Talk of Civil War
Found this interesting.
In America, talk turns to something unspoken for 150 years: Civil war.
https://tiny.iavian.net/rk4l
At a moment when the country has never seemed angrier, two political commentators from opposite sides of the divide concurred last week on one point, nearly unthinkable until recently: The country is on the verge of "civil war."
First came former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova, a Fox News regular and ally of President Trump. "We are in a civil war," he said. "The suggestion that there's ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future is over. . . . It's going to be total war."
The next day, Nicolle Wallace, a former Republican operative turned MSNBC commentator and Trump critic, played a clip of diGenova's commentary on her show and agreed with him - although she placed the blame squarely on the president.
Trump, she said, "greenlit a war in this country around race. And if you think about the most dangerous thing he's done, that might be it."
With the report by special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly nearly complete, impeachment talk in the air and the 2020 presidential election ramping up, fears that once existed only in fiction or the fevered dreams of conspiracy theorists have become a regular part of the political debate. These days, there's talk of violence, mayhem and, increasingly, civil war.
A tumultuous couple of weeks in American politics seem to have raised the rhetorical flourishes to a new level and also brought a troubling question to the surface: At what point does all the alarmist talk of civil war actually increase the prospect of violence, riots or domestic terrorism?
Speaking to conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, diGenova summed up his best advice to friends: "I vote, and I buy guns. And that's what you should do."
He was a bit more measured a few days later in an interview with The Washington Post, saying that the United States is in a "civil war of discourse . . . a civil war of conduct," triggered mostly by liberals and the media's coverage of the Trump presidency. The former U.S. attorney said he owns guns mostly to make a statement, and not because he fears political insurrection at the hands of his fellow Americans.
The rampant talk of civil war may be hyperbolic, but it does have origins in a real crumbling confidence in the country's democratic institutions and its paralyzed federal government. With Congress largely deadlocked, governance on the most controversial issues has been left to the Supreme Court or has come through executive or emergency actions, such as Trump's border wall effort.
Then there's the persistent worry about the 202o elections. "Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power," Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer and personal lawyer, told a congressional committee Wednesday.
On that score, Cohen's not the only one who is concerned. As far back as 2016, Trump declined to say whether he would concede if he lost to Hillary Clinton, prompting former president Barack Obama to warn that Trump was undermining American democracy. "That is dangerous," Obama said.
The moment was top of mind for Joshua Geltzer, a former senior Obama administration Justice Department official, when he wrote a recent editorial for CNN urging the country to prepare for the possibility that Trump might not "leave the Oval Office peacefully" if he loses in 2020.
"If he even hints at contesting the election result in 2020 . . . he'd be doing so not as an outsider but as a leader with the vast resources of the U.S. government potentially at his disposal," Geltzer, now a professor at Georgetown Law School, wrote in his piece in late February.
Geltzer urged both major parties to require their electoral college voters to pledge to respect the outcome of the election, and suggested that it might be necessary to ask the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reaffirm their loyalty to the Constitution over Trump.
"These are dire thoughts," Geltzer wrote, "but we live in uncertain and worrying times."
His speculation drew immediate reaction from the right. Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin tweeted a link to an article that called Geltzer's warnings "rampant crazy." News Punch, a far-right site that traffics in conspiracy theories, blared: "Obama Official Urges Civil War Against Trump Administration."
Said Geltzer: "I don't think I was being paranoid, but, boy, did I inspire paranoia on the other side."
The concerns about a civil war, though, extend beyond the pundit class to a sizable segment of the population. An October 2017 poll from the company that makes the game Cards Against Humanity found that 31 percent of Americans believed a civil war was "likely" in the next decade.
More than 40 percent of Democrats described such a conflict as "likely," compared with about 25 percent of Republicans. The company partnered with Survey Sampling International to conduct the nationally representative poll.
