125

All the ingredients are there and it won't take much to put it all together.

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[-] morrowind@lemmy.ml 88 points 11 months ago

For there to be a civil war there needs to be an army on both sides.

There isn't

[-] hedgehogging_the_bed@lemmy.world 60 points 11 months ago

Yeah, somehow all my gun-owning friends get all awkward and quiet when I ask them how it's gonna feel to shoot at the 18yo army recruits and national guard when they finally "come for their guns." I haven't even gotten to ask what anti-drone measures they have.

Not one of them is ready for the realities of a shooting war with the American Military.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 32 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I haven't even gotten to ask what anti-drone measures they have.

The answer will be "none" because unless they're ex-military, their entire contribution to any militia is usually "gun".

Most of them wouldn't pass fitness requirements nor take orders. Few of them have other skills such as first aid, communication tech or drone piloting.

Even when contributing their gun, you can't assume they know how to safely and usefully handle a weapon, or that they're mentally fit for combat, because none of that is a requirement for buying a gun.

It's a hero fantasy they've literally never thought critically about, but it's supposed to make all the mass shootings worth it.

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[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 9 points 11 months ago

What if some subset of the US military were to split off and join a hypothetical rebellion?

[-] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago

The leadership in place is very adept in the art of maintaining the status quo while eroding the baseline slowly. For there to be any dissent among the military there would have to be a very radical shift that goes against the middle. It isn't about trans rights, or abortion rights, or civil rights. Those, despite what both sides of the media will tell you, are centrist issues. The sides that have a side have already chosen their side and nothing will change that. There is no battle for the current extremes. If there were any sort of "civil war" it would be for issues that are detrimental to the foundation of the country which is constantly shifting based on the will of the leadership. I'm kind of talking in circles now, but the point is that as long as we have a two party system there will always be an enemy and a champion for both sides. It won't be until that is gone that either side will have a reason to act and a way to grab the center. Give us 20 years of partisan leadership and we'll see action. While we swap back and forth every 4-8 years no one bitches for long enough for any significant movement to form, and the military will continue to defend the middle.

[-] hedgehogging_the_bed@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

Roughly a quarter of the armed forces is under 25, the largest age group https://www.statista.com/statistics/232711/number-of-active-duty-us-defense-force-personnel-by-age/

So even if there's a split, the front lines will still be mostly people too young to rent a car.

[-] ArumiOrnaught@kbin.social 13 points 11 months ago

Lol yeah, a lot of people don't realize our military is 20 year olds leading 18 year olds.

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[-] OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

Well, as long as there are no cowboys riding warheads...

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[-] galloog1@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago

The most likely scenario is an action that causes the majority of the military to rebel such as what happened in Syria. That's partially why the military swears an oath to the Constitution and not the standing government.

For that to happen you need an inciting incident that is at least perceived to be against the Constitution by the majority of the military including a significant portion of the top brass.

We almost got there with all the January 6th shenanigans but the inciting incident involved the military sitting down and not listening to the Executive branch's unethical orders.

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[-] droning_in_my_ears@lemmy.world 72 points 11 months ago

My country is going through a civil war right now.

The US is nowhere near close. You'll be fine.

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 57 points 11 months ago

First of all, disclaimer, I'm just a random weirdo on the internet. I don't have a law degree, I'm not a politician. I'm probably naked and masturbating while writing this.

Are we going to have a Civil War 2: Now With More F150's where it's the north vs the south? No.

Are we going to reach a point where the US sort of falls apart into separate little countries after a lot of unpleasantness? I'm not as confident in saying "No".

I think what will happen first is less "civil war" and more "societal collapse". There are very few places in the US where someone can rent an apartment by themselves, and have a decent life with nice hobbies, while only having one income. Buying a house by yourself is even farther out of reach.

