Civil War?

[Hans Bulvai]

[noddy]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Demon of Undoing]

Tinker, the forum just ate my post because it logged me out , after an hour and a half of writing and trying to preview it . The 2.0 would allow you to hit a back button if that happened, though it generally didn't .

Not pointing fingers and getting pissy, but if you can fix that, you might want to .

Short version: if you are dismissive of the militias, you are clueless, because you don't understand what they represent . If you think the USG could actually shut down a movement that had any kind of sympathy at all, you are wrong. And if you think there aren't people out there that might be willing to force a crackdown on the basis of the understanding that people will only take so much, well, keep dreaming. Unless you think the American people are so fat, lazy , stupid, stinky, whatever that they are somehow exempt from what historically happens when you add up a society with a history of violence +arms+body cavity search -levels of oppression .

And yes, right now, the superempowered individual is a thousand times more a threat than militias under these circumstances.

[Sparky]

[Sparky]

[Demon of Undoing]

[Demon of Undoing]

With every light, there is dark, every yin , a yang . The flipside of the wonderful concept of America as a cohesive idea ( as opposed to grouping of blood or theologically based religion) is that, should the idea disintegrate or corrupt, all the strengths that make America so rich, powerful, militarily capable and dangerous to opponents can ( again, under proper circumstances) become positively toxic inside our borders .

It is my experience that Americans do not want to deal with the inherent properties of their own civic faith on that flipside, to the point of ignoring bald facts . Our PR organs are so good that we have similarly put that blind spot in our foreign friends. I laugh when I hear people talking about China's ambition being ambushed due to domestic issues and conflicts. America was created, sustained, boosted and lauded because of just those very things. It is unwitting American exceptionalism of a very naive kind that thinks such things cannot happen here, or happen again, or happen differently enough to go really badly .

All that is required is to get people to start doing main force pulling in opposite directions ,and this can fall apart in a short time. In important ways, the groundwork has already been laid, and is being laid now. I still put it at impossible odds now. In 25 years ? Maybe not.

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[Sparky]

[Colonel Sun]

Sorry, DoU, but like Sparky I'm still rather skeptical.

McVeigh was quickly caught, tried, and executed.

No one, expect possibly some of these self-styled militias, was sympathetic to his cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians who happened to be low level US federal govt workers.

Perhaps there exists so-called militias in the US capable of causing coordinated widespread mayhem. I have absolutely no idea. Although I doubt it.

The evidence so far is that in any encounter with the state to-date such so-called militias have come across as
being dumber than a bag of bricks with
the organizational skill and tactical discipline of a herd of cats and
long range planning abilities that make the underpants gnomes [see above] look like strategic geniuses.

[Demon of Undoing]

[Ibrahim]

Collectively "militias" are too disorganized to do anything other than isolated and incoherent domestic terrorism. If you're talking about the government "pushing people too far" and these groups "pushing back," there would be no way to coordinate them for anything better than local rioting. Modern revolutionsall had some kind or organizing principle (e.g. Maxism or, more recently, counter-Marxism) and the only the the "militias" agree upon is that they want to be left alone, "the gubbermint goes too far," and that they like guns.


I also disagree with the term "militia." A better description would be "gangs."

[Tinker]

[Demon of Undoing]

Okay, abandoning this thread because we are now firmly in the realm of predicting based off of conditions as yet unrealized. I will say though, that Tinker's recruitment pattern, above, sounds more like repressed homosexuality rather than independent cells set up by nameless people and acted on by volunteers that nobody had to incite to anything. Anybody can have an attack of conscience , but if you are using a true cell structure, it doesn't matter much on any sort of broad dimension .

[Tinker]

[noddy]

its all ratios to me.

right now, enough people have enough to lose that the status quo is still viable and at a push most will still defend it.

[Tinker]

noddy It usually revolves around the affordability of food.

[noddy]

[Colonel Sun]

[Tinker]

[noddy]

[Sparky]

[Tinker]