I’ve seen alot of calls for violence in America. Whether it be directed at the president or Federal officers, many people are advocating for an escalation in response to the current situation.
And believe me, I do understand. what I see happening in America is horrifying. But all I am imploring is to really think about what your asking for. Because you can’t put the genie in the bottle once you’ve left it out.
If you’re really gung-ho about it, go and ask a Veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan about it and see what they think. If anyone will know about it they will.
I am going to link a YouTube Playlist. Its the Associated Press Archives of the Bosnian-Serbian war. Because THAT is what will happen if wide scale violence breaks out. Except what will happen in America will be a hundred times worse.
The Bosnian war was pretty much broken up along ethnic lines. “Well it’s going to be Conservative VS. Liberal” you say. Except it won’t be. It will be anyone having a grudge against someone going after them.
ALOT of personal animosity will be taken out in the first few weeks I feel.
And I think the Seige of Sarajavo will be writ large in American cities across the country. Imagine having to dodge sniper fire on your way to get to your job at Wendy’s.
Because that’s the other thing no one is thinking about. You are still going to have to make a living while this is all going to be happening. And the cost of everything will skyrocket. Shipping will probably have to be escorted from place to place because people will be stealing or even blockading locations because they’re “damn dirty libs” or “Fascist Conservatives” Fresh produce will become a thing of the past.
Canada and Mexico will close their borders due to all the refugee’s trying to cross. so if you thinking of doing it, do it the moment everything pops off because otherwise you won’t get in.
Basically Civil war is going to the worst thing to happen in America in a long time. and the only good that comes out of it will be Americans will finally have first hand experience of real war torn violence. And maybe that will hopefully last for another two hundred years or so.
If America even survives the outcome that is.
the problem with a civil war is collapse of the supply chain for most people, and you’ll have to become useful to get protection
Americans are sadly locked into the path of violence as the other path will force them to face their systemic racism, and corporate idolization which is clearly not going to happen.
It took Nicole Good to be face shot before people really started to react despite 4 other similar events with non white females and I am constantly shocked how many Americans defend corporations that are literally exploiting them. America is cooked unfortunately as like most humans, myself included, we tend to become blind with power.
Renee Good was her name. Not Nicole. Sucks that attention was only given after a white LGBT woman was killed. Still sucks even more that she was killed. I am haunted by the pictures of her glove box. It was filled with stuffed animals for her child.
you could say they were either build up or outshined by Nicole shooting. plus she was protesting ice for deporting people to labor camps. its not “this one thing did it” its gradual
It very much seems like a setup to try and agitate the left into their own Jan 6th.
If the Dems don’t sweep midterms and get majority after the shitshow that’s been this administration, they just might get it.
Then it’ll be dismissed because of Jan 6th.
Not American, so feel free to stop reading.
It’s ridiculous to me how you yanks go from zero to a hundred like this. Either normality or civil war. Like there is no in between? You have an authoritarianism problem. So resist authoritarianism. What makes you think that the only way to resist is shooting people? Resistance is a spectrum, and you have barely started using democratic means to fight back (you just started electing democratic socialists), much less active procedural and institutional warfare (is Bernie demanding a vote for every procedural point requiring a vote? Are the Dems actually using any rat fucking tactic to make the state ungovernable? Are your local and state governments really resisting beyond making angry noises?). You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions. Wtf. Those come at the very end, if everything else has failed. Has it? Nowhere near. So this talk about civil war, is that really useful?
The problem is that the steps between zero and a hundred are incremental rights which take decades to establish. If you are a non-American then you might have those steps already established, but currently the US does not. So once the status quo passes beyond the acceptable parameters the only possible solution is violence.
Another user I spoke with asked about collective rebellion, union strikes, and general resistance, but these don’t work if the infrastructure isn’t already in place. You can’t start a strike if you don’t have a union and your co-workers don’t agree, you can’t take up arms without at least a state level rebellion, most protests are effectively meaningless, and unless you are willing to give up everything (job, family, and well being) then you’ll never amount a significant resistance.
