I don't think we need to be worried about full-blown civil war, but preparing for an increase in stochastic terrorism probably isn't the worst idea.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Climate change will create food and water scarcity. Their life or yours.
Idk man. I've been having some huge existential crisis lately and climate change and destruction is just flooding my brain.
Anyone else or just me?
Not me. There's nothing I can do to stop it and I refuse to bring kids into it. So my plan if things get really bad is to die and there's no sense worrying about that.
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Haven't stopped planning for retirement and all that jazz but at this point it's just theater.
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If you're not white, straight, and a guy, I'd also recommend updating your passports and maybe arming yourselves. It's gonna be a bumpy year.
I can't really imagine danger being particularly extreme for anyone other than trans people, for trans folk updating passports is likely a good idea. But keep in mind that blue states would still be relatively safe.
If shit truly gets to the point where it's death squads and fascist street gangs, realistically there would not be anywhere in the world that would be safe.
“Blue states” are states with notable swaths of intolerant people spread out over the majority of the state, with a lot of tolerant people and allies condensed into cities.
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What can a straight, white guy do to prepare?
Rat out your neighbors to the police.
Well, since the police would be on it like maybe the national guard?
I don't know, just be prepared to cap somebody in the name of equality.
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Maybe I'm being naive but I don't think we're quite at that point yet. People angry about the 2020 election were a loud minority
In the Weimar Republic, the Nazis never got more than something like 30% of the vote. Fascist "loud minorities" are still incredibly dangerous.
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Someone made a laundry list of evidence demonstrating it'll very likely be an actual thing but I can't find it anywhere. When I do, I'll post it
EDIT: AHA! I FOUND IT! It's a Reddit comment, but so it goes. Blatantly ripping off here:
It's not just the insurrection act.
It includes:
1-Argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president power to do whatever he wants.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/16/politics/trump-agenda-second-term/index.html
2-Fire the civil service and replace it with Trump loyalists.
3-Use the DoJ to target critics
4-Weaken the election security agency
5-Reject climate change
6-Remove all LGBTQ+ protections
https://www.metroweekly.com/2023/09/right-wing-project-2025-seeks-to-eradicate-lgbtq-protections/
7-Bring the Bible into government
For reference, they're talking about this monstrosity of a plan Trump has set up for if he takes power in November. Don't actually vote against Biden even if you support Palestine. Shit's unreal. Shit's very clear and obvious .50 cal territory.
I think it will be a civil war if Trump wins, because it will embolden the crazies, and they'll feel protected by the government to abuse and harass others, which is what they want to do anyway.
If Trump loses, these loser chucklefucks won't feel emboldened, because they won't feel protected by the government.
They're pussies, and all of us, and them, know it.
EDIT: Now that the list has dropped. Yeah, civil war if Trump wins. Basically business as usual if he doesn't.
EDIT II: To be clear, the election could still go either way. So making plans and planning Mutual Aid Networks among your peers is the best you can do for now. Hopefully they won't be needed but will help towards some real community-building.
But then rinse and repeat 4 years later.
Agreed, but between dementia and stress clearly making him more unhinged and his ill-health and advanced age: there's a good chance he won't functionally be able to run again in four years.
The positive thing about that is the cult won't let him go. Trump has already told them to reject the truth of their eyes and ears, and they've listened. Trump will happily turn on the Republican establishment, he's made the threat countless times.
Trying to replace Trump will be the party's downfall, because the voters/cult won't accept a new face, even when Trump literally fucking dies. They'll say it's a conspiracy.
People forget that Trump was an "anti-establishment" candidate. It's unlikely we'll ever have another like him again, as the establishment clearly doesn't like being bullied by him. If they could drop him and still win: they already would have.
EDIT: While there are some young conservatives, the votes for Republican swing wildly towards older people. In four years, more of these older people will have fucking died or lost their minds to dementia, and more young people will be eligible to vote. We honestly haven't had a Presidential election since COVID and there's a strong chance the polls are fucking stupid wrong (they honestly haven't been reliable since around 2004) and that Trump is going to be absolutely destroyed since he literally killed millions of his own voters. This is also arguably why the Republicans are fighting tooth and nail right now, they know that this might be their last election where they can win anything at all. They want the fix in, now, because otherwise this might spell the end of the entire party, long-term. You might call their behavior an Extinction Burst.
The optimist in me hopes you’re right, the pessimist in me is considering buying a gun, and the realist in me is practicing baseball bat-fu in a bathrobe when I wake up in a cold sweat thinking about it.
I'm hoping I'm right, too. The thing is, it's all very much up in the air. The Democrats are doing their usual plan of depressing their own youth vote by talking down to the youth and acting like any critique of Democratic policies means you must be voting for Republicans instead. It's gross, rude, and not very productive with the youth, who are largely on their side.
Mutual Aid networks is what you should be getting involved with. We don't have the skills for combat, we have other skills. All kinds of skills are needed in a civil war style situation, give your real valuable skills where they are worth something.
Also I prefer a high powered flashlight that can blind an assailant. Light is faster than bullets and only hurts those who look directly at it.
EDIT: Also, extinction bursts in children are easier to control because they're fucking children. These are organized adults with the temperament of children. Their extinction burst might not fail.
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People angry about the 2020 election were a loud minority
That loud minority came very close to putting the lives of elected representatives at risk.
No, these guys are way less organized than last time and Donald Trump is getting fucked in court still. I think its less likely now than it was 4 years ago. The GOP is fracturing and losing steam. Senators and governors are still a threat but not in the civil war type of way I don't think.
