So is the US slipping into Civil War?

Highly unlikely this is what the civil war would be like. It's not a state v state thing necessarily although that might be a small part of it. In the first civil war, the south unified and its people largely supported the war, except their slaves. It's unlikely something like that will happen again. It's not impossible but unlikely.

What is much more likely is rural v city. Even in red states, cities are blue and will often vote for blue policies. Rural areas are where things get dicey. They've been largely left behind by the surge in industry and general expansion of the capitalist economy we currently have (they've had a lot of businesses (including grocery stores) close because more people are leaving, and their rural towns are frequently having their hospitals close leaving large swaths of areas where the nearest hospital is an hour away). As such, they've got a grudge against the cities. What's likely to happen is rural counties and their local governments trying to cut off their food supply, starving the cities to win the battle. There's tons more possibilities, but this one I think is the one that's got the highest likelihood.

Another possibility that is scary, but is highly dependent on the party of the people in power, is the government using their power to actually strike the cities, like in Syria where Assad bombed and used chemical weapons on his own people. Syria is actually a pretty good example of what more modern civil wars are like, or can be like. Governments v rebels and militias, and cities v rural (although there's much less rural land in Syria).

If you're interested, the podcast It Could Happen Here has a great first season where they go over possible disasters including a civil war and a pandemic (it was actually made in 2019 so before covid). It's really helpful and can teach a lot, especially for an outsider from across the pond. It also does a lot better job giving an explanation and actual sources.

Hope this helps since it didn't seem like you were getting a real answer.

"Fuck yeah, secession!" Says the Texan from the comfort of their lounge chair, beer in hand.

These people are too comfortable to ever be willing to die for their stupid ideals. All it took was one MAGA idiot to get blasted on Jan 6th and then they all scattered like roaches. As soon as their lives were on the line, it was no longer a matter of grave importance. They all firmly believed that democracy was at stake, but were unwilling to fight for it to the death because they somehow must have known that it was bullshit, somewhere in the back of their pea-sized brains, they knew.

By the time Texas starts asking people to show up to mustering fields, rifle in hand, the facade will fall apart. Biden doesn't need to do anything. This sideshow of bluster and saber-rattling will fall apart on it's own.

It’s not a totally unreasonable impression, but no, this will not turn into a second civil war. The Guard units of each state can be called up for federal duty. The National Guard is part of the US Department of Defense and thus ultimately answers to the DoD and the US president as commander in chief. The US military has multiple components, including regular services (eg the full time Army), reserve components (eg US Army Reserve) and National Guard components. The latter two are part-time military with one weekend per month training duty plus an annual training. Guards members and Reservists hold regular full time jobs.

The Guard units are deployable by the governors of their respective states, and so can be used in emergency situations like natural disasters. They have also been deployed against what have been perceived as riots that threaten lives and properties of the individual states.

However, they are subject to activation by order of the US president and they fall under the national command authority. Guard personnel take the same oath to the constitution as other military personnel, and cannot legally refuse federal activation. Guards personnel would be subject to courts martial and face potentially extreme penalties including being discharged from service under criminal conditions, being stripped of rank and benefits, and jail time in federal prison. This would be what we call a career limiting rule.

So, if push comes to shove, Biden can activate the NG and order them to stand down or to implement policies to maintain order. Thinking the NG units and in particular their commanders would disobey a presidential order because they just love their state governor and hate the president so much is getting into Turner Diaries levels of right wing apocalyptic fantasy.

I said this in another thread-

Most Americans aren't interested or even capable of fighting in a civil war. When you live paycheck-to-paycheck, you're not going to abandon your family to fight on the front lines.

And a huge percentage of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.

Texas would have to have a draft.

Good luck with that.

A lot of you all must be too young to remember. This isn't a new thing for Texas to do. They threatened to secede at least once (maybe twice) while Obama was president. Once it was straight out of the North Korean playbook, claiming a training exercise the military was conducting was a cover for a military invasion of Texas.

