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I don’t think we need to be worried about full-blown civil war, but preparing for an increase in stochastic terrorism probably isn’t the worst idea.
Climate change will create food and water scarcity. Their life or yours.
Idk man. I’ve been having some huge existential crisis lately and climate change and destruction is just flooding my brain.
Anyone else or just me?
Not me. There’s nothing I can do to stop it and I refuse to bring kids into it. So my plan if things get really bad is to die and there’s no sense worrying about that.
there is nothing I can do to stop it
Wtf. Drive/fly less and bike/walk more. Take the train/collective transport. And if that’s too troublesome for you at least vote for politicians who care about climate change and are willing to actually do stuff.
So my plan if things get really bad is to die and there’s no sense of worrying about that.
And please that’s just so fucking selfish. Even if you don’t get any kids there are still people who will have to live with the climate change that you created. For example I and all of my friends, cousins, classmates, etc will have to live with the consequences of climate change.
That’s a mountain of assumptions and frankly insufficient attempts to feel like you can make an impact. The literal best way for a person to reduce ecological impact is to not exist.
Secondly, having someone exist for you even if their existence is pure misery is the most selfish thing. It’s my body and it’s my choice. Anyone who says different is someone who feels entitled to keeping me around regardless of what I want.
I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say you’re depressed and suicidal. If so, I am sorry for what you’re going through and hope you find some way to improve your life and get better.
Not really? Like there are moments but I’m talking about if or when things fall apart I don’t care to keep trying. It’s not because of depression that I’d be ok with death but because I’m not scared to die but I am scared to suffer every day.
I don’t think depression has the monopoly on desiring death over suffering.
“Living is just a promise that I made”
While I’m all in favour of individual action, I think it’s very reductive to say that that will stop climate change. And even the politicians we explicitly vote for to actually do things don’t, or not enough. And it’s not like we chose to live in a world that is being destroyed by climate change, so how is it selfish if we leave behind other people who also do? They created it as much as me - barely, because none of us have any real recourse to deal with it.
Haven’t stopped planning for retirement and all that jazz but at this point it’s just theater.
If you’re not white, straight, and a guy, I’d also recommend updating your passports and maybe arming yourselves. It’s gonna be a bumpy year.
I can’t really imagine danger being particularly extreme for anyone other than trans people, for trans folk updating passports is likely a good idea. But keep in mind that blue states would still be relatively safe.
If shit truly gets to the point where it’s death squads and fascist street gangs, realistically there would not be anywhere in the world that would be safe.
“Blue states” are states with notable swaths of intolerant people spread out over the majority of the state, with a lot of tolerant people and allies condensed into cities.
Really? Other groups besides trans people certainly have a lot to fear in my state: I can predict immigrants, Black people, Native Americans, gay people, non-Christians, and anyone who positions themselves as allies, off the top of my head.
Not sure where you live, but the fascism is feeling pretty full-blown around my parts lately.
What can a straight, white guy do to prepare?
Rat out your neighbors to the police.
Well, since the police would be on it like maybe the national guard?
I don’t know, just be prepared to cap somebody in the name of equality.
Be straighter and whiter, I guess
Same thing. Be vigilant. Prepare for what’s going to go down.
Maybe I’m being naive but I don’t think we’re quite at that point yet. People angry about the 2020 election were a loud minority
Someone made a laundry list of evidence demonstrating it’ll very likely be an actual thing but I can’t find it anywhere. When I do, I’ll post it
EDIT: AHA! I FOUND IT! It’s a Reddit comment, but so it goes. Blatantly ripping off here:
It’s not just the insurrection act.
It includes:
1-Argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president power to do whatever he wants.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/16/politics/trump-agenda-second-term/index.html
2-Fire the civil service and replace it with Trump loyalists.
3-Use the DoJ to target critics
4-Weaken the election security agency
5-Reject climate change
6-Remove all LGBTQ+ protections
https://www.metroweekly.com/2023/09/right-wing-project-2025-seeks-to-eradicate-lgbtq-protections/
7-Bring the Bible into government
For reference, they’re talking about this monstrosity of a plan Trump has set up for if he takes power in November. Don’t actually vote against Biden even if you support Palestine. Shit’s unreal. Shit’s very clear and obvious .50 cal territory.
