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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 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?
I think someone who sees "if we Republicans can't win at the ballot box we should grab our guns and start shooting" is right to be worried that the shooting will be not entirely discriminate.
You live in a village and hear a young passionate man with a red band on his arm state they'll only expropriate the needed share of corn from only the lazy bloodsuckers who exploit others. How confident are you?
I'm not terribly confident of the red-armband-man but that's because of the historical record of people like him, but I don't see the reason to apply that record to every would-be revolutionary. As a Euro we didn't put a lot of emphasis on the American revolution during history lessons, so maybe I missed something, but I don't think it was comparable to the Red Terror.
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