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.
Well, Trump and MAGA have ensured that the US is cooked anyway no matter what happens
The question is what the alternative would be. Look at history for the answer. The easy comparison would be Germany leading up to, during, and after World War 2, but that would be low-hanging fruit considering how very directly the US regime is trying to force other countries to join them. (Anschluss, anyone?) Look also at the countries where extremist regimes took over and didn’t get forced out until years later and the damages they did to their country and the people living in it. Unfortunately too many examples there to name. The US regime and their stormtroopers will continue to harass, arrest, and outright kill people who have a legal right to live in the US simply over the color of their skin or otherwise until they are stopped. And they will most assuredly not stop by the power of fingerwagging and strongly stated words.
One side in this supposed civil war has a monopoly on weapons, training, tactics, supplies, and political power. The other side has legal weed dispensaries. It wouldn’t be a civil war, more like a Gaza style genocide.
Also, many progressive cities are literally surrounded by conservative suburbs and rural areas. It wouldn’t be difficult to cut the cities off from food supplies.
I have a hard time believing the higher IQ people would fall easily. Think about how insecure , scared and absolutely stupid most MAGATs are about literally everything. Plus there’s a real possibility we would get into alliances that want to preserve democracy
I bet if every legal gun owner in Minneapolis, marched armed and peaceful down the street, that the message would be delivered.
In real life when you get hit, hiding behind cover does not regenerate your health and picking up health packs or eating food does nothing.
Also most war will be 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror.
of course not, you gotta eat a first aid kit
Then apply crushed ramen and super glue into the open wound
APPLY PRESSURE TO THAT WOUND PRIVATE OR WE WILL LOSE YOU!!!
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
I’ve called this out too, and somebody called my comment “gamerslop bullshit” just because I had one sentence that pointed out that real war isn’t like call of duty.
The person who commented that didn’t realize the irony that the “gamerslop bullshit” implicit in the warmongering/romanticization of violence is precisely what I was calling out.
People these days will accuse you of anything you criticize them for. Like, you pointed it out so clearly you’re the one doing it. It’s so illogical.
People in the US have been protected from the reality of war since the civil war in the 1860s. Even vets (a very small minority) of real wars get to come home at the end of it. The reality would be more like Vietnam or Syria were the war is your home and there is no escape. It is like the war against vaccines, people have forgotten the reality of life with those diseases and take the return of them very lightly.
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).
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.
Those outlets would not publish that propaganda if it did not sell. It’s not that there is no interplay, but the media figures pushing the fascist propaganda have no incentive to stop and cannot be forced to stop without abandoning core principles of our society (freedom of speech)
Executing, exiling, or dispropriating enough billionaires would make a difference, but again, you need fascist tools to stop the decent into fascism. There is a significant segment of our society that wants the violence. Not a majority, but enough that I see no peaceful way through. The violence will come for us eventually.
Again, that’s backwards. The billionaire bought the media companies so they can push their message and shift public discourse.
It’s not about profitability; they target engagement/profitability by making everything rage bait.
Sure, the billionaires are the ultimate problem. They are not the office holders.
