This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
In the 90s, they did this with an isolated guy and his family, living in their cabin, and then they did it to a bunch of weirdo Christian types. It worked real well both times, and then a federal building blew up.
There is zero need for massed formations or mustered armies in such a scenario. You are basing your assessment off the idea of a campaign of pitched battles and clearly-defined fronts. There is pretty much zero chance that's what a future American civil war would look like. It's pretty unlikely that such a war would even be fought with AR15s, much less tanks and planes.
Which accomplished nothing, except getting our government to make their suppression of such groups quieter and less of a big media show.
Explain how "20+ man SWAT team takes out 4-5 'domestic terrorists' with no losses, then another 4-5 'domestic terrorists' with no losses, then another, then another…" ends in victory for the folks on the losing end of every single engagement, rather than being picked off, tiny packet by tiny packet, until none are left?
The last several years are best modelled as a massively distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble. You are betting that the methods this search has discovered so far are more or less the best methods available. Having examined the question at some length and with a particular frame of mind, I am confident that your assessment is wrong.
It's more "what's available to one side that they're willing to use" than just "what's available."
And I don't see the basis for your confidence. I believe that there's basically nothing that the Red Tribe is both capable of and willing to do "to hurt the outgroup badly," and you — and others — have provided no real evidence to change my mind on that.
"Never give up, never surrender" might be great when it's coming from Tim Allen in a movie, but even the Japanese, with their "kamikaze attacks" and "banzai charges," eventually gave up and surrendered. At some point, one has to admit that war is lost. If the Red Tribe has not yet clearly passed this point, then where is that point?
Most people don't. That seems like a good thing, on balance.
When our will to fight is broken. At the moment, we're still ramping up toward conflict, and it's still possible that conflict can be precluded through more-or-less peaceful resolutions of the existing points of contention. Once conflict actually starts, it will be too late for talking about it. To the extent that the risks of such a conflict are not generally appreciated, it seems to me that no benefit to Reds is derived by elaborating them. If the only reason Blues might not oppress Reds is that they're not sure they'd be able to do so without mortal consequences, fighting is probably preferable than perpetuating the existing "peace". In which case, overconfidence and obliviousness on the part of Blues is a strategic asset worth preserving.
Your position, it seems to me, could come from one of a couple premises. Either you think Reds lack the awareness, the will, or the capability to successfully prosecute a fight with Blues. I think the Culture War demonstrates sufficient Awareness. Will and capability are intertwined: the greater the capability, the less will is required, and vice versa. You are assuming that people wait in their homes for the SWAT teams to come for them, which it is not clear they will do. Further, you are assuming that the capability is limited to our ubiquitous autoloading cartridge-firing weapons, and that assumption is most certainly not valid. The value of personally-owned firearms is primarily political, not strategic; the political fights over gun control are useful to coordinate within Red Tribe over the question "is it time to fight?". Once the question is answered to the affirmative, it seems to me that autoloading cartridge smallarms largely go to the sidelines.
As for what defeat looks like, if blues can successfully confiscate personal firearms, inflict serious social and legal consequences on non-woke Christianity, and maintain something approaching the current economic and socio-political conditions, that would pretty clearly be a victory for them in my book. I think it very unlikely that such an outcome is achievable, but you are free to think otherwise if you wish. Time will tell.
Also:
If Emperor Shōwa had taken that position in 1945, instead of the one he did — consider the Kyūjō incident, or Onoda Hiroo — where would Japan be now?
More options
Context Copy link
Because that's what all the fellow Red Tribers I talk to proudly declare they're going to do, and sometimes going on about how they'll shoot anybody who calls on them to do more. "We're the people who, when someone tells us to breathe, suffocate to death. It's our superpower." "'Fourth generation warfare' means the 'lone wolf' with no coordination, supplies, logistics, plan will automatically win over any superior number of well-supplied, well-coordinated troops!"
Plus some limited explosives, crudely-assembled technicals, etc. The problem is that amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. And logistics require coordination. As in the German Peasants' War, it's these that win the war. One side is highly coordinated (read David Hines), while the other is practically allergic to coordination (at least partially due to the other side's ability and willingness to come down hard on any attempts to build it, but also due to fundamental temperament).
Except that from what I see — particularly given the Left's deft hand at proverbial "frog-boiling" — the answer is consistently never. "This is not the hill to die on." Nor is the next, when we retreat to that one. Nor the next, nor the next. I've seen fellows on the right lay out some "redline" where the Left will have truly "gone too far" if they cross it… and then a decade later, when it's indeed crossed, well, pick your battles, "this is not the hill to die on," and David French may have a point with his latest "the Conservative Case for [Insert latest left victory here]" piece, don't you know?
It never will.
In favor of, what, McVeigh truck bombs? Light aircraft crashed into IRS offices (full of nothing but entirely replaceable cogs in the vast Federal machine)?
