US closer to civil war than we think, study says

[PunkTheFunk 125,733]

The US is “closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe”, a member of a key CIA advisory panel has said.

The analysis by Barbara F Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego who sits on the Political Instability Task Force, is contained in a book due out next year and first reported by the Washington Post.

At the same time, three retired generals wrote in the Post that they were “increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military”.

Such concerns are growing around jagged political divisions deepened by former president Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election.

Last month, [Walter] tweeted: “The CIA actually has a taskforce designed to try to predict where and when political instability and conflict is likely to break out around the world. It’s just not legally allowed to look at the US. That means we are blind to the risk factors that are rapidly emerging here.”

The book in which Walter looks at those risk factors in the US, How Civil Wars Start, will be published in January. According to the Post, she writes: “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.”

But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.

“And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”

Walter, the Post said, concludes that the US has passed through stages of “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” and may now be in “open conflict”, beginning with the Capitol riot.

The retired generals who warned of conflict around the next election – Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba and Steven Anderson – were less sanguine about the army.

“As we approach the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol,” they wrote, “we … are increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military, which would put all Americans at severe risk.

“In short: We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/us-closer-to-civil-war-new-book-barbara-walter-trump-capitol-attack

Video if you don't feel like reading:

[weed 79,284]

I need a gun mawma 

[Shipper 13,114]

So what stocks should I buy and be rich after?

[gypsy101 5,453]

fingers crossed i’m not killed in the civil war

[HuffsAhoy 7,433]

Eh, while we are certainly a divided nation, I don't think we will have another legitimate civil war. The climate of the USA is entirely different today than back in 1861, where it was a free-for-all in secession. At worst, we will see some increases in domestic terrorism but this notion that a full blown civil war will breakout is nothing but fear mongering. 

[dit 46,738]

11 minutes ago, Shipper said:

So what stocks should I buy and be rich after?

probably weapons (but plz dont)

[Roughhouse Dandy 13,862]

I can definitely see it happening, but I doubt the majority of it'll look like a traditional war. 

And I agree that it basically hinges on the outcome of the election. 

Either way that goes is likely to be a bad time for the country. 

[Suuus 5,632]

No offense to americans here but im so that dont live in America 

[gothicdream 39,660]

Glad I'm less than 2 hours from Canada 

[Chlorine 47,976]

If it was closer than I think we'd be in it. 

Hard to have a civil war when one side is disproportionately getting wiped out by their own stupidity though: 

NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.73 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who's been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR's methodology. Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: "It's back down to around 5.5 times higher."

The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality. The data also reveal a major contributing factor to the death rate difference: The higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.

The analysis only looked at the geographic location of COVID-19 deaths. The exact political views of each person taken by the disease remains unknowable. But the strength of the association, combined with polling information about vaccination, strongly suggests that Republicans are being disproportionately affected.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate 

It's textbook Darwinism... which they also don't believe in. 

[GooberChill 456]

This will give all the Republican Ford F-150 Dennis Prager neckbeards a b0ner

[TimisaMonster 31,073]

Why do I feel it's the eastern and mid west states that would be fighting while us on the west coast be chilling like...

[Bling 31,703]

If all the minorities, including women and gay men , came together along with straight allies, we could take over this country 

[Pennywise 36,080]

2 hours ago, weed said:

I need a gun mawma 

[Supersonic 49,376]

We been knew. The US has been the least stable it has been since the actual civil war in 1861. The incoming red wave in November 2022 is probably gonna prevent it for another 2 years (appeasing the Republican base by them taking back a bit of symbolic power), or they're gonna power trip and stage a coup. Every US president since Ronald Reagan has layed down bricks of anti-democracy, America has been in its proto-facism era ever since.

Every Non-US political commentator and every US political commentator that's not a centrist or Republican agrees.