Grim reading!

But don't blame me!  What follows is a reprint of a comment to a post down below left by my e-pal, Malcolm Pollack, on the subject of the possible/probable likelihood of an American civil war.  It is a thoughtful contribution and I decided to reprint it as a post in it's own right.

Blue and Red have, at this point, wholly incommensurable belief and value systems. They disagree fundamentally and axiomatically about human nature, morality, sexuality, the role of government, respect for family, heritage and tradition, and our duty as stewards of the American nation and culture. As I wrote here back in October:
As the historian Michael Vlahos has been explaining to John Batchelor these past months: you don’t know, except in hindsight, when civil wars have begun. (It strikes me as being much the same as falling into a black hole: once you’ve passed the event horizon, all possible pathways lead through the singularity — even though, to the person falling in, there’s nothing noticeable about the event horizon itself.)

To put that another way: looking at the current chasm in American politics, the fundamentally incompatible visions of America the two sides hold, the degree of dehumanizing hatred they show for each other, the bloody damage already done, and the implacable fury with which they grapple for every atom of power, can any of you imagine some way forward in which the Right and Left just "bury the hatchet" and "hug it out"?

Of course not. This fight continues, and intensifies, until either one side is destroyed, or we work out some kind of divorce.

I don't see any sign of either side giving in or walking away, and there isn't anything like enough commonality left to restore any kind of comity. It goes without saying that this civil war -- which in hindsight we may, in future, understand already to have gotten underway by now -- won't look like the last two American civil wars, with regular armies deployed in military array. It will more likely proceed on a far more granular scale, with constant low-grade violence and disorder, and the occasional regional secession, as the horizontal ligatures that have bound the Republic together all these years gradually break down. Perhaps there will be some geographical sorting as Red folks leave the great Blue urban islands.
I honestly can't see, at this point, how things will get better before they get much worse. (Can any of you?) And I really don't see how America as presently constituted continues for much longer.

Should this occur, it truly will qualify as "Apocalypse Now"!  Lest you think I am being overly dramatic, just think who the winners will be if America dissolves!

 

 

Comments

[JK]

Bob,

Reading the transcripts of what the "House Managers" are reading to the Senators I keep seeing the repeated phrase [regarding you know what surname] "the totally discredited story that any thing occurred."

You recognize the problem doncha Bob with the way the impeachment is being presented so far?

On the one hand the Schiff-Show would have it Trump solicited a thing from which a thing resulted or the thing did not. At the same time the Schiff-Show's basis on which the alleged demanded thing was demanded never happened in the first place or, if it did it affected nothing but because Trump attempted to effect the result of the thing that did not happen he attempted to do it anyway and for that ... [the full force of the law].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2f-MZ2HRHQ

[Whitewall]

It is ironic that 2020 America is experiencing nearly unmatched prosperity at home. The idea of a "rising tide lifts all boats" is being proven true. Those fools who say capitalism needs reforming are wrong. It needs to be unleashed from the stifling regulations of government.

At the recent Economic Forum in Davos, Donald Trump returned and reminded the global elitists that what he said he would do economically, he has done and the results speak for themselves. His reception was much better this time. But no, big media must go wall to wall "impeachment". Media and the socialists and globalists have no answer. The message to other political leaders is clear: copy the same pattern in your country when you get home. Some have.

We are living in a time when good things are being done and citizens are benefiting as a result. The problem is, basically, these good things are getting done by the wrong man. A man who has never held political office. The governing elites are furious and confused. Freedom works. Big government, big business and big Deep State don't.

[Backofanenvelope]

I Think it is a mistake to think any civil war in the USA will be between the left and the right. The majority of Americans are conservative with a small 'c' and they all think politicians are a corrupt waste of space. Perhaps the heavily armed insurrectionists of all sorts will concentrate on offing ALL politicians. Donald Trump, of course, is not a politician.

[Bob]

"Civil War" is misleading. The actual Civil War was a regional conflict between North and South. Current tensions are between rural areas and small towns and the big cities everywhere across the country, including the coasts. There are similarities in that it's about economic models and, to a lesser extent, two views of culture - lesser because no one is claiming anything on the level of humans' rights to own other humans as property, though there's plenty of overblown rhetoric.

