So, lets say we get to August or some summer month, and 4,000,000 people are protesting right out front the white house.

Do they send in the tanks? Do they kill 1,000,000 people? Would republican civilians see empathy for the dead americans who were democrats? Or would it unite the nation like 9/11 did, except this time against the government?

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    35 minutes ago

    Everybody keeps expecting civil war when what we’re likely going to get is akin to “the troubles” of Northern Ireland. Prolonged, indefinite, bloody, insurgency. Bombings. Assassinations. More heavyhanded fascist paramilitary actions. Blood and chaos.

    • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      26 minutes ago

      I agree. To have civil war you need multiple opposing armed forces of somewhat similar military strength. I don’t really see that happening because of the purges of military leadership but an insurgency is very possible.

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      9 minutes ago

      At the end of the day, the die hard MAGA folks are a quarter of the country. The stuff they’re doing is wildly unpopular. At some point you have to fight for democracy. It is worth dying for. It is worth killing for. If we have to go through a troubles, so be it. Frankly, this probably isn’t going to end until we start seeing a whole lot of dead Evangelical Christians. The Christian nationalists are so used to being able to violently oppress and persecute everyone else. They don’t realize that their own lives and freedoms can be just as easily destroyed.

      We already are in a civil war. One portion of the population has declared war on everyone else, hell bent on forcing their evil beliefs on everyone else. They do so in the confidence that they themselves will never face persecution, the loss of their rights, or a threat of violence. White Evangelical Christians are way too fucking comfortable.

      Honestly, a troubles might be the best thing to knock some sense into these fuckers. Once the retaliatory killings start and their churches start getting torched, maybe it will finally get through their thick skulls that if you want to live in a democracy, you have to be willing to respect other people’s choices and let them live their own fucking lives.

      The troubles ended because both sides felt threatened. No one felt safe. This encouraged everyone to come to the table. Right now one side feels invincible. They believe they can act with complete impunity against the rest of the population. So far, we’re all just holding our punches and trying not to escalate things, but these fuckers just keep pushing. Something will have to give.

      Mutual bloody violence is a superior option to one-sided bloody violence, which is the situation we have now.

  • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    28 minutes ago

    America bombed its own city 40’ish years ago, and the entire country just moved on without a care. And about 60 years before that, almost forty city blocks were razed to the ground because the inhabitants were black.

    Yes, they 100% could risk it. America is an extremely propagandized country, with patriotism on the right reaching jingoistic levels.

  • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    55 minutes ago

    Do they send in the tanks?

    You don’t use tanks in a city. You use machine guns.

    Do they kill 1,000,000 people?

    If they can, probably

    Would republican civilians see empathy for the dead americans who were democrats?

    Ask yourself how many people in the US showed empathy for the Gazans.

    Or would it unite the nation like 9/11 did, except this time against the government?

    Lol no, the US is a terminally propagandised country. Iraq has WMDs, Venezuela has drugs, free healthcare is bad somehow, Israel is not genociding the Palestinians, etc. etc.

  • 1D10@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    edit-2
    2 hours ago

    “Would republican civilians see empathy for the dead americans who were democrats?”

    You mean a couple hundred paid agitators that were bussed up from asylums in south America?

    Because that’s the story your average republican voters would believe. I know it’s a bit hyperbolic but some of the shit I’ve heard them say about Mrs Good, and in general about the current protests leads me to feel that there is no limit to the lies an average republican voter is willing to suck down.

    All that said I do not believe the military would follow those orders, but I’m not sure they would interfere if the DOJ started killing protesters in front of them.

    • kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      3 hours ago

      Too many people recorded the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti for them to control the narrative, but all that happened was that one guy got demoted.

      • potatopotato@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        2 hours ago

        It is building political pressure against them, they’re very clearly uncomfy within the administration. It may not directly fix all our fucked up shit but the admin blinked for the first time this cycle when it was looking increasingly likely that they had no limit and we were headed straight for a police state.

        We survived last time by keeping them consistently on the defensive and for the first time we’ve managed to control the narrative again

    • Mastengwe@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      2 hours ago

      Do you think they care? Dude they’re shooting unarmed women in the face in broad daylight in front of thousands of witnesses and on video.

      And just imagine, the heartless coward that did it isn’t facing charges and gets to lie down in his own bed every night and walk up the next day.

  • Jessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    55 minutes ago

    The other night, I was eating lunch at my desk, in our small open office. The IT guy and one of the robot techs were debating whether the summary execution of Alex Pretti was justified. IT guy believes the government’s version of events, suggesting that Alex brandished his firearm (which is patently false). They openly support the state’s murder, and further, encourage it. It might be a bit difficult to get them to go along with a massacre, but they’ve already been walked through 2 murders, and are primed for more.

    Would something like this ever happen? Hope not. But if it does, god help us all.

    I’ve checked out from trying to advocate for the truth. You cannot reason with someone who is arguing in bad faith. The blatant disregard for the live’s lost, instead focusing on proving a point to justify the theft of those live’s. It’s gross. How anyone can look at the system that has been fully exposed in front of them and say More of that! blows my mind. But those are the people that will backup Trump if such a thing happened.