But I am noticing something that is a lot closer to everyone than real estate: food is getting expensive. A hamburger at a fast food joint used to be a quick and cheap, although not healthy, way to get lunch, but now a combo meal basically anywhere is $15. For one person. So cook at home, right? Ignoring the difficulties of cooking for oneself after working both jobs, or working all day at one job, that isn't much cheaper. Making a healthy meal for yourself and your family is a skill that not everyone has, and groceries aren't cheap either. I think the first thing that is going to happen is going to be mass food theft, followed by food riots. It's already starting in fact, how many memes have popped up with variations on the saying "If you see someone stealing food, no you didn't"? Stealing food from a large company is acceptable for a lot of people. With rising COL, we will approach a point where a majority of people cannot afford food, and food isn't a house or a shiny new car. Food isn't a choice.

There will be hysterical articles in NYT about how these poor struggling retailers are losing SO MUCH money (but not really) from theft, and you'll start seeing two squad cars parked outside of every grocery store and walmart - even in "nice" areas.

And that's where things will start to escalate. Not everyone likes police now, and seeing a neighbor thrown on the ground and arrested, if not just killed, in walmart because she was trying to get food for her family isn't going to make them more popular. One or two cops cannot fend off everyone in a walmart. Oh, the cops have guns? That's adorable, so do some people in a walmart. Political feelings about police won't matter when it's your stomach growling, when it's your children going hungry.

I expect this would be the point where food would get locked up, only distributed by employees. Which would make it cost more, and more time consuming to acquire. There will be lines. There will also be people who will grow food - but not everyone can do that, and I'm cynical enough to think that some locales will pass laws against "backyard farming" in the name of "food safety", pushed by grocery stores trying to get that extra .025% profit this quarter.

What will happen once people can't get food, will be the local PD being completely unable to enforce anything.

Remember that it's bread AND circuses.

[-] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 14 points 11 months ago

There will be hysterical articles in NYT about how these poor struggling retailers are losing SO MUCH money (but not really) from theft

Yeah, that's been retracted.

Now the only reason to park two squad cars outside of every Kroger is to determine minorities into doing what they were already doing, i.e.: going grocery shopping.

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[-] Maggoty@lemmy.world 51 points 11 months ago

Tensions are definitely higher than last decade and the decade before. The collapse of the Soviet Union and relatively good economy of the 1990s relieved a lot of tension.

But we're still a ways from WW3. We're back into a pretty normal range for the Cold War. We know China and Russia have the will and the means to try and expand. But they know we have the will and the means to stop them in certain places. That's important because the first two world wars have very different start points that we aren't close to meeting.

World War 1 was started by chains of alliances between countries. They were meant to keep balance but they were decentralized. So there was no committee ruling on Article 5 or bringing new members in. Which is how anarchists in Serbia set off the alliances like a chain of explosives. Both the CSTO and NATO contain rules preventing such a thing. WW1 was helped by cultural views on war. Europe hadn't had a proper industrialized war yet. So everyone thought it was going to be another affair with picnics and a couple large set piece battles.

World War 2 was started by a specific ideology in a country run by meth heads. Hitler was as high as he was crazy. There were a lot of problems left over from World War 1 that gave him an opening but at the core of it all, if he had made a level headed assessment he'd have known he could never win against the US/UK/RUS alliance.

Neither Russia nor China wants the economic devastation that would result from a World War 3. They aren't meth heads and the glory of war is long dead. There's some rumors too that the Chinese are looking at what western equipment can do in Ukraine and they're currently purging some officers who insisted we were exaggerating our capabilities. (They built plans and bought equipment over decades on those recommendations). Russia couldn't invade a cardboard box much less a NATO country at this point.


Now, American Civil War 2. It's not likely for two reasons. One, fighting a war is far more complicated than it used to be. You could gather a bunch of rifles and cannons to have a serious force in 1861. Now days whoever the Army sides with will win in hours. It's not an exaggeration to say a militia could run off a town's police force, set up checkpoints, and take over. But while they were celebrating they'd get hit by air to ground missiles and 25mm rounds from a single helicopter they will never see or hear. And they certainly won't see the special forces team in the woods designating targets. If for some reason they did need to be engaged by the regular infantry it would not go well for them at all. They need to deal with drones, snipers, mortars, artillery, and light tanks. Furthermore there have been head to head practice fights between veterans and militias. (Reality TV in the 2000's got wild.) It never ended well for the militia. They would be outmaneuvered, pinned down, and dead, in about 5 minutes.