For the most part people want to live their lives with the least amount of fucking up they can. So long as the republican’s don’t fuck up their shit too much they will keep their heads down and vote in the elections.
Democrats and states both follow the same rules. They will try to counter the Republicans, but if that means a government shutdown with old people and the poor going without assistance then they are willing to cave. So far we aren’t at the point where any US group is willing to make real sacrifice to make a change, such as a fighting, going without, or causing their family to suffer.
On the one hand yes you are behind on some kinds of labour organizing.
On the other hand, it’s not that simple.
a) you have a very long history of minority organizing. Black Americans, Chicanos, indigenous people, and other minorities have survived for generations. It sounds like a leftie cliché, but you guys should really take leadership from them.
b) you don’t have the baggage that comes with entrenched left wing politics. There is a thing like too much left wing politicking. In Greece for example, land of spectacular antifa riots, the left is absolutely paralyzed and completely fragmented. Too much history, too many reasons to blame this or that left faction for what they did 10,20,30, sometimes 60 or more years ago. You have a chance to build on a green field.
c) one thing you Americans actually have going for you is that you guys actually believe in democracy. You’re true believers. It’s a thing we in the rest of the world have always kind of being weirded out by you that you want to be electing judges and sherrifs and school boards etc. And you actually have this libertarian steak in you that’s kind of interesting when it comes to resistance. You have so much democratic institutional hardware just lying around.
d) you actually are close to some of the powerful economic structures, institutions, and pop culture centres in the planet. Anything you do will and already does reverberate globally in ways that others don’t.
So, while you do have very big challenges you also have very big opportunities. And friends man, you have friends. I know we give you guys shit all the time, but trust me, when Americans rise up and stand up we all feel a bit taller. I’m telling you this as someone who listened to RATM on the way to weekly marches getting gassed by the police, thinking we were trying to be as cool as the WTO protests in Seattle.
I feel like what you are touching at is that liberals in the US, and Americans in general, are waiting for a touch stone. So far nothing has gone so far as to start the fire. On the other hand there has been no centralizing ember, someone to carry the torch.
Yes, the US has a long history of minority organizing, but minorities are one of the worst groups for turning out for elections (in fact minorities are more likely to turn out if they are voting for Republicans than they are for anyone else, a key element of being a conservative in the US is turning out to vote but liberals can’t seem to harness that energy).
The US doesn’t have the baggage as you mentioned, but the existence of the two party system carries a ton of baggage on it’s own and has effectively squashed most third party resistance.
Most American’s do believe in Democracy, but sadly one half is too stupid to know what it is and the other half only believes in it when it supports their ideas. The second group is one which would happily ban all abortions and then complain when a woman can’t get an abortion even though the pregnancy is killing her. My very own cousin is white trash poor with his children living on government assistance, but thinks we need to end welfare because the minorities are using it. These people are too stupid for governance.
To your final point, the US left needs a leader, a cult of personality to combat Trump, but there frankly isn’t anyone right now. So far no one high enough up in the social circle has been willing to stick their head out far enough to rally around.
I hate to say it, but the US is at the point where we need a life line. Just like the US coming in and occupying Germany to eliminate the Nazis, we now need an outside force to help fix our shit. Short of that the US needs another civil war, but I’m not so certain that it will go the way we want it.
The reasons you outlined are why you are in trouble. As in, if they weren’t the case you would be in trouble. It’s a bit of a circular tautology. But they are not things that doom you. They are the shape of the whole you’re in. And it’s on you guys to find a way out. There’s no way around that. And no, the world is not coming to save you: there is no cavalry.
I don’t think you guys are doomed. I think the opposite, that the American people are a sleeping giant that can shake the world. And no, I don’t think you need to jump straight to shooting reach other.
I think that’s all well and good unless you are wrong. From my perspective I think you are wrong, but maybe you aren’t. As things sit the people that are on your side think they are in trouble and want outside help, but you are saying “you’ll be fine.” The US has historically been the interventionist in the first world, but now they are in need of intervention. This has been the soul of the Republican argument for a long time, the US intervenes and the rest of the world does nothing. Now the Republican’s want to pull aid from allies and intervene (cough invade) only when it benefits them.