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      24 minutes ago

      I don’t think IT guy, or at least the equivalent people in my life, would be supportive to the point that they would actively involve themselves in a shooting war in support of Trump, which is what this hypothetical scenario would turn into.

      If there’s one thing I’ve learned about conservatives it’s that they will start to pay attention once something impacts them personally. They are fine with the lies when it’s about some abstract person some other place but when it involves someone they know or happens in their town they will change their tune quickly. Of course not all of them but enough to matter. These kinds of people prioritize familiarity and perceived stability over just about anything else. As long as things are stable enough that they can maintain most of their routines they won’t think too deeply about anything. This kind of event, and the ensuing chaos, would force them to take a deeper look at things in a way that they’re currently too comfortable to be forced to confront.

    • Greddan@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      2 hours ago

      People have been calling U.S Americans dumb cunts for decades, Trump is the embodiment of the U.S.A as viewed by outsiders.

    • daannii@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 hours ago

      Trump wanted to literally bomb protestors last term. There is some report on a call where he wanted to do it. Just drop a missile on them.

  • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 hours ago

    First of all, I don’t think the Anerican military would follow that order. Shooting supposed drug smugglers illegally and shooting your neighbors illegally are two different kettle of fish for us humans who want to belong to sonething.

    They would have to turn off the internet including satellites and then destroy all camera capable gadgets, maybe with an EMP. I think this is too much hassle. There won’t be a Tiananmen Sq in the US. The Chinese could control the narrative internally and didn’t give af about the rest of the world - in 1989. As we see in Iran today, the world is but a village and footage travels fast. The risk is too high.

    But keep looking at ICE or “proud” militias. I would not be surprised to hear about these bastards sniping at protest leaders or even rando participants to discourage more protests. Look for fat guys on roofs.

    • Horsecook@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      2 hours ago

      I don’t think the Anerican military would follow that order.

      Of course they wouldn’t. Because Americans are exceptional, unlike those soulless Chinese bugmen.

      • daannii@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        2 hours ago

        I concur. They have already done illegal things. There will be some who will.

        Blowing up innocent fishermen boats and killing off the survivors.

        Stealing oil tankers. Kidnapping a leader of another country.

        Oh. Yeah. They would absolutely kill Americans.

        There is enough of them.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    2 hours ago

    The orange regime kinda tried to do that in the first stint, and I would not be super shocked if they tried and actually did something like that nowadays. But it would also probably trigger widespread riots, if not outright rebellion in a lot of places.

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    45 minutes ago

    Look into US involvement with the Tlatelolco massacre. It was effectively order by the US. If they are willing to do that to someone else they will eventually be willing to do that to you. The death count you see on wikipedia is almost certainly an understatement they locked them in a square and shot at them like fish in a barrel

    That in response to Mexican government concerns over the security of the Olympic Games, the Pentagon sent military radios, weapons, ammunition and riot control training material to Mexico before and during the crisis.

    The Olympia Battalion members wore white gloves or white handkerchiefs tied to their left hands to distinguish themselves from the civilians and prevent the soldiers from shooting them

    Captain Ernesto Morales Soto stated that “immediately upon sighting a flare in the sky, the prearranged signal, we were to seal off the aforementioned two entrances and prevent anyone from entering or leaving.”

    The soldiers responded by firing into the nearby buildings and into the crowd, hitting not only the protesters, but also watchers and bystanders. Demonstrators and passersby alike, including students, journalists (including Italian reporter Oriana Fallaci), and children, were hit by bullets, and mounds of bodies soon lay on the ground.

    Olympia Battalion members pushed people and ordered them to lie on the ground near the elevator walls. People claim these men were the people who shot first at the soldiers and the crowd.

    Video evidence also points out that at least two companies of the Olympia Battalion hid themselves in the nearby apartment buildings and set up a machine gun in an apartment in the Molino del Rey Building

    Thousands of students gathered in the square and, as you say, the government version is that the students opened fire. Well, there’s been pretty clear evidence now that there was a unit that was called the Brigada Olímpica, or the Olympic Brigade, that was made up of special forces of the presidential guard, who opened fire from the buildings that surrounded the square, and that that was the thing that provoked the massacre.

    U.S. officials stood resolutely by Díaz Ordaz after Tlatelolco

    in a review of “contingency scenarios” drafted by the U.S. Embassy in November, the ambassador urged Washington to be prepared to grant financial assistance and economic support packages to Mexico in the event of continued or increased student violence, as a way of showing U.S. support for the regime.

    Finally, not one document declassified by the U.S. government discusses at any length evidence that government agents operating as snipers from the windows of the Tlatelolco apartment complex may have initiated the massacre of October 2

  • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 hour ago

    Do they send in the tanks?

    They don’t need to. The situation is so fundamentally different.

    (Not saying that they wouldn’t, because lunatics everywhere)