Civil Unrest next level or the beginning of the failure of our democracy

This is just wrong. The GOP efffectively expelled black voters by opposing the civil rights act; and they have continued to demonize black voters as a way of rallying the support of racist white voters. They’re not seeking the support of black voters by talking about welfare queens and strapping bucks and Obamaphones, are they? Because that’s an awfully, well, racist way to go about it.

If you’re not trolling, why did you ask that? Asking for proof of something that’s blatantly obvious was a time honored tactics of our friend Gman. I don’t understand why you’re choosing that path if you’re here to honestly argue your point. Especially since you then said you agree it’s clear that they’re targeting minorities.

I agree. This is one of the many things that is frightening about the turn to Trump. And it is absolutely disgusting.

Maybe, but when you come in with “Cheating is the same as trying harder,” I’m gonna call bullshit.

Because that was his central argument. If you’re playing chess, trying harder and getting better is the same as, say, stealing your opponent’s knights before the game starts. You see, both side are just trying to win! You can’t fault the knight stealing guy, he’s doing the same thing as the dude that tried to get better : trying to win.

Heck, if those minorities would just get on board with their own oppression, the GOP wouldn’t be forced to disenfranchise them. Don’t you see?

Here I’m thinking why didn’t I think of that opening?

Well put.

I mean, rationally, it’s entirely reasonable to say that a political party is invested in trying to maximize their chances of winning elections. That’s not a controversial concept, and is plainly correct.

Where it gets sticky is how. Not all methods of winning are equally valid. Not all are equally respectable. And in this case you can not judge an action from its end goal, winning. You must judge it by the means of doing so.

Winning by driving more voters to go to the polls? Good
By gathering a large coalition*? Good
By achieving positive gains for the country? Good
By being effective at creating a vision and following through on that? Good

By rigging elections? Bad
By preventing people not in your coalition from voting? Bad
By using appeals to racism? Bad
By engaging in legislative shenanigans like Wisconsin? Bad
By extreme partisan gerrymandering? Bad

All have the same end goal, not all are morally equivalent.

So saying that Dems trying to win by getting more people to vote is the same as the GOP trying to win by preventing people from voting may be true when framed in that overly reductionist definition where the only thing you are comparing is the intended end result, it is also bullshit.

*caveat being if said coalition explicitly courts white supremacists, neo Nazis, and other such clearly evil groups

Looks like the spat of people threatening politicians on BOTH sides is on the rise. I feel this is the cusp of what will become actual violence soon, and maybe not civil war but a type of violent unrest that for some could be considered as such.

What is sad here, is that I consider Collins very moderate republican. Often straddling the line between her crazy base and common sense/sanity.

Well, Civil War 1.0 was certainly preceded by various sorts of smaller-scale violence, from Bleeding Kansas to the Harper’s Ferry Raid to Congressman Brooks thrashing Senator Sumner with a cane.

That said, I think we’re still a long way from '68-level general violence and unrest.

Is she still considered a moderate? I was under the impression that we turned a corner on her, and realized has is as conservative as any GOP senator, but with better marketing.

October was right after the Kavanaugh hearings and all the noise there.

I think the appropriate term is “milquetoast”

One can count the number of moderate votes from Collins on the fingers of one hand; perhaps even a hand with no fingers.

She is not a moderate, but she plays one on TV.

Until our side learns to be just as ruthless towards the Republican base (aka white supremacists), they’ll keep winning.

We need an institutional radical, ideology comes second.

The idea that the Dems are only maximizing their chance of winning, same as the republicans, would only be true if we knew that the Dems would also stoop to the same tactics of the GOP were the positions reversed.

I feel we already know that’s not the case, considering how determined the Dems are to throw themselves on their own sword in any case where they might seem hypocritical (Al Franken etc).

The right is now wargaming the civil war 2.0 and making the case its inevitable.

The U.S. Armed Forces will win, whoever controls them. The only way this gets interesting is if the standing army (far, far bigger and more powerful than its equivalent in 1860, to say nothing of the increased asymmetry bestowed by modern airpower/cruise missiles/drones/etc.) somehow splinters or fragments or divides its loyalties among pretenders, Roman-style.

Of course, a bunch of dedicated folks occupying cities with AK-47s and AR-15s and IDEs could still make things very ugly for any army unwilling to deploy WMDs.

I fear a second civil war, if it were more than just isolated Ruby Ridge-type stuff, would be a bloodbath that would make the first one look like a skirmish, and I’m not fond of the folks who jerk off to the idea.

Their argument is that major liberal areas will fall into unrest if they take out the power infrastructure. Rioting will be a issue on major areas. thus the army will be fighting a war on 2 fronts. Only the power grid in Texas is not suspetaible from something as simple as sniper fire sabotage. The army like the first civil war will split, ect…

I mean, random armed insurrections in a couple scattered areas would likely be put down quickly. But there are an awful lot of people in the US. If States start seceding again, the military’s loyalties will be divided again. Even if the war is cities vs. towns an actually coordinated rebellion would not necessarily be crushed effectively by the US military. It’s pretty hard to fight a counter-insurgency war and it takes a lot of will, not just asymmetric power.

In the first Civil War, a fair number of U.S. Army officers did defect to the Confederacy, which constituted a huge brain drain that no doubt helped the South to have some kind of a fighting chance. But the rank-and-file manpower was recruited mostly from state militias on both sides, since the standing army at the time was so tiny.

It would be interesting to see if a similar high-level officer defection would occur in a modern scenario. What I think is different in a modern army is the nexus of high equipment, infrastructure, and training. The Old South did seize what weapons and forts they could (because industrially, they were frankly pathetic next to the North), but the most sophisticated machinery of the time would have been a cannon or an ironclad. How do you seize the ability to operate, fuel, etc., advanced drone/aircraft/naval operations? Seems like a tall order.