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Yes. And what were the outcomes of those victories? Why are election victories valuable?
Because otherwise you get the New Deal and the Warren Court.
I hate this argument. That the right should accept losing slowly as a "win," because it's not as bad as losing quickly.
I don't remember if it was here, or at the old subreddit, but I remember reading yet another gun control argument, yet another "cake slicing" characterized as a "compromise." When someone asked what exactly the pro-gun side got out of such a compromise, one gun control proponent got quite honest: you get to keep some of your guns for now. You get them taken away slowly, a bit at a time, rather than all at once right now. You get to lose slowly, instead of quickly, and you should be happy with that. It's a very vae victus attitude, an "I am altering the deal; pray I don't alter it any further," attitude.
I'm also reminded of a Nick Freitas video where he complained about a constituent who called him "useless," then spent an hour explaining how state legislatures work, how little power elected politicians have, how the system is rigged against right-wingers so that it's often "lose-lose" — in short, how he's useless. Or, more specifically, that he personally is not useless, but that any right-wing politician in his position playing by "the rules of the game" will be just as impotent.
As I see it, "well, at least you get to lose slowly" isn't an argument for playing the rigged game, it's an argument for flipping the table. Because, as @FCfromSSC notes, even when we "win" electorally, we still end up in the same place.
Sun-tzu says not to fight where you are weak and the enemy is strong, fight where you are strong and the enemy is weak. Your argument is one that says electoral politics is a battleground where the right is weak. So why should we fight on that one, instead of one that's more favorable to us. Because there's one battlefield where we have, if not an advantage, then the least disadvantage — the literal battlefield. We have a lot more guns, more veterans, a lot of favorable geography, control of the food supply, and less dependence on some highly-vulnerable infrastructure.
As I see it, your statement here isn't an argument for why we should seek electoral victories for the Republican party, it's an argument for why we should grab our guns and start shooting.
Please stop saying this.
Why? He's right, given the premises. The people offering the lose-lose alternatives should take notice, unless (as I suspect) they already have and are perfectly willing to fight the real war.
Because he's written this before, unironically, and just a few days ago.. If his behavior catches up to his rhetoric, this would not be a good thing. Not every comment is meant to be taken as a thought experiment.
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Because it's boring and cheap.
The only thing to talk about at that 0point is internet tough guy shit that always sounds like twelve year old boys playing with Legos. "We have all the money so we're gonna win" "Oh yeah?! Well what're you gonna do when we cut off the water supply?"
I have no interest in reading a bunch of internet guys brag about their experience with Gorilla warfare.
Anyone who thinks that the median poster on the motte is going to do anything other than duck and cover during real civil strife is kidding themselves. (this is true of most online spaces)
Exactly. That kind of jerk off fantasy is intensely boring for me.
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Calling for it is definitely boring and cheap. An actual collapse of civil order would be a lot of things, but "boring" and "cheap" are not among them. If you think that our current order would obviously have survived Trump catching the Butler bullet with his brainstem, you are much more of an optimist than I. I believe that a lot of Americans were genuinely disappointed that the bullets only killed and wounded his supporters and not Trump himself. Would you disagree?
The taboo on organized political violence has been steadily degrading for at least the last decade. We've had multiple presidential and federal assassination attempts within the last few years, numerous politically-motivated shootings, and at least one politically-motivated spree-killing of children. This would be catastrophic if the capacity for organized violence were a constant in the equation, and only the willingness were increasing. And in fact, the commenter above fervently believes this, as do most people, and so is actively working to maximize the willingness variable. And on the flipside, most people discounting the possibility of a serious collapse are likewise assuming capacity as a constant and reasoning from there.
He and all others who share this perspective are deceived. Not only is capacity a variable, it is a variable freighted by a massive overhang of untapped potential energy. The last several years are best modelled as a massive, distributed search for the best ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble. The further the culture war escalates, the more motivated the search. If nothing changes, that search is very likely to, within the next few years, return results that are unsurvivable for our present society.
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The next time you see blue tribe normies freaking out that Trumpists literally want to murder them all, remember that it's not just the top-down Democrat propaganda that made them think that. You contributed.
I'm not a Trumpist, nor did I even say I wanted to murder them all. Even if I had said it was time for open war (I did not; I said that given his premises, open war made perfect sense), open war does not imply genocide.
Stop trying to stifle discussion.
I'm sure civil war will respect all of those fine details you specified.
If you want to discuss, then discuss. "DAE just start shooting is the only choice here?" is only technically discussion.
Not respecting all the fine details doesn't imply genocide either? Do you think the US respected all the fine details in Afghanistan? Or do you think they committed genocide? Or do you think neither, and therefore your entire argument is invalid?
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Nice, fedposting, consensus building and stupid rolled in one.
Not entirely sure is it trolling or genuinely advocating for civil war. And unsure which one would be sadder.
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And my point is that we got the equivalent of the New Deal and the Warren Court even when we won.
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