It's true that during the 1960's through 1980's there were mostly leftist terrorist groups active in the US:

"Modern left-wing terrorist groups in the United States developed from remnants of the Weather Underground and extremist elements of the Students for a Democratic Society. Between 1973 and 1975, the Symbionese Liberation Army was active, committing bank robberies, murders, and other acts of violence.[13] Other terrorist groups such as the small New World Liberation Front resorted to death threats, drive-by shootings and planting of pipe-bombs in the late 1970s.[14] During the 1980s, both the May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO) and the smaller United Freedom Front were active. After 1985, following the dismantling of both groups, one source reports there were no confirmed acts of left-wing terrorism by similar groups.[15] Incidents of left-wing terrorism dropped off at the end of the Cold War (circa 1989), partly due to the loss of support for communism.[16]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism#United_States

The anti-Vietnam War movement was probably equally important as a motivator of leftist violence.

There have been periods of right and left terrorism throughout American history. The KKK and The Knights of the White Camelia peaked in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Various anarchist groups, mostly associated with the left, have been around intermittently.

Currently right wing terrorists are most active:

https://www.csis.org/ground-combatting-rise-right-wing-terror

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-08-10/fbi-struggles-to-confront-domestic-terrorism-by-right-wing-groups

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/right-wing-terrorist-killings-government-focus-jihadis-islamic-radicalism.html

All reasonable people disagree with terrorism as a political tactic. My personal view is that the current violence has more to do with globalization and the loss of manufacturing jobs that once supported small towns and rural areas than any aspect of culture. There are towns not far from me that have had their economies destroyed by offshoring. Drug and alcohol abuse, crime and suicide are rampant. There's a lot of demagogic scapegoating about it all being the fault of foreigners. There's not so much blaming the manufacturers who moved out of the country.

--

JK,

You've written one of the common defenses, but it's too early to draw any conclusions or even speculate about the impeachment trial.

[Loz]

It'll stay hot air rather than cold steel, imho.

What the Dems need is another punch in the guts at the ballot box, and maybe another, for another 8 years, 4 Trump and 4 for a successor, to get some sense knocked into them.

The impeachment is bs ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/opinion/trump-impeachment-defense.amp.html

What, is the Don supposed to request corrupt allies sort their shit out and challenge corrupt enemies while at the same time saying "Oh, but don't you dare investigate our US corruption"?! What kind of credibility do you get from hypocrisy and double-standards? How to lose allies and fail to rally a possie against enemies in one easy lesson!

And what a brill political manoeuvre: he's drawn the Dems into an energy trap - yet again. They waste all their ammo and energy on a lost cause battlefield of the Don's choosing, just like the Russia thing, just before an election. Will they ever learn?!

Remember my berating the Don for zero results? Rocketman, Ping-a-Ling, the Mad Mullahs, Vlad and Assad, the EU, this time last year there were no deals on the sales board? "Not only did you not make target, you sold nothing - you're fired!" says the sale manager, I quipped!

Well hey, they're starting to drop now aren't they? The Mad Mullahs reeling from decapitation; Vlad and Assad stranded in the shithole desert of Syria still fighting but no re-unified Syria, no oil, no land connectivity to their ally Iran; Ping-a-Ling's pips starting to squeak so he's coming on board with some jaw-jaw and ink on the paperwork.

And all the while the swamp drained and tax cuts pumping through the grateful fiscal veins of the homeland.

He's a Machiavelli abroad and Libertarian at home.

What's not to like? I mean quite literally: What is there not to like?

SoD

[JK]

https://www.oodaloop.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/DHSBaseline-Anarchist-Extremists.pdf

https://privacysos.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FBI-BlackIdentityExtremists.pdf

Ain't perzactly speaking Right-Wingers described therein Bob.

[Bob]

JK,

I didn't even imply there are only right wing terrorists active now. But they are currently the most active:

https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/confronting-white-supremacy

https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/confronting-the-rise-of-domestic-terrorism-in-the-homeland

[David Duff]

Bob, and we can trust absolutely the impartial, forensic analyses of the FBI, can we not, to say nothing of the Dept. of (non)Justice?

[Bob]

David,

Minus your British silliness, absolutely.

[Glesga]

The Democrats have no one who is electable. Trump wil probably skate the next election. We in the UK will make our transition out of the EU easier with Trump although he will want a fair trade deal on his terms! Joke Bob.

[JK]

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/01/antifa-charlottesville-violence-fbi-242235

Depends on what The Media narrative is is Bob.

Politico can be, at times, inconvenient.

[JK]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/01/24/2020-guns-trump-obama-michigan-voters-102790

[JK]

https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2020/01/heh-truth.html