I think it will be a civil war if Trump wins, because it will embolden the crazies, and they’ll feel protected by the government to abuse and harass others, which is what they want to do anyway.
If Trump loses, these loser chucklefucks won’t feel emboldened, because they won’t feel protected by the government.
They’re pussies, and all of us, and them, know it.
EDIT: Now that the list has dropped. Yeah, civil war if Trump wins. Basically business as usual if he doesn’t.
EDIT II: To be clear, the election could still go either way. So making plans and planning Mutual Aid Networks among your peers is the best you can do for now. Hopefully they won’t be needed but will help towards some real community-building.
But then rinse and repeat 4 years later.
Agreed, but between dementia and stress clearly making him more unhinged and his ill-health and advanced age: there’s a good chance he won’t functionally be able to run again in four years.
The positive thing about that is the cult won’t let him go. Trump has already told them to reject the truth of their eyes and ears, and they’ve listened. Trump will happily turn on the Republican establishment, he’s made the threat countless times.
Trying to replace Trump will be the party’s downfall, because the voters/cult won’t accept a new face, even when Trump literally fucking dies. They’ll say it’s a conspiracy.
People forget that Trump was an “anti-establishment” candidate. It’s unlikely we’ll ever have another like him again, as the establishment clearly doesn’t like being bullied by him. If they could drop him and still win: they already would have.
EDIT: While there are some young conservatives, the votes for Republican swing wildly towards older people. In four years, more of these older people will have fucking died or lost their minds to dementia, and more young people will be eligible to vote. We honestly haven’t had a Presidential election since COVID and there’s a strong chance the polls are fucking stupid wrong (they honestly haven’t been reliable since around 2004) and that Trump is going to be absolutely destroyed since he literally killed millions of his own voters. This is also arguably why the Republicans are fighting tooth and nail right now, they know that this might be their last election where they can win anything at all. They want the fix in, now, because otherwise this might spell the end of the entire party, long-term. You might call their behavior an Extinction Burst.
The optimist in me hopes you’re right, the pessimist in me is considering buying a gun, and the realist in me is practicing baseball bat-fu in a bathrobe when I wake up in a cold sweat thinking about it.
I’m hoping I’m right, too. The thing is, it’s all very much up in the air. The Democrats are doing their usual plan of depressing their own youth vote by talking down to the youth and acting like any critique of Democratic policies means you must be voting for Republicans instead. It’s gross, rude, and not very productive with the youth, who are largely on their side.
Mutual Aid networks is what you should be getting involved with. We don’t have the skills for combat, we have other skills. All kinds of skills are needed in a civil war style situation, give your real valuable skills where they are worth something.
Also I prefer a high powered flashlight that can blind an assailant. Light is faster than bullets and only hurts those who look directly at it.
EDIT: Also, extinction bursts in children are easier to control because they’re fucking children. These are organized adults with the temperament of children. Their extinction burst might not fail.
Back down the high lumen flash light rabbit hole I go
Edit: sheesh these things are bright; I think I can see the bottom
Just buy a gun, it’s super easy and will never be banned in a reasonable timeframe anyways.
Idk I have an adolescent puppy that’s been reading Fetcher in the Rye lately, their search history has large gaps, even though he never puts the phone down, just seems like a liability to even have one in the house.
People forget that Trump was an “anti-establishment” candidate
do they? every time Trump doesn’t show up to a presidential debate, i’m reminded; every time a state tries to kick him off the primary, i’m reminded. i’m saddened, because the Democrats gave us their most establishment candidate, but i’m reminded, that Trump still has a very rocky relationship with that establishment.
I would actually be incredibly surprised if Trump was able to run again in four years. There are a lot of reasons he probably won’t be able to (assuming he loses 2024 which is definitely a tossup right now).
“America is awful! We need radical change”
“nooo I don’t actually mean it TT…”
In the Weimar Republic, the Nazis never got more than something like 30% of the vote. Fascist “loud minorities” are still incredibly dangerous.
People angry about the 2020 election were a loud minority
That loud minority came very close to putting the lives of elected representatives at risk.
No, these guys are way less organized than last time and Donald Trump is getting fucked in court still. I think its less likely now than it was 4 years ago. The GOP is fracturing and losing steam. Senators and governors are still a threat but not in the civil war type of way I don’t think.
What exactly is required to be a threat in the civil war type? Besides Guns and a feeling of not being represented?