At the very least Europe needs to pick up the slack the US is dropping, even if they don’t go the extra mile to help fix the US. At the end of the day the US is steering towards needing foreign interventions, a civil war, or devolving into a totalitarian regime. Meanwhile the rest of the world is watching and wondering why we don’t just fix ourselves. I’ll tell you the sensible answer, I’m renewing my passport and making sure I have enough money for a last minute flight out of the country.
Well, take care. In the meantime, listen to the 20 lessons on tyranny.
And maybe binge watch this guy, I think he’s onto something.
Every single leftist could have resisted a lot of this using the internet to spread a message.
You’re absolutely right. Generations jave been indoctrinated to give up autonomy and control to the system. People have been socially and economically backed into a corner where they don’t feel like they can make any real change in their lives.
They know transcending class barriers is impossible (though they lie to themselves about it) and they don’t really believe that politics make a difference. People don’t vote. They scrabble at shit jobs and go into debt to feel richer.
Violence is the one form of power they’re truly clinging to. A gun is a surrogate for control. It’s power you can exert in your narrow sphere.
Most of this perception is wrong, but it’s a part of the culture. The idea that the only way this can get fixed is violent civil war is a game of chicken with the ruling class and they’re betting that people won’t actually rise up.
You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions.
Most Americans are victims of a violent regime and not violent themselves. They’re scared and going through something most Canadians and many post-WWII Europeans will never have to deal with in their lifetimes. People are being murdered, and you’re telling the victims it’s their fault and that they’re violent for trying to prepare for a worst-case scenario.
Yes, of course there are other ways to confront this. Yes, I wish the country I was regrettably born in was culturally more like the EU and Canada. But it’s not that simple and I can’t help but feel that this comment is in poor taste.
You missed my point.
You missed mine. Until you find yourself the victim of an authoritarian state you live in starting a Holocaust, you don’t get to make blanket statements about an entire country that lumps the oppressors and the oppressed into the same category.
I’m not denying fear, violence, or victimhood. And I’m not equating oppressors with the oppressed. I should push back on the idea that naming cultural patterns equals blaming victims, or that only people inside the worst possible historical analogy are allowed to analyze trajectories.
I’m talking about how societies slide, not about who deserves what. Those are different conversations. I’ve been on the receiving end of state violence. I’ve marched, been gassed, watched movements radicalize too fast and burn themselves out. That’s exactly why I’m saying this: jumping straight to existential framing and armed horizons doesn’t protect anyone it only narrows the future until only catastrophe is left.
You don’t need to already be in a Holocaust to talk about escalation dynamics. In fact, if you wait until everything is unspeakable, analysis is already useless. Yes, fear is justified and preparation is understandable and necessary. But when fear becomes immune to critique, it stops being a warning signal and starts being a steering wheel.
My point hasn’t changed: there is still space, Real Political Space, for non-violent (not peaceful!) resistance, that can be powerfully disruptive. Once that space collapses, it doesn’t reopen because people were right about how bad things felt. I’m arguing against that collapse, not minimizing what’s at stake.
YSK: The average citizen doesn’t have much control over the cork in the bottle.
This administration is repeatedly and consistently provoking people. Randomly shooting people in the face, and talking about sending the military to Minnesota is going to cause things to boil over if the other people we elected don’t step in and force them to cool down.
One thing you saw in places like Syria and the Balkans was a lot of revenge murders and groups that were essentially gangs terrorizing and enslaving towns.
I remember reading how people in the old Yugoslavia talked about how people they’d lived next to for generations suddenly turned on them. The same in Rwanda where groups were slaughtered en masse. People were packed into churches and the buildings set on fire, etc.
Everybody know it not a game but st some point there is no othet options and fight oppresion
Most of the voices calling for v10l3nt r3v01ut10n in the states are Russian bots or MAGA provocateurs.
We’re in a civil war right now. This is what it looks like.
But it can get a lot worse.