At current, this is all posturing. If Biden does engage the military to stop them. Perhaps lock up the governors for treason, maybe it could escalate somewhat. If something did happen that was in the line of being more serious, it wouldn't be a long incursion as long as the military obeyed the commander in chief. The national guard is absolutely no match for even a small slice of the might of the US military.

If something does happen, hopefully they'll shut it down quickly and bloodlessly, maybe finally gather enough strength to enable some Germany type of anti-fascism laws.

We need to fix gerrymandering, we need to fix people screwing with elections. We need to put some strong protections against the propaganda and opinion pieces flowing out of all the news outlets. We need to force free non-political basic education to the entire f****** country so people can make some informed decisions about s***.

I'm tired of everybody looking at politics like it's a f****** football game.

Can we just have a normal, boring year for once, please? I'm so tired...

This is exactly why DeSantis wants to revive the Florida State Guard.

Biden should ignore Abbott right until the point he signs an order to interfere with Federal agents on duty. Then it's a conspiracy & the Insurrection Act can be brought into play to clean house.

My take on it is that the Republicans will do their best to drag this out until the election. No compromising or middle ground. Just make it out to be the crazy Democrats fault. This stuff gets to be very predictable after all these years.

It all seems quite a bit overblown to me. There's legal precedent for the President to take over a state's national guard and use federal troops to enforce a court order (see Brown v Board of Education):

"In September 1957, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas Army National Guard to block the entry of nine black students, later known as the "Little Rock Nine", after the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by asserting federal control over the Arkansas National Guard and deploying troops from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division stationed at Fort Campbell to ensure the black students could safely register for and attend classes. [...]" (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education)

The current wording of the Insurrection Act provision (which has been amended a few times since initial adoption), according to Wikipedia:

"Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion."

Just my $.02 but I'd guess either the feds back down or Texas does. Hopefully nobody gets trigger happy.

No this is all Republican division. It's their only playbook to rally their base. The take home message for everyone is VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. Before the election started up we had a nice quiet 2-1/2 years. This kind of shit only appeals to those that love the chaos that Trump will bring back.

Those states are going to be in a rude awakening when they realize they are broke because the blue states are by far the largest contributors to federal funding. When they cut that off, the welfare state will come crawling back quickly.

Seems to be a distinct possibility. Posturing prior to the election, rattling sabers, they're spoiling for a full-on shootin' war contingent on losing the election, in my opinion.

edit: I dare say, it might even be strategically advantageous for them to intentionally try lose, claim it was rigged, and use that to go live with the 4th riech.

I don't think the conservatives are sufficiently unified to form a single opposition army. The problem with basing your appeals on hating "outsiders" is that you end up with a lot of internal hatred too. There's also a strong undercurrent of "no one can tell me what to do" that makes central control unlikely.

What seems more likely are terrorist incidents, carried out be individuals and small groups, without any overall communication or strategy. We're already seeing some of that. The lack of coordination won't prevent it from happeing, but will prevent it from achieving anything.

I don't think there are very many people within the MAGA movement who honestly want to resort to violence, whatever they tell themselves. The ones who are actually willing are the ones who wanted to hurt someone anyway. Politics provides them with an excuse, not a motivation.

I think we're going to have a nasty time for a while, but I don't think a right-wing takeover by violence has any chance of happening. I'm much more worried about a political takeover that then turns into an authoritarian coup. The left-wing has a much better chance of organizing as a whole, but I don't think there are that many people ready to fight from that side either, but that could change as conditions get worse.

It's not a new civil war reason. It's the same one as last time just packaged up a little different.

Racism

No, it’s theatrics

An election is upcoming

Minnesota looking across our western border like

I read how most experts agree that there will be some kind of "constitutional crisis" within the next decade. The impeachment 1, impeachment 2, and January 6 attacks already show the rumblings of what is to come.

Personally I find it doubtful that a full civil war would be the means though bc of the disparity b/t military resources at the federal vs. lower levels. Thus, probably something else, perhaps extremely mundane e.g. Trump runs for President, and bc of the Israeli conflict in Gaza and whatever else Russia manufactures between now and then Biden loses, then Trump simply declares himself Emperor.