Some historians have sounded a similar alarm. "How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?" Victor Davis Hanson, a historian with Stanford University's Hoover Institution, asked last summer in an essay in National Review. Hanson prophesied that the United States "was nearing a point comparable to 1860," about a year before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
Around the same time Hanson was writing, Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor who is now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, imagined his own new American civil war, in which demands for Trump's impeachment lead to calls from Fox News commentators for "every honest patriot to take to the streets."
"The way Mr. Trump and his defenders are behaving, it's not absurd to imagine serious social unrest," Reich wrote in the Baltimore Sun. "That's how low he's taken us."
Reich got some unlikely support last week from Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist. "I think that 2019 is going to be the most vitriolic year in American politics since the Civil War, and I include Vietnam in that," Bannon said in an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation."
All the doom, gloom and divisiveness have caught the attention of experts who evaluate the strength of governments around the world. The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, a measure widely cited by political scientists, demoted the United States from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy" in January 2017, citing a big drop in Americans' trust for their political institutions.
Similarly, Freedom House, which monitors freedom and democracy around the world, warned in 2018 that the past year has "brought further, faster erosion of American's own democratic standards than at any other time in memory."
Those warnings about the state of America's democratic institutions concern political scientists who study civil wars, which usually take root in countries with high levels of corruption, low trust in institutions and poor governance.
Barbara Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, said her first instinct was to dismiss any talk of civil war in the United States. "But the U.S. is starting to show that it is moving in that direction," she said. "Countries with bad governance are the ones that experience these wars."
James Fearon, who researches political violence at Stanford University, called the pundits' warnings "basically absurd." But he noted that political polarization and the possibility of a potentially serious constitutional crisis in the near future does "marginally increase the still very low odds" of a stalemate that might require "some kind of action by the military leadership."
"I can't believe I'm saying this," he added, "but I guess it's not entirely out of the question."
Less clear in the near term is what kind of effect the inflammatory civil war rhetoric has on a democracy that's already on edge. There's some evidence that such heated words could cause people to become more moderate. A 2014 study found that when hard-line Israeli Jews were shown extreme videos promoting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as essential to Israeli pride, a strong army or national unity, they took a more dovish position.
"Extreme rhetoric can lead some people to pull back from the brink," said Boaz Hameiri, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author on the study. But that only happens when people already believe a "more moderate version of the extreme views" and find the more extreme message shocking, he said.
In such cases, people recognize the absurdity of their position, worry it reflects badly on them and reconsider it, he said.
If the extreme messages become a normal part of the political debate, the moderating effect goes away, the study found.
Violence is most likely to occur, Hameiri added, when political leaders use "dehumanizing language" to describe their opponents.
Most experts worried that the talk of conflict here, armed or otherwise, was serving to raise the prospects of unrest and diminish trust in America's already beleaguered institutions.
The latest warnings of civil war from diGenova drew an exasperated response from VoteVets, a liberal veterans advocacy group whose members have fought in actual civil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Amazing we have to say this but: 1. We are NOT in civil war. 2. Do NOT buy guns (or any weapons) to use against your fellow Americans," Jon Soltz, the group's chairman, tweeted in response to diGenova. "Trust us, we have seen war."
In America, talk turns to something unspoken for 150 years: Civil war.
https://tiny.iavian.net/rk4l
At a moment when the country has never seemed angrier, two political commentators from opposite sides of the divide concurred last week on one point, nearly unthinkable until recently: The country is on the verge of "civil war."
First came former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova, a Fox News regular and ally of President Trump. "We are in a civil war," he said. "The suggestion that there's ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future is over. . . . It's going to be total war."
The next day, Nicolle Wallace, a former Republican operative turned MSNBC commentator and Trump critic, played a clip of diGenova's commentary on her show and agreed with him - although she placed the blame squarely on the president.
Trump, she said, "greenlit a war in this country around race. And if you think about the most dangerous thing he's done, that might be it."
