people are writing it off as clickbait

Because it's anything but. Cracked has put together some of the best articles as of late when dealing with culture and politics - a lot of them highly regarded here - and I always thought liberals would be openminded enough to examine all points and really look at it.

But these days, so many of us are quicker to just dismiss it as clickbait. Much like so many dismiss the south, religious types, and others.

To our detriment.

[Amonester]

27. I think the nutjobs like watching their NASCAR & Football so much...

that as soon as they'd realize the yuuuuugggge amount of hellfire they'd have to win over...

They'd give up and go back watching their.... eat NACHOS and sip BEER.

[smirkymonkey]

31. I agree. It's not like the author is pulling this out of his ass. He has actually talked to some

experts on this topic. We all think that we are going to see the shitstorm coming a mile away when it finally happens, but what struck me is when he spoke about being in the Ukraine and said "The most common sentence I heard was, "It's like a bad dream." Up to the minute the shooting started, almost no one thought civil war was a serious possibility.".

I really do feel like we think we are exceptional, that it can't happen here. We are like the proverbial frog in the pan of water that gets turned up degree by degree until it cooks to death because it can't perceive the danger until its too late. Everyone wonders why people didn't flee Europe in WWII before things got to the horrific point they eventually got to. It's because they never thought it could ever get that bad.

[beachbum bob]

26. Not happening....

Hysterical ramblings

[smirkymonkey]

36. I don't think these nutcases are going to try to take over the government, but I do think

it's possible that they could possibly declare an "unofficial war" on American citizens who don't believe and think as they do.

[Hoyt]

29. There is a reason white wing racists are so into guns and crud.

[tenderfoot]

37. Hyperbole

eom

[Initech]

38. It's Cracked, they're known for that sort of thing.

[romanic]

42. Cracked is cracked out.