Two, the modern model is terrorism. In a Civil War you need a large percentage of support. You have to field whole divisions and the logistics therein. But for political violence you need support from 10 percent of the population in a region to have places to hide and logistics. Also, you can cause havoc with a force the size of a company.

I would say it's highly likely we'll see more political violence before we either come back together as a country or we allow a region to become autonomous or even independent.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 19 points 11 months ago

Furthermore there have been head to head practice fights between veterans and militias. (Reality TV in the 2000's got wild.)

A British youtuber hired a few retired SAS to play paintball with him and his friends. Spoiler: the SAS guys won every round

[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago

You sometimes hear about the paintballers winning, but when you're not actually at risk of death you take more chances.

[-] MechanicalJester@lemm.ee 10 points 11 months ago

I played a little paintball, and the most impressive game was when I had sprinted along the perimeter to get a sniper angle on a path, wait 20 seconds, and have a Marine Recon AD barrel roll from behind a tree 30 feet from me that I never heard and put a single round in my goggles before I knew what was happening. It bounced but I wasn't about to call that anything but legit AF.

I saw the military haircut and asked him after the round.

I'm great against paper targets...but that's not the same as combat and I am crystal clear about it.

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[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 36 points 11 months ago

Well there's civil war with actual armies and military actions and such. That's really not likely to happen.

Now civil unrest? Yes that may happen.

[-] CaptainProton@lemmy.world 33 points 11 months ago

Not really: for context, the civil rights movement in 50's and 60's was far more violent, like actually violent with military being called in across many American cities.

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[-] Furball@sh.itjust.works 23 points 11 months ago

Gonna put it simply: No lmao

[-] EatYouWell@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

Yeah, there will be some domestic terrorist cells that pop up, but my bet is 90% of the people who want to participate would shit their pants and run the second bullets start flying.

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[-] callouscomic@lemm.ee 22 points 11 months ago

Love how people don't know our history and presume that things are somehow more divided now than all the other times.

It's always been like this.

[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The first Civil War was started when slave states sent squads up north to round up "escaped slaves" which frequently included all black people in a town, even if they'd never been enslaved. The free states tried to stop this, and then the traitors threw a hissy fit and got their shit kicked in.

I can definitely see red states sending cops to arrest women fleeing to get an abortion, and free states trying to stop them and that leading to violence.

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[-] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 17 points 11 months ago
[-] dellish@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago

Is that the Behind The Bastards Robert Evans? Love his work.

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[-] Sensitivezombie@lemmy.zip 14 points 11 months ago

Civil War? No. What is possible and already happening at State levels is following the direction of Hungry. Authoritarian judges, politicians are being installed across the US and progressive and even moderate laws being challenged. Roe vs Wade comes to mind. On the federal level we see the installment of far right federal judges and Supreme Court justices. All coming together to help install far right authoritarian in the executive and legislative branches. Yes, socially, Americans have been more divided in the past, but this time there's is a deliberate attempt to change the governance of US from the inside through brute force.

[-] gzrrt@kbin.social 10 points 11 months ago

The US has a pretty severe urban / rural divide in most of its states, but I don't think it's enough. You'd usually need a pretty clean split along territorial lines for that.

[-] chaogomu@kbin.social 8 points 11 months ago

You don't need a clean territorial split for a civil war. You just need clean lines of separation between different groups. There have been civil wars based on ethnic lines, religious lines, and even ideologies.

The wars without clear territory get messy. Like genocide messy.

[-] graycube@kbin.social 9 points 11 months ago

There is a movie coming out in a few months about a US Civil War: https://youtu.be/aDyQxtg0V2w?si=oRudiMaKVQmBy2R_

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[-] dan1101@lemm.ee 8 points 11 months ago

Can't afford to take the time off work to fight a war. Unless the corporations will sponsor us.

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[-] Pratai@lemmy.ca 8 points 11 months ago

I mean, the gravy seals may try and overthrow the government again in 2024, but they’ll be embarrassingly squashed within a half a day.

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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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