With the report by special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly nearly complete, impeachment talk in the air and the 2020 presidential election ramping up, fears that once existed only in fiction or the fevered dreams of conspiracy theorists have become a regular part of the political debate. These days, there's talk of violence, mayhem and, increasingly, civil war.
A tumultuous couple of weeks in American politics seem to have raised the rhetorical flourishes to a new level and also brought a troubling question to the surface: At what point does all the alarmist talk of civil war actually increase the prospect of violence, riots or domestic terrorism?
Speaking to conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, diGenova summed up his best advice to friends: "I vote, and I buy guns. And that's what you should do."
He was a bit more measured a few days later in an interview with The Washington Post, saying that the United States is in a "civil war of discourse . . . a civil war of conduct," triggered mostly by liberals and the media's coverage of the Trump presidency. The former U.S. attorney said he owns guns mostly to make a statement, and not because he fears political insurrection at the hands of his fellow Americans.
The rampant talk of civil war may be hyperbolic, but it does have origins in a real crumbling confidence in the country's democratic institutions and its paralyzed federal government. With Congress largely deadlocked, governance on the most controversial issues has been left to the Supreme Court or has come through executive or emergency actions, such as Trump's border wall effort.
Then there's the persistent worry about the 202o elections. "Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power," Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer and personal lawyer, told a congressional committee Wednesday.
On that score, Cohen's not the only one who is concerned. As far back as 2016, Trump declined to say whether he would concede if he lost to Hillary Clinton, prompting former president Barack Obama to warn that Trump was undermining American democracy. "That is dangerous," Obama said.
The moment was top of mind for Joshua Geltzer, a former senior Obama administration Justice Department official, when he wrote a recent editorial for CNN urging the country to prepare for the possibility that Trump might not "leave the Oval Office peacefully" if he loses in 2020.
"If he even hints at contesting the election result in 2020 . . . he'd be doing so not as an outsider but as a leader with the vast resources of the U.S. government potentially at his disposal," Geltzer, now a professor at Georgetown Law School, wrote in his piece in late February.
Geltzer urged both major parties to require their electoral college voters to pledge to respect the outcome of the election, and suggested that it might be necessary to ask the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reaffirm their loyalty to the Constitution over Trump.
"These are dire thoughts," Geltzer wrote, "but we live in uncertain and worrying times."
His speculation drew immediate reaction from the right. Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin tweeted a link to an article that called Geltzer's warnings "rampant crazy." News Punch, a far-right site that traffics in conspiracy theories, blared: "Obama Official Urges Civil War Against Trump Administration."
Said Geltzer: "I don't think I was being paranoid, but, boy, did I inspire paranoia on the other side."
The concerns about a civil war, though, extend beyond the pundit class to a sizable segment of the population. An October 2017 poll from the company that makes the game Cards Against Humanity found that 31 percent of Americans believed a civil war was "likely" in the next decade.
More than 40 percent of Democrats described such a conflict as "likely," compared with about 25 percent of Republicans. The company partnered with Survey Sampling International to conduct the nationally representative poll.
Some historians have sounded a similar alarm. "How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?" Victor Davis Hanson, a historian with Stanford University's Hoover Institution, asked last summer in an essay in National Review. Hanson prophesied that the United States "was nearing a point comparable to 1860," about a year before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
Around the same time Hanson was writing, Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor who is now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, imagined his own new American civil war, in which demands for Trump's impeachment lead to calls from Fox News commentators for "every honest patriot to take to the streets."
"The way Mr. Trump and his defenders are behaving, it's not absurd to imagine serious social unrest," Reich wrote in the Baltimore Sun. "That's how low he's taken us."
Reich got some unlikely support last week from Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist. "I think that 2019 is going to be the most vitriolic year in American politics since the Civil War, and I include Vietnam in that," Bannon said in an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation."
All the doom, gloom and divisiveness have caught the attention of experts who evaluate the strength of governments around the world. The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, a measure widely cited by political scientists, demoted the United States from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy" in January 2017, citing a big drop in Americans' trust for their political institutions.