Or maybe even that much paperwork will not happen and the government will simply never pass another federal budget again, thus ending the federal level by default of obstruction.

So probably not Civil War, at this time and over this event (no matter how much the clickbait media tries to get its clicks), but even so... something is coming indeed, down the road in some form.

I mean, isn't this kind of keeping with the theme of US civil wars so far?

If I was creating a civil war bingo card based on history of civil wars in the US, "starts over how people with darker skin can be abused or not" would certainly have been on it.

The Governors are unserious idiots playing with fire hoping they won't get burned by a rando of their idiot base taking it too far.

The real risk for Americans remains a situation like The Troubles, not armed conflict between states and the federal government.

They’re just trying to “get out the vote” by forcing Biden to do something that they can point to and say “See! You were right all along! The federal government is going to invade and put you all in FEMA camps and make your children go to public school where they will be turned gay!!!”
I realize that that sounds absolutely stupid and it is. If I hadn’t already watched exactly that happen with Jade Helm I would never have believed that people could be that incredibly stupid, but it did and they are. Sigh.

I really hope Biden doesn’t take the bait and just deals with it after the election.

Same shit, different election:
“ On April 28, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor the operation, writing: "During the training operation, it is important that Texans know [that] their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed", and requesting "regular updates on the progress and safety of the Operation".”

Hm... I should get a gun. And a passport.

These would be 'rebel' states are among the poorest and most heavily dependent on federal subsidies. They need the US more than the US needs them.

This has to be purposefully not getting media coverage so as to not incite panic/public support, right? When I saw the first ruling posted by Gov Abbott it seemed almost like a secessionist rant, but it’s NO WHERE to be seen in MSM

I honestly don't think the active duty and national guard units would be willing to fight each other. A lot of guard guys are former AD and AD gets supplemented by guard all the time. Some missions they even work side by side with active guard positions.

The states leveraging their guard units like this strikes me as highly presumptuous.

Fuck I hate my governor...

Ain't no way this is actually going to happen, any attempt at succession will be put down by the much larger national military. There will be no civil war.

Compare the map you posted with the population map

There is many more people in the states that would be a Union Army, the fools that would wage war on the United States would be defeated and most Americans wouldn't even need to do anything but watch

Taking into account the overall average of all the comments posted to tour question:

It looks one the answer is:

No one knows.

And as usual, the ones that act like they do know, are specifically the ones you should ignore.

This will all blow over once Trump fucks off to private dementia care to escape prosecution.

Certainly would be exciting as an Australian

History is about to repeat itself so you know what? I'm going to sit here north of the border watching you guys burn

Wait. The first civil war ended? /s

From what I've heard, the supreme court decision was mostly about the feds having access to the border, and the ability to cut down the razor wire, rather than any specific opposition to the razor wire existing in and of itself. I would wager this whole deal is mostly just a kind of political play, to try and egg biden into doing something stupid, while simultaneously keeping up the appearance that everyone at the head of these states is doing something dangerous, anti-institutional, and counter-cultural, even though they're all kind of inherently unable to do anything along those lines just as a matter of their positions.

Everybody's correct when they say that the political divides in this country are less clear-cut, but I also don't think that the radicalization that we've seen, as a matter of perspective from being in online space, necessarily reflects reality. I think if you look at most people, most people want social security of some kind, and want healthcare of some kind, and want drug legalization of some kind, and want us to stop fighting wars in some form. Those are all kind of generalities, because the specific mechanism by which people want those things achieved differs from person to person. It's very fractured as a matter of course, as a matter of how our political system and society is set up, and the ruling class has taken advantage of this to enact a divide and conquer strategy, where they can selectively promote whatever ideological positions benefit them the most, and cordon everyone off into a relatively small set of solutions over which they have a high amount of control. Rather than, you know, what a good democracy might do, which is come to a compromise solution, that everyone but the most extreme propagandized radicals might be kind of okay with. There is a reason why lots of conservatives like communism, as long as you use the right words. Both parties attempt to be mostly "populist" parties. This is all kind of obvious, right, but people understate the degree to which it's a deliberate thing, and the overstate the degree to which it's been successful, you know, which isn't surprising, because, again, serves the interests of the powerful. People aren't, broadly, morons, people have realized that this is all the case. That's mostly what the "radicalization" that you've seen online has been, people just realizing that they hate these shitass solutions that aren't really compromise solutions. See how everyone is cripplingly disappointed with the democratic party, and also how, likewise, conservatives are consistently disappointed with their own party, as well, and for many of the same reasons, barring the extreme radicals.