Unification.
That’s the main lacking puzzle piece on both sides.
If the left were unified there wouldn’t be a republican in politics.
If the right were unified, you wouldn’t have jackasses running their mouth at every opportunity just to get a news blurb generated about themselves.
The old adage about United we stand, divided we fall? Technically, our divisions are the only thing keeping us up right now.
If we ever come together it will end in nuclear hellfire
Organizing a war against the us army would take a lot of planning. Unless trump wins, controls the army, and enough generals agree.
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For there to be a civil war, both sides need an army. The US president will have the US army, and the other side might as well have nerf guns. The civil war would last an afternoon.
If there’s going to be anything, it’s an increase in domestic terrorism.
That’s what a modern civil war will look like.
Have you read CIA reports?
Flash pogroms and terrorism. Sometimes by law enforcement. In other words, not a stand up fight, but a bug hunt.
That’s what’s going to suck. The war might only last a couple months but I can’t imagine months of bombings and violent demonstrations in every city across the U.S.
The us gov is not going to bomb cities and kill innocent citizens and I’m frankly sick of seeing idiots repeating this insane concept.
I think you may have added the “us gov” part from inference, vigilante citizens and vigilante cops have bombed American cities and citizens in the past, and will again.
Sorry buddy, it’s not going to be the U.S. government bombing cities and killing innocent civilians.
You’ve never heard about the Tulsa massacre, have you?
White mobs are not the us government. There was no bombs dropped.
The US has bombed its own citizens twice. First in 1950 it bombed the Puerto Rican towns of Jayuya and Utuado, then in 1985, the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a residential neighborhood while targeting MOVE.
If we were to go down the road of military and police violence against US citizens it would be a much longer list.
So in other words, you haven’t.
Furthermore, the American Civil War was precluded by several decades of escalating tension between the states, not between parties in the federal government. The legal and organizational attributes of a state also served to enable separatist states to even attempt to raise an army (this was by design). Bubba and his buddies will, as you said, be armed with nerf guns comparatively
There’s also no real fiscal incentive. Morality and freedom are important and all, but we fight wars for financial gain.
That and the three letter agencies have so much incompressible amount of power that any real revolution/civil war is damn near impossible.
Plus, who really wants to abandon modern living to die in some urban street combat?
Fascists think they do
Once they hear the cracking of gunshots fires in their direction, they’ll start rethinking their decisions.
It would be a guerilla collective against a conventional force that’s consistently failed against guerilla tactics.
There’s no way to know how long it’d last or how it’d impact politics, but targeted acts of terrorism in cities would likely become a more common tragedy. It would pretty much gaurantee US states increasing their police forces and personal rights eroding, and I’m not looking forward to that.
You guys are giving Republicans way too much credibility.
Better to take their threat as creditable now than to be surprised later
Democrats too. half the country lost a pretty significant right to their own bodily autonomy that they’d taken foregranted for basically their entire life. and they just… rolled over and took it? that’s about the most concrete domestic loss they’ve taken this century, and more concrete than anything else on the table right now, so i honestly don’t know what would have to happen in order for the left to do anything meaningfully violent.
I’m sorry, but what were your expectations towards the Democrats here?
These anti abortion laws were enacted at state level. By Republican state governments whose representatives were elected by the people. What did you want the Democrats to do here? Even if they complained, in the end if they don’t have the majority in the state government, they have no power to do anything.
Even at the federal level, the Senate is 48 Democrat members, 49 Republican members and 3 independents. They don’t have the majority there either.
And in the house of representatives, the Republicans are the majority with 220 members vs 213 as Democrats. They still don’t have the majority there.
And if you look at the supreme court, Trump packed it with Republican judges.
So what are your expectations towards the Democrats??? If people don’t elect them, they can’t do anything.