I think they'll mostly just keep salami-slicing, plus anarcho-tyranny if you use them in self-defense, plus demographic trends, to make that increasingly small and irrelevant without any big, triggering mass confiscation
Beyond what they're already doing? Plus, again, demographics ̉— sure, the Amish and Mormons have the birthrates, but the Left have education, and Wisconsin v. Yoder and homeschooling are both doomed long term
This, I don't think they can do, but one can very easily stay on top in a decline. Tocqueville's Law — it's when improving conditions begin to slow that people rebel. When things decline, people are too busy fighting for their own individual "slice" of the shrinking "pie" to meaningfully rebel. And the Iron Law of Institutions — better to reign in Hell, and all that. There's a lot of ruin in the West, and Industrial civilization has a lot of seedcorn needed for its maintenance that can be diverted to propping up the system instead, allowing them time to crush all rivals before the arrival of the inevitable crash (which thus proves so devastating that we're knocked so far back into pre-industrial conditions that it's impossible to ever recover).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, a future American civil war would inevitably involve significant state-to-state territorial disputes because the breakdown in federal authority necessitates big states establishing their regional hegemony to safeguard their own stability and non-isolation from both resources and markets. This process involves lots of conventional armies moving around because that’s what governments do.
For probably the most obvious example, California needs to engage in some level of adventurism against significantly smaller neighbors to ensure its water supply(no, it will not improve its water management, nor do citizens of wealthy and powerful regions accept rationing for the sake of the hinterlands) when the federal government can’t impose an acceptable solution from above.
What "breakdown in federal authority"? My point is that there wouldn't be any such thing. Why would there be? Just because a few hundred temporary figureheads are cut out of the loop more openly and explicitly than before?
Legitimacy, legitimacy, legitimacy. And more legitimacy. And eventually money, but still more legitimacy.
This "legitimacy" thing people keep talking about seems like a spook to me. "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." People obey the law and the government because armed men will haul you off and throw you in a cage if you don't (and shoot you if you resist). "The law" is only whatever rules you'll get punished for breaking. "Federal Law" isn't the US Code, it's only 'whatever the FBI, DEA, ATF, etc. will arrest you for' — nothing less, nothing more. And as long as those men with guns keep on enforcing the same rules, nothing changes, regardless of what some old man in some old building might say quoting old words on some old piece of parchment.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
...It seems to me that the sort of conflict you're talking about here is what happens following a complete collapse of the federal government. You're describing not the next American civil war, but the one after that.
Exactly. And I see no reason for it to collapse just because it's made explicit — even more explicit than our current doddering figurehead-in-chief does — that a US President has little more power than King Charles III does.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Were the federal government to fall, I’d expect the Rio Grande/the Rockies to split New Mexico between the Republic of Texas on the east and Calivada on the west, with Salt Lake taking Wyoming, Colorado, and a V-shaped chunk containing Santa Fe/Taos/Albuquerque.
The official map of The Hunger Games is pretty much how it would shake out.
It seems like based on current trends, a west coast transitional federal council engages in inland-facing imperialism that winds up resisted by approximately 1 trillion local and ethnic/religious interest groups while a red state coalition led by Texas supports them as a buffer to guard their flank in New Mexico and maybe props up some small states(greater Idaho, deseret, etc) to prevent a land link to Colorado. So fairly close I guess; but a Texas-led red state coalition already exists and you can expect especially the ones nearby to throw in with their larger, richer neighbor even more.
I think you’re right that New Mexico functionally ceases to exist in this scenario but Colorado would probably wind up as a major rival towards the Texas led coalition because it’s a geographically isolated blue spec facing a suddenly-expansionist and much larger neighbor- something like Finnish Russophobia except they both wind up with nukes. I also expect an independent republic of Texas to eventually try to split northern Mexico off from the rest of the country because the industrial zone it contains would be pretty key to Texas maintaining both its war machine and standard of living in the imperial core, although I’m not sure how it would do that(probably not a ground invasion).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Crunching some numbers to get a rough sense about potential Second US CW.
Compared to most of world's armies, US armed forces are enormous.
Compared to US territory and population, they are tiny, especially the high tech part.
Assuming US population as 330 million:
2,800 tanks = one tank/118,000 Americans
3,500 aircraft = one plane/95,000 Americans
760 helicopters = one chopper/435,000 Americans
And all these wonder weapons are dependent on supply from American and world economies, who would cease to exist when North America turns into Somalia on ice.
For comparison, in Syria in 2011 when the late unpleasantness began, the ratio was:
Counting Syrian population as 21 million:
4,800 MBT = one tank/4,375 Syrians
4,500 IFV = one IFV/4,666 Syrians
575 aircraft = one plane/36,000 Syrians
191 helicopters = one chopper/110,000 Syrians
Conclusion: Second US Civil War will be fought with pickup trucks and construction machinery with extra metal plates welded on.
And drones. Drones, drones, drones. Masses of 3D printed plastic drones swarming from horizon to horizon.
Yes, bikes too, our poster Kulak's dream coming true.
Interesting times for everyone involved(and the whole world will be involved).
edit: links set properly
Again, what makes you think it'd ever get to a "Second US Civil War" stage with open military, rather than just a bunch of Wacos, Ruby Ridges, and the arrest and/or execution of a bunch of attempted or actual McVeighs? Just ordinary law enforcement keeping Our Democracy safe from domestic terrorists?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link