Most people are focused on how the internet divides people into radicalized swaths and conspiracy theorists, which is true, but even the mainstream monopolized internet is kind of a good tool for mass mobilization. See the occupy movement and the arab spring for older examples, for more recent examples, maybe the george floyd protests, or the french retirement protests. The only risk of these is kind of that they more easily get co-opted as a result of their visibility, i.e. "defund the police" gets turned into an argument for "fund the police". If you were an asshole, you could cite charlottesville, or jan 6th, for examples of internet mobilization, but those are relatively smaller scales of things, compared to the others, which were more popular, they just got disproportionate media attention relative to their size, and had disproportionate political effects.

I think if we're looking at the true, extreme political radicals, we're seeing them come about as a result of a kind of well-oiled engine. I'm not gonna say that this is an institutional kind of thing, and it's maybe more of a third level effect of active decisions, but it's still something that, nonetheless, has been deliberately constructed. 4chan is funded by a japanese toy company and a hands off japanese internet techbro, and is administrated by some former american military freak who's deliberately organized the site. The more radical offshoots, that use the same source code, tend to be funded by oil money, and political action committees, but through second-level effects, where they fund some small level conservative actor, and then they prop up the space. Which churns out some radical terrorists that are capable of your more fucked up bombings, and shootings, and controlled and coordinated protests. And then you kind of get military people at almost every level of this, in lower numbers, who act to control the space.

I dunno what I mean to extrapolate from all of this, but yeah. There's probably not going to be a civil war.

Fuck Trump and his shit-headed followers forever.

This shit needs to stop. As a Texan (by force...) I'd absolutely be joining the feds to fight against Texas.

I don’t see how the national guard isn’t already federal, it’s the national guard, not the state guard. They get called up just like regular military for wars.

Cut off their money, court martial them, dishonorable discharge, take away their guns and vehicles. These belong to the military, not Texas.

No.

Weak king, so the local lords smell the opportunity to gain power, tale as old as time.

What is curious to me is these are state departments disagreeing, though the previous civil war was fought between federal and state governments with raised armies.

This time I was expecting the police vs. militants. Uncontrolled civil unrest. Portland and Minneapolis but spread across the nation, cranked to eleven.

Biden needs to send the army to Texas and arrest Winey Greg.

Look how the military treated people in Iraq. Wait until the National Guard gets more involved.

A lotta people's shitty 2nd amendment logic is about to be tested.

Could they not at least bunch up a bit so it's easier to build a wall around them?

Dumbasses once again saying, "Now is the time!" when they're clearly outnumbered and outgunned.

I'm an american and an idiot. I thought the National Guard was a Federal organization?
Regardless Governor Abbott is a hateful idiot, along with all of the other leaders in Texas. I just left Texas because I can't handle paying their salaries anymore, though I went to Louisiana where they are somehow more corrupt but also bigger idiots.

Ayo check out the Cornfederacy up there!

I get that this isn't the point, but this is one of the least-cropped screenshots I've ever seen.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised.

Like even if this thing with states acting up doesn't work out the people they are speaking too are definitely gonna still be riled up.

It seems obvious to me that they are probably planning something for the upcoming election since they would try and make sure that another "election steal" wouldn't happen again.

The only way that I see this not turning into a civil war is for government to somehow change the conversation drastically so that people aren't asking these questions.

Because if people begin asking these questions then people planning to do stuff are gonna be even more anxious and try and do the thing earlier.

I'm not sure how they would change the conversation though because all the republican population is going to just ignore them and still think we are heading towards a civil war making it just more likely to happen.