Great post.
However, from a European perspective all this has been a long time coming, ignoring all warnings and with open arms (pun not intended).
So for the US I don’t see how it can be fixed without going through this.
I’m sorry.
As another European, I don’t think it’s as bad as it seems. I personally don’t think most republicans are fundamentally fascist, more so convinced that Trump is playing 5d chess.
If you where to ask most Republicans if they supported democracy, right of law and freedom for all, they would say that they support it.
However, due to the tribalism of current American politics and the cult of personality around Trump, they aren’t seeing how that is being infringed.
Trump is almost 80, and will die eventually. With him will his cult of personality die. Some hardliners will probably latch on to Trump Jr or Vance, but most republicans will probably quietly switch over to supporting some more moderate dumb fuck (think Mitt Romney).
Around 84% of Republicans approve of what is clearly kidnapping murder and open fascism as we are threatening half the world, planning on invading a NATO country, and stealing oil from Venezuela. Conservatives are absolutely our enemy.
Hard disagree. The Republican politicians are not leading the masses to dark places, the masses are pulling the politicians to greater extremes and the politicians are holding them back, because they have a greater understanding of the consequences than the average voter.
Ask the average Republican if undocumented I’m immigrants should all be deported, and they will tell you yes. That’s 14 million people, and the only way to accomplish it is to build up ICE to 5 times it’s current size, and do what they are doing in Minneapolis in every city in America. What they want requires fascism.
Ask them if abortion is murder and they will say yes. They don’t care about the women that are dying from pregnancy complications, the children that will be orphaned, the families that have been torn apart because the treatment for many conditions is abortion of the pregnancy and if it’s murder you can get treatment.
Ask them if environmental regulations are too stiff and should be rolled back so the economy can grow, and they will say yes, they don’t care about the ecosystems that will be lost forever, the diseases that people will suffer from pollution, or the rights of communities to avoid those harms.
What holds them back is that individuals don’t all want the same things, so the party pulls in different directions, because some people understand the disaterous implications of a specific policy, so they don’t support that particular cruelty, but they don’t question the wider ideology, and the basic ideology is a death cult.
What you get over time is generational frustration that the corrupt politicians refuse to do what is necessary and support for more and more extreme individuals in office. People that hatch plans like the federalist society, to corrupt the courts, and project 2025, to destroy the administrative state and consolidate power into the executive, and congresspeople who will support the descent into violent fascism, because that’s what is required to give the masses what they demand.
Democracy slows down the process, but the American voters will get the cruelty, suffering, and death they demand eventually.
Right, but that all comes from upstream, with Conservative media (and politicians) focusing all their attention on “wedge issues” to distract their base from their ruinous fiscal policies, gutting the government services their base would benefit from to steal more wealth for the ultra wealthy.
Vance will be worse; in general the removal of Trump won’t make it better.
I dont have any words to add and hope you’re right.
A real civil war wouldn’t last longer than three weeks here in the US. A small group of whacked-out people love the idea of it, but they certainly have not thought it through. It’s just a fun thought for them because they have never cracked open a history book and don’t have any real perspective regarding what war actually means.
This is the country that couldn’t go three weeks without a haircut or toilet paper in 2020. People would walk into their first empty grocery store, toting their big impressive AR-15 rifles, and then demand that the war be ended.
None of us want to live in a war-torn state. That’s why I and most others voted for harm reduction. What we’re facing now is terrorism. The USAmerican people are being terrorized by federal forces.
People are not calling for violence for a economic policy we don’t like, which is what incited the Confederacy to begin the first USA Civil War. We’re dealing with federal forces who are hell-bent on terrorizing us. What politically-aware people have been calling for, for the better part of a year, is the next degree of harm reduction. Targeted political assassinations. Fighting ICE agents. Storming the capital, perhaps. With each month, this government gets more empowered and more violent.
Violence terrorizes people. We all know war is terrible. No one thinks the USA going through a Civil War will be exciting. People see violence and they want it to stop, and they see massive peaceful movements that have not worked, in the face of a government that shows no hesitation in threatening or attacking its people; and those people are desperate.