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For there to be a civil war, both sides need an army. The US president will have the US army, and the other side might as well have nerf guns. The civil war would last an afternoon.
If there's going to be anything, it's an increase in domestic terrorism.
That's what a modern civil war will look like.
Have you read CIA reports?
Flash pogroms and terrorism. Sometimes by law enforcement. In other words, not a stand up fight, but a bug hunt.
That's what's going to suck. The war might only last a couple months but I can't imagine months of bombings and violent demonstrations in every city across the U.S.
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Everyone keeps saying this, but I think good ole' Amercian laziness will win out and nothing happens.
Ever been around people when an emergency happens? People can't be bothered half the time; or they gawk...
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You guys are giving Republicans way too much credibility.
Better to take their threat as creditable now than to be surprised later
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Note: this isn't going to look like the Civil War in the 1860s with pitched battles. It's more likely going to look like The Troubles or La Violencia
So long as we have mass precarity this is going to continue to be a risk. And we're going to have to deal with renegade MAGAs and Project 2025.
After 2016, I don't trust the people of the US not to vote in fashy autocrats.
What is P25?
Only the plan to turn the United States government into a broad amalgamation of totalitarianism and fascism.
Americans need to stop electing fascists
The problem is, the politically daft don't comprehend the risk that comes when fascists get elected, and when their life is in precarity (say, one paycheck or one bad illness away from homelessness) then some strong, confident Mussolini-wanabe starts looking attractive, especially when what he promises is too good to be true.
During the Great Depression, different factions were seriously considering going full fash or trying out communism. (The growing pains of the Soviet Union didn't seem worse than living in cardboard boxes here in the States.) FDR's New Deal was a stopgap measure so that the industrialists could get their act together. Well, they resented having to consider the public then, and they still do now.
And as Iran has shown us recently, violence is unthinkable for the most of us, until the hour it's inevitable.
I’m not saying you’re wrong but this feels like a super-Russian national subversion ploy.
It sort of is and it isn't, in a lot of ways.
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Polls have been notoriously unreliable for over a decade now. Part of it is cell phones, part of it is increasing numbers of people feeding false responses, trying to influence the poll.
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Do that many people really want to vote for Trump? Young people are notoriously leftist, and older people are notoriously conservative, and millennials on down are changing the path to becoming conservative as you become older. Meaning more and more people are leftist or liberal or centrist, and less and less are straight conservative. Trump's comments literally lead to the death of millions of old people during COVID. We have yet to actually see in a major nationwide election whether or not he actually killed a sufficient enough of his own voters to start swaying elections towards the Democrats nationally.
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Democrats and the media are doing what they always do to the young when they complain that the Democrats aren't doing enough: They'll equivocate it with saying "I'm not going to vote for a Democrat!" which is actually not what most young people are saying as much as they hate that the Democrats are essentially holding their votes hostage by refusing to do better and hitting us over the head with "but if you don't let us half ass it, FASCISTS WILL TAKE OVER" which is some seriously psychologically abusive shit, literally threatening us with fascism if we don't give in to their half ass takes. However, as an old man, I've seen the Democrats do this to the youth and depress their own youth votes for forty years. I literally lived it myself as a youth, over 20 years ago. All they do is talk down to the youth and act like any critique of their policies must mean a vote for the Republicans, not a clear understanding that Republicans are far worse, but that's not an excuse for Democrats to be the milquetoast halfass bullshit party.
So between Democrats shoving their own foot up their own ass like usual, and old people dying by the millions to preventable disease, it could still go either way, even without Russian's trying to subvert the election. As usual, the Democrats are subverting themselves well enough already.
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Daily reminder that memes can't predict the future.
Probably, at some point. Wealth disparity is wrecking a huge swathe of the population's way of life. They’re restless and want change.
Politically, divisiveness is continually reaching new heights. Politicians, republicans for the most part, are more reactionary and less productive. They are now fueling the fear and anger of their constituents and it won’t end well.
The US right now looks like Germany just before they put the Nazi party in power.
Lots of FUD, angry constituents, a faschism-adjacent party on the ballots, and lots of hate.
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Too many people are too comfortable to ever get off their asses to do anything more than bitch about it online. It's a very small percentage of people that actually go to rallies and half of those people are middle class white people that have never known real hardship; the kind of people that are surprised when they get pepper sprayed while trying to break into the capitol. There won't be a civil war, but we're definitely on the brink of single party rule.
We're like a bunch of frogs sitting in water that is being slowly brought to a boil, but except for water it's fascism and half the country is okay with it because they think they are "saving the children." The other half think they can stop it. I think that both sides might be delusional.
It’s hard to do more when we're working ourselves to death just to afford basic necessities. That tipping point gets closer and closer though.
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I can already hear the gunshots as the polls are announced. I live in a Red State.
Come to Canada, y’all
Aren't you all catching enough bullshit just breathing the crazy fumes wafting over the border?
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No, don't. We need to build more homes first and we're already way behind.
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Bad goes to worse, I do have the option of getting citizenship in the Dominican Republic via my parents.
It's not exactly an upgrade, but I'll take it over being stuck state-side.
My friend of Jewish descent recently listened to some audio recordings of his grandparents before they fled Germany.
They basically describe similar situations and feeling quite similarly to how he feels today. His wife doesn't like him talking about it, but he's sincere: he feels the need to flee.
I don't blame him one bit.
EDIT: To be clear, his desire to flee has very little to do with his Jewish lineage and more to do with how scary and dangerous the Trump cult is. Him being of Jewish descent is just like a cherry on top for MAGAs who want to abuse others. A bonus.
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