Oh, this'll be fun in the future when people try to whitewash it. We'll have another chance to follow up by asking, "a state's right to what, specifically?"

IDK but I got shut down when I asked a few weeks ago.

“take over texas” as if the federal govt wasn’t already in control of the states. the states pay federal taxes, and they receive various federal benefits. texas isn’t some separate nation. it’s just one of the regular 50 states.

All of the recent news surrounding Texas tells me we need to return to a more literal reading of the 10th Amendment. Bring back dual federalism.

No.

The US is the next empire to fall. I am a US citizen and i am taking steps to GTFO if needed. I have an e-residency and ID card from another nation and am working up to the investment for full citizenship.

No, the civil war 2 looks like mass shootings and terrorists attacks. It started with the Oklahoma City Bombing. Liberals just refuse to acknowledge it's existence.

There's an argument to be made, though, tha the US has always been in a state of civil war. The Spartans would symbolically declare war on their slaves every year. That's kind of what slavery is: a constant war on a portion of the population. That's aside from the whole genocide of native folks. Since the 13th amendment didn't actually ban slavery, it never ended and if you look at standing rock, you know that whole native genocide thing never ended either.

Then when you contextualize all this with stuff like the Red Summer, you realize the recent violence is just the normal terrorism that white supremacists do every now and then to get control back. There probably won't be a war with two side, more just escalation violence from one side leading to the systematic murder a huge chunk of the population. The question is if it will be officially sanctioned like the Holocaust, or continue with the ad-hoc stochastic terrorism like the Rwandan genocide and the Serbian ethnic cleansing.

I expected more snipers, bombings, and attacks on infrastructure but if Trump wins it's definitely gas chambers.

Democrats are too afraid of "real war" to actually do something about this. If they did they might have to deal with the mess for real and open themselves up to political challengers from the left.

Tangentially related: https://mander.xyz/comment/7170064 that was after Jan. 6, and no we fucked around and didnt do any of this shit.

Serious question. Couldn't Texas just hold a referendum to scede?

Nah, just giving Texas back to Mexico.

Living in Georgia rn, I'm pretty confident the state won't be seriously attempting succession in the near future. The political will simply isn't there.

It's interesting that the fairly small group who want (or think they want) succession are forced to share a political party with the country's most nationalist. I suspect any serious attempt at it now would further divide the Republican party.

Why not Arizona? That's surprising.

The disunited states has gone post-truth. When two sides vying for power don't agree on the nature of reality, ie immigration vs invasion, I don't see how there can be any agreement or good faith negotiation. So how can the result be anything but war? Whoever invented the notion of alternative facts has a lot to answer for.

Literally every state surrounding mine is willing to do this and mine isn't.

I gotta say, for once I'm impressed with Mississippi

States right right?

No, Tim Pool.

This all have a strong brexit vibe, but taken to the next level in a very MURICA! style.

Civil war 2: Electric Boogaloo, also: Blammo?

Oh that's cute, the state I live in is supporting treason. Well we all know what the punishment for treason is. Hope they're just posturing because if these morons actually try this shit they're going to get rolled over.

Wait, dead Republicans might actually make the country better. This might be okay.

So guys just in case, can you like maybe hand over your nuclear launch codes. You can have them back when you've calmed down.

who's the Youtuber in the bottom right

If you look at history it takes more than this. I doubt people would go to war over illegal immigrants.

It always was.

Lol no.

I can't wait!

I want to know why Texas is putting their children in the river in the first place.

I mean, all a politician has to do is say "I will oppose Bidens open border policy" and they'll win an election.

All Biden has to do is not allow an open border with Mexico, and he might have a chance of getting re-elected.

Why does everything have to be so political?

Then keep those comments to yourself

Eh. Something clearly needs to be done, and the concerns aren’t being addressed (and haven’t been for awhile). Congress and the senate haven’t done anything aside from attempt to impeach hunter Biden (from who knows what) or show off his dick.

Doubtful it’s any kind of civil war, but Texas (and other states) is being hit hard by the number of immigrants, and if the federal government can’t (or won’t?) do anything to curb it, makes sense that they will do something on their own.