Similarly, Freedom House, which monitors freedom and democracy around the world, warned in 2018 that the past year has "brought further, faster erosion of American's own democratic standards than at any other time in memory."
Those warnings about the state of America's democratic institutions concern political scientists who study civil wars, which usually take root in countries with high levels of corruption, low trust in institutions and poor governance.
Barbara Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, said her first instinct was to dismiss any talk of civil war in the United States. "But the U.S. is starting to show that it is moving in that direction," she said. "Countries with bad governance are the ones that experience these wars."
James Fearon, who researches political violence at Stanford University, called the pundits' warnings "basically absurd." But he noted that political polarization and the possibility of a potentially serious constitutional crisis in the near future does "marginally increase the still very low odds" of a stalemate that might require "some kind of action by the military leadership."
"I can't believe I'm saying this," he added, "but I guess it's not entirely out of the question."
Less clear in the near term is what kind of effect the inflammatory civil war rhetoric has on a democracy that's already on edge. There's some evidence that such heated words could cause people to become more moderate. A 2014 study found that when hard-line Israeli Jews were shown extreme videos promoting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as essential to Israeli pride, a strong army or national unity, they took a more dovish position.
"Extreme rhetoric can lead some people to pull back from the brink," said Boaz Hameiri, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author on the study. But that only happens when people already believe a "more moderate version of the extreme views" and find the more extreme message shocking, he said.
In such cases, people recognize the absurdity of their position, worry it reflects badly on them and reconsider it, he said.
If the extreme messages become a normal part of the political debate, the moderating effect goes away, the study found.
Violence is most likely to occur, Hameiri added, when political leaders use "dehumanizing language" to describe their opponents.
Most experts worried that the talk of conflict here, armed or otherwise, was serving to raise the prospects of unrest and diminish trust in America's already beleaguered institutions.
The latest warnings of civil war from diGenova drew an exasperated response from VoteVets, a liberal veterans advocacy group whose members have fought in actual civil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Amazing we have to say this but: 1. We are NOT in civil war. 2. Do NOT buy guns (or any weapons) to use against your fellow Americans," Jon Soltz, the group's chairman, tweeted in response to diGenova. "Trust us, we have seen war."
0
-
Talk....talk....talk....for years... 0 -
IMO the situation isn't exclusive to the U.S. Something is in the air. IMO the (international) lefts idealistic policies are finally running into the wall of reality.
I'm a hunter and a sports shooter, naturally people with a new interest in firearms are going to approach me with questions. Some of the people that are asking seem to be unlikely firearms owners. The people who are into firearms are adding firearms, mostly non-sporting types. People who have been silent for years are asking about tactical gear. Nothing radical, but definitely a noticeable trend. It is like many people feel a sense of unease, even urgency. Like I said something is in the air and it isn't exclusive to the U.S.
IMO many people are just getting fed up being bullied, harangued and provoked by left wing nut cases and noisy minorities. It seems almost every segment of society is a protected class except the silent majority and the silent majority is getting tired of it.
Trying to blame it all on Trump is laughable.0 -
I would call it a revolution by the left. It won't work. Folks will stand up when they have enough and it goes sideways. If riots violence and riots occur the undermining folks will be shot. Curfews and shot on sight. No more water cannons , tear gas, but real bullets. When they return fire all hell will break loose. Won't last long after that. 0 -
Hessian wrote:IMO the situation isn't exclusive to the U.S. Something is in the air. IMO the (international) lefts idealistic policies are finally running into the wall of reality.
I'm a hunter and a sports shooter, naturally people with a new interest in firearms are going to approach me with questions. Some of the people that are asking seem to be unlikely firearms owners. The people who are into firearms are adding firearms, mostly non-sporting types. People who have been silent for years are asking about tactical gear. Nothing radical, but definitely a noticeable trend. It is like many people feel a sense of unease, even urgency. Like I said something is in the air and it isn't exclusive to the U.S.