The president can’t step in and cancel any of these anti abortion laws because it’s the will of the people. (In a way)
That’s what happens when people are apathetic and don’t go out to vote.
what you say is entirely consistent. it’s a strong belief in democracy as a process with no bounds/constraints, as an ultimate good in and of itself. and it’s sort of my point: in the “civil war” frame, Democrats are super unlikely to instigate violence. your neighbors will vote away all the things you value, out of religious beliefs you disagree with or merely out of spite, but that’s okay, so long as they do so democratically.
i meet enough democrats (little d) who say they wouldn’t comply with a draft, even if enacted democratically. my thoughts are that there’s at least a few things similar to that: decisions where your own interests shouldn’t be subservient to the will of an abstract majority. the surprise with abortion for me is that for my whole life, that was de-facto such an example. it wasn’t treated as a thing that had been decided democratically, just as a thing which was. then some people far away said “abortion should be decided democratically”, and the number of people around me saying “actually no it shouldn’t” was way smaller (i.e. zero) than the number of people who say that about things like the draft. i still don’t know how to square that, but to answer your “what were your expectations towards the Democrats here” question, well, you asking that is the answer to why i think “civil war” talk is so beyond the pale.
I promise you that even if everyone in my state turned up to vote, we’d still elect fascists. This is clearly a system failure.
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Everyone keeps saying this, but I think good ole’ Amercian laziness will win out and nothing happens.
Ever been around people when an emergency happens? People can’t be bothered half the time; or they gawk…
Most Americans are lazy until they aren’t. Doesn’t require much energy to show up somewhere with a gun in hand now does it?
Most Americans won’t do shit.
I still remember in the sequel to The first Mage: The Ascension ttrgp book that the Ascension war was fought and ultimately came to a stalemate because when the average person was given the opportunity to Ascend and be giving God like powers to rewrite the world to their own whims they chose to watch TV instead.
I always like to say everyone should have a zombie survival plan. Is there any possibility of zombies? No. But there’s a lot of overlap between prepping for the exciting, fictional disaster and boring, real-world natural disasters.
- Having a fireaxe in your trunk might not let you chop off zombie heads, but it’ll sure be useful for clearing road debris after a hurricane.
- Having a bug-out-bag with important documents and bottled water is also great for wildfire preparedness, even if that bag also has a spiky leather jacket in it.
I encourage people to have a civil war plan. Do I expect we’ll have one? Not really, it wouldn’t be a two-sided conflict. But we can expect to see domestic terrorism (see also: insurrection) and potentially police riots (the police enacting organized violence as they did in 2020). If you’re ready for a civil war, you’re ready for the more mundane breakdowns we’re more likely to see.
- Knowing first aid and how to treat a gunshot wound might not find use on a battlefield, but it could easily save someone’s life in a mass shooting or isolated hate crime.
- Having ad-hoc or peer-to-peer communications is useful during riots and power outages.
- If you can move ordinance discreetly across state lines, you’ll probably find the skillset applies to moving red state refugees as well.
- Building a network of people you trust to band together when SHTF? Brother, you just invented a mutual aid network.
So yeah, if you feel anxious about the possibility of a civil war (or zombies), channel that energy into prepping for it, and you’ll find that even if your predictions were wrong, your effort will not go to waste.
Thank you for giving me justification for buying myself a fire axe!
Can a mod pin this comment?
Funny enough, I don’t know how to pin a comment. I’ll look up how!
I’ve been learning how to use Meshtastic recently and getting friends interested in setting up fixed nodes around the city I live in. I live in Australia and successive governments on both sides of politics have repeatedly restricted the right to secure, private communication.
Note: this isn’t going to look like the Civil War in the 1860s with pitched battles. It’s more likely going to look like The Troubles or La Violencia
So long as we have mass precarity this is going to continue to be a risk. And we’re going to have to deal with renegade MAGAs and Project 2025.
After 2016, I don’t trust the people of the US not to vote in fashy autocrats.
What is P25?
Only the plan to turn the United States government into a broad amalgamation of totalitarianism and fascism.
Americans need to stop electing fascists
The problem is, the politically daft don’t comprehend the risk that comes when fascists get elected, and when their life is in precarity (say, one paycheck or one bad illness away from homelessness) then some strong, confident Mussolini-wanabe starts looking attractive, especially when what he promises is too good to be true.
During the Great Depression, different factions were seriously considering going full fash or trying out communism. (The growing pains of the Soviet Union didn’t seem worse than living in cardboard boxes here in the States.) FDR’s New Deal was a stopgap measure so that the industrialists could get their act together. Well, they resented having to consider the public then, and they still do now.
And as Iran has shown us recently, violence is unthinkable for the most of us, until the hour it’s inevitable.
Daily reminder that memes can’t predict the future.