What is the alternative? We let federal agents keep shooting and abducting people until some magical aspect of Democracy manifests and pushes them out? How do we actually envision that happening? What do we do for the three years until our next presidential election? Every person who is killed, abducted, disappeared is a life permanently lost.
For those who talk about peaceful protests and voting the fascists out, how do you expect to win elections when your voters are being killed? It’s not just the ICE agents, either, though they certainly are violent. Consider: Layoffs, Homelessness, Imprisonment, Emigration, Suicide. The people here today are not going to be the same people here in three years.
The reality is, the people of the USA are under violent occupation. We are living the terrors of war. Violence does not require mutual-consent; and when only one side chooses to fight, you end with a massacre. That is what we have been living through – a slow-rolling massacre. No one knows what will stop this, but maybe, just maybe, ICE agents would think twice before going on deployment if half of the last three squads never made it home.
what the first Civil War was fought over Slaves. Literal human resources were right up their with land as far as property value and ability to continue to earn future value. Enshrining slaves as property forever is virtually the only difference in the confederate constitution.
Lincoln was the first presidential ticket with a northern pres and vp at a time when we deliberately had an equal number of southern and northern states and a bunch of territories to be brought into the union out west. Previously it was possible for a southern pres or vp to enforce this fake equality that couldn’t last because the pres could veto and the vp could vote to break a tie. Once you break that tie you can’t put it back you can now add more northern states without issue.
What were they worried about losing as they lost ground in the house and senate again? Their property and future earnings from that property. It’s popular to quote Lincoln saying he would free none or all of the slaves if he could save the union but that doesn’t tell you what the war was about. They went to war so they could keep their slaves and We went the war so we could keep the southern states instead of having an enemy on our doorstep.
To be fair, you also went to war because the fuckers shot first.
It’s worthwhile you mention Sarajevo, and in reference to that I will post this tidbit posted by a MetaFilter user in 2009 regarding their experience in the siege of Sarajevo. I have it bookmarked and post it from time to time where it seems appropriate. The reality is though, you’re correct, Americans by and large don’t know what they’re asking for.
Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.
Of those who couldn’t leave my city, Sarajevo:
Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the “long haul” - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.
Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of “preparation” to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don’t know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it’s worth something.
But here’s the main point: “Preparing” for the disaster really didn’t do anyone much good. Those who “prepared” ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.
We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren’t attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I’d take a bite of a friend’s salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I’d never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.
Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.
You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn’t. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn’t have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.
Those who’d prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can’t swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us. Again, I can’t swear it, but I hear stories, and it seems that these people suffer from post-war trauma, guilt and nightmares more than the rest of us.
Those survivalists, I feel sorry for them. It’s no way to live.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 9:33 PM on January 28, 2009
The only reason I’m prepping is for the eventuality that others may need help.
My roommate watched a woman get dragged from her wrecked car, bleeding and screaming for help, being disappeared by ICE. They were recording and I’ve seen the video. I’ll probably never forget it. I carry a whistle now but I pray I’ll never need it. We’re like two weeks into whatever the fuck this is and I’m already sick of it. I’m tired of running to the window every time I hear a car alarm, I’m tired of wondering if I hear the wind or a whistle. I’m tired of worrying about more people I know getting abducted, and scrutinizing every vehicle that drives past if they’re going to fuck with me because I’m visibly queer and also trying not to be mistaken for the gestapo occupying my city. Is this an occupation? And I know war is worse. Fuck all of this.
It’s too late, it’s already starting to happen. People are already having to dodge ice just while going to work, Charlie Kirk literal got sniped while at work.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Kirk was preaching ugly evil shit I don’t think you can compare him getting sniped to normal people getting hurt
I’m not saying he was a good person, but the logic of “they deserve it” applies on both sides, even if one side is disproportionate to the other.
Kirk deserved it for the horrid shit he said and the vitriol he spread, I can absolutely see some right winger saying someone else deserves it for living in the dem part of town or looking a bit gay.