IMO many people are just getting fed up being bullied, harangued and provoked by left wing nut cases and noisy minorities. It seems almost every segment of society is a protected class except the silent majority and the silent majority is getting tired of it.
Trying to blame it all on Trump is laughable.
Well said; the uneasy feelings are well founded. States like CA, IL CN and others that are stripping gun owner rights wholesale are going to be the first to explode. We can not continue to believe in the rule of law when the laws are not enforced against the very people making them. Our masters have armed security, they live behind walls yet Joe and Jane Average are denied the same. Eco terrorists, Governments using laws to strip property rights from people, undecipherable tax codes designed to be undecipherable are adding to the metal stress and a feeling of hopelessness in millions.
It is a recipe for disaster. I hope I never see it, I hope it never happens but if it does a small spark will be looked upon as the start of it. I assure you it will not be the right that starts the violence.0 -
It is ironic that this article spends so much time worrying about Trump not accepting the results of an election when Democrats have been trying to prove "collusion" for 2 years so as to impeach Trump. 0 -
Rack Ops wrote:It is ironic that this article spends so much time worrying about Trump not accepting the results of an election when Democrats have been trying to prove "collusion" for 2 years so as to impeach Trump.
+1
The left has not allowed a peaceful transition of power. They have weaponized the justice Dept and used the media to smear the the POTUS since before he was even inaugurated.0 -
Interesting read.
This has been coming for years, not just during or because of the Trump Administration. Obama's Administration increased and perpetuated the divisions amongst us, be it Race, Liberal vs. Conservative, Abortion vs. Pro-Life, Gun owners/2nd Amendment Advocates vs. Those who would strip us of those Rights, etc. etc.
Bernie Sanders, Hillary, Antifa, etc. etc. The List goes on and on.
Guess which side is better prepared?0 -
bpost wrote:Hessian wrote:IMO the situation isn't exclusive to the U.S. Something is in the air. IMO the (international) lefts idealistic policies are finally running into the wall of reality.
I'm a hunter and a sports shooter, naturally people with a new interest in firearms are going to approach me with questions. Some of the people that are asking seem to be unlikely firearms owners. The people who are into firearms are adding firearms, mostly non-sporting types. People who have been silent for years are asking about tactical gear. Nothing radical, but definitely a noticeable trend. It is like many people feel a sense of unease, even urgency. Like I said something is in the air and it isn't exclusive to the U.S.
IMO many people are just getting fed up being bullied, harangued and provoked by left wing nut cases and noisy minorities. It seems almost every segment of society is a protected class except the silent majority and the silent majority is getting tired of it.
Trying to blame it all on Trump is laughable.
Well said; the uneasy feelings are well founded. States like CA, IL CN and others that are stripping gun owner rights wholesale are going to be the first to explode. We can not continue to believe in the rule of law when the laws are not enforced against the very people making them. Our masters have armed security, they live behind walls yet Joe and Jane Average are denied the same. Eco terrorists, Governments using laws to strip property rights from people, undecipherable tax codes designed to be undecipherable are adding to the metal stress and a feeling of hopelessness in millions.
It is a recipe for disaster. I hope I never see it, I hope it never happens but if it does a small spark will be looked upon as the start of it. I assure you it will not be the right that starts the violence.
Well said X2.0 -
bpost wrote:Hessian wrote:IMO the situation isn't exclusive to the U.S. Something is in the air. IMO the (international) lefts idealistic policies are finally running into the wall of reality.
I'm a hunter and a sports shooter, naturally people with a new interest in firearms are going to approach me with questions. Some of the people that are asking seem to be unlikely firearms owners. The people who are into firearms are adding firearms, mostly non-sporting types. People who have been silent for years are asking about tactical gear. Nothing radical, but definitely a noticeable trend. It is like many people feel a sense of unease, even urgency. Like I said something is in the air and it isn't exclusive to the U.S.