Probably, at some point. Wealth disparity is wrecking a huge swathe of the population’s way of life. They’re restless and want change.
Politically, divisiveness is continually reaching new heights. Politicians, republicans for the most part, are more reactionary and less productive. They are now fueling the fear and anger of their constituents and it won’t end well.
The US right now looks like Germany just before they put the Nazi party in power.
Lots of FUD, angry constituents, a faschism-adjacent party on the ballots, and lots of hate.
Edited: I wrote a bunch of stuff that my American grade education taught me about Nazi Germany but it was wrong.
Like how Nazi Germany was very one minded - it wasnt. The Nazi party at best represented 33-39% before they stopped counting.
Or that the population they targeted was more or less numerous. Trans people are < 1% of the population. The Jewish population was right around . 79% by best estimate prior to becoming in very real danger.
Great article, thank you!
There’s unfortunately a lot to compare with the two parties.
Too many people are too comfortable to ever get off their asses to do anything more than bitch about it online. It’s a very small percentage of people that actually go to rallies and half of those people are middle class white people that have never known real hardship; the kind of people that are surprised when they get pepper sprayed while trying to break into the capitol. There won’t be a civil war, but we’re definitely on the brink of single party rule.
We’re like a bunch of frogs sitting in water that is being slowly brought to a boil, but except for water it’s fascism and half the country is okay with it because they think they are “saving the children.” The other half think they can stop it. I think that both sides might be delusional.
It’s hard to do more when we’re working ourselves to death just to afford basic necessities. That tipping point gets closer and closer though.
And how many of frogs are there that just simply don’t care what happens?
I’m not saying you’re wrong but this feels like a super-Russian national subversion ploy.
It sort of is and it isn’t, in a lot of ways.
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Polls have been notoriously unreliable for over a decade now. Part of it is cell phones, part of it is increasing numbers of people feeding false responses, trying to influence the poll.
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Do that many people really want to vote for Trump? Young people are notoriously leftist, and older people are notoriously conservative, and millennials on down are changing the path to becoming conservative as you become older. Meaning more and more people are leftist or liberal or centrist, and less and less are straight conservative. Trump’s comments literally lead to the death of millions of old people during COVID. We have yet to actually see in a major nationwide election whether or not he actually killed a sufficient enough of his own voters to start swaying elections towards the Democrats nationally.
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Democrats and the media are doing what they always do to the young when they complain that the Democrats aren’t doing enough: They’ll equivocate it with saying “I’m not going to vote for a Democrat!” which is actually not what most young people are saying as much as they hate that the Democrats are essentially holding their votes hostage by refusing to do better and hitting us over the head with “but if you don’t let us half ass it, FASCISTS WILL TAKE OVER” which is some seriously psychologically abusive shit, literally threatening us with fascism if we don’t give in to their half ass takes. However, as an old man, I’ve seen the Democrats do this to the youth and depress their own youth votes for forty years. I literally lived it myself as a youth, over 20 years ago. All they do is talk down to the youth and act like any critique of their policies must mean a vote for the Republicans, not a clear understanding that Republicans are far worse, but that’s not an excuse for Democrats to be the milquetoast halfass bullshit party.
So between Democrats shoving their own foot up their own ass like usual, and old people dying by the millions to preventable disease, it could still go either way, even without Russian’s trying to subvert the election. As usual, the Democrats are subverting themselves well enough already.
Careful with that rhetoric. There are Internet tough guys lurking who will gladly threaten to hit you for being so bold.
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I can already hear the gunshots as the polls are announced. I live in a Red State.
Bad goes to worse, I do have the option of getting citizenship in the Dominican Republic via my parents.
It’s not exactly an upgrade, but I’ll take it over being stuck state-side.
My friend of Jewish descent recently listened to some audio recordings of his grandparents before they fled Germany.
They basically describe similar situations and feeling quite similarly to how he feels today. His wife doesn’t like him talking about it, but he’s sincere: he feels the need to flee.
I don’t blame him one bit.
EDIT: To be clear, his desire to flee has very little to do with his Jewish lineage and more to do with how scary and dangerous the Trump cult is. Him being of Jewish descent is just like a cherry on top for MAGAs who want to abuse others. A bonus.
It’s probably for the best for him to flee, first they’ll come for the LGBT then they’ll come for him.
Muy, muy bueno