IMO many people are just getting fed up being bullied, harangued and provoked by left wing nut cases and noisy minorities. It seems almost every segment of society is a protected class except the silent majority and the silent majority is getting tired of it.
Trying to blame it all on Trump is laughable.
Well said; the uneasy feelings are well founded. States like CA, IL CN and others that are stripping gun owner rights wholesale are going to be the first to explode. We can not continue to believe in the rule of law when the laws are not enforced against the very people making them. Our masters have armed security, they live behind walls yet Joe and Jane Average are denied the same. Eco terrorists, Governments using laws to strip property rights from people, undecipherable tax codes designed to be undecipherable are adding to the metal stress and a feeling of hopelessness in millions.
It is a recipe for disaster. I hope I never see it, I hope it never happens but if it does a small spark will be looked upon as the start of it. I assure you it will not be the right that starts the violence.
When the takers (liberals) take and take and take while giving nothing, soon the givers are fed up and refuse to be pushed further. There is nothing more vicious than a cornered wildcat.
0 -
We're already in a civil war. It just has gone hot yet. Inevitably,it will. 0 -
I found enough dung in that article to make the Genus world record cow pie.
Interesting a lot of input came from California based entities . Most people seem to want to ignore the simple basic truth. The Constitutional Republic of the United States of America is under attack .
The powers that are behind this attack are those who have world wide influence both economically and politically. They have been able to corrupt our education system, our political system, and our media. They are NOT the names you hear on the news, and Trump is not one of them. If you can't take it from there and figure out what is going on then whatever I would say to you makes little difference. We are at war and it's my belief that we are loosing that war. By we I mean every American that still believes in our Constitutional Republic. One of our problems is that due to our educational system, way to many have no clue what that even is, or what it means.0 -
This is a test of the word police we have had on the forum.
Before if one wrote CIVIL WAR it was auto changed to the war of northern aggression.....but never the war between the states.
So now that I have wrote it, will post and see if the word police are at work.0 -
Rack Ops wrote:It is ironic that this article spends so much time worrying about Trump not accepting the results of an election when Democrats have been trying to prove "collusion" for 2 years so as to impeach Trump.
Yep - I noticed that too...
Everyone raised hell with him for his response during the first debate. Then, when he won, pretty much everyone decided that they couldn't accept the results of the election... Oh well, hypocrisy at its best...0 -
select-fire wrote:I would call it a revolution by the left. It won't work. Folks will stand up when they have enough and it goes sideways. If riots violence and riots occur the undermining folks will be shot. Curfews and shot on sight. No more water cannons , tear gas, but real bullets. When they return fire all hell will break loose. Won't last long after that.
It won't be that clear. You failed to mention / take into account the role of social media and technology. The political right may have the majority of beans, bullets, band aids and balls, but the left has and pretty much owns technology. Technology over the last 25-30 years has completely changed the way conflicts are fought and won. I hope I'm wrong, but I think that the left will use technology as a force multiplier. They may defeat us sitting in their parents' basements.0 -
Sounds like a bunch of leftist fear mongering after tasting sour grapes. 0 -
I am old broken and crippled but will be willing to take up arms over gun control so I am sure others have their hot buttons to do the same 0 -
Quick&Dead wrote:This is a test of the word police we have had on the forum.
Before if one wrote CIVIL WAR it was auto changed to the war of northern aggression.....but never the war between the states.
So now that I have wrote it, will post and see if the word police are at work.
Either one still works for me, but some folks can't handle that!0 -
If all the accusations against President Trump were true he'd dang near qualify to be a Democrat! 0 -
The internet has changed the way politics and information are exchanged dramatically. Talk is all there will ever be of a civil war. That is how it should be. A shootng war is the last thing our country needs to settle differences. Countries are always in a mess politically since its always money and power at stake.
The talk is good. Were it not for the exchange of ideas. We the people would be stuck listening to fake news and left wing nuts with a bizzare agenda.0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
19 comments