Arnold Kling has been posting lately about the prospects for civil war in the United States:
Civil War Scenarios
The 1960s and Today
Civil War Watch: Sentences to Ponder
I agree with him that the idea is still pretty far-fetched. I also think that things would need to get much, much worse before there’s a real prospect for civil war. For one thing married couples in which both spouses used to work and at least one spouse still has a job tend to be something of a firebreak against real desparation.
However, when you read about people shooting other people because the shooter disagrees with the political opinions of the employers of his victim you’ve got to wonder.
A civil war will start when a substantial political community believes that separation or violence is the only method available to correct perceived wrongs. That’s a tall order in the US today and not very likely. I think an increase in crime and violence by radical groups is likely, but these groups do not have a base of support that could really challenge US governance and authority at any level of government.
I don’t see much chance for a repeat of the the US Civil War where the political communities were organized and led by state governments. State populations are much more diverse now and there is no issue today that could drive a wedge between the states as was the case with slavery.
What I do think will happen is an uptick in political violence. I think we’re already seeing it. There’s just too much loose talk, too much hyperbole by people who should know better and who have large enough megaphones that it makes a difference.
I agree that we will se more political motivated violence. The 24 hour faux outrage machine is working quite well. People now hate people over differences in an income tax rate of 4%. They are convinced that the other side harbors communists. Hell, that the other side’s leaders are communists or fascists or whatever.
However, I dont see the likelihood of an 1860s civil war or even a 2000s Iraq type civil war. I think we are more likely to see a Syrian type war, except that I dont think the government will be willing to be quite so brutal, so it will stop much earlier with smaller numbers of casualties. Somewhere between the civil rights marches and demonstrations, and the revolutions seen in the former communist bloc.
Steve
I’m guessing the side that believes in gun control won’t be winning.
Unless that side controls the military.
You think the military will, completely and wholly, just start shooting at its fellow citizens regardless of who gives the orders? I don’t. And if the military is that far gone, then the country is in much worse shape than I believe.
I agree Ice. Just cannot see the military shooting at unarmed college students.
Steve
Yeah, Steve, panicky National Guard units acting in a confused campus setting against rioters will be exactly like ordering the Air Force to carpet bomb Orlando.
Although I guess steve has a point, given the tens of thousands of protesters Nixon’s regular army slaughtered in the following months, culminating in the nuclear bomb drops on Harvard, Yale and Princeton that fall. Greater Boston may never be habitable again.
No, I don’t think the military will just start shooting people, but carpet bombing Orlando is an interesting idea.
Hell, steve, the Army being used to disperse the Bonus Army would be a more pertinent example than Kent State.
…
Carpet bombing Orlando is an interesting idea.
In the natural order of things swamp, scrub and cypress domes would reclaim it all within a decade. This being Florida, that would never happen. Within five years it would be completely rebuilt, twice as tacky and three times as plastic, with ridiculous profits for developers and the pols that decided who got to play.
Also, the Mormons would then have NO reason to restrain development of Deseret Ranch, so the Orlando-area population center would shift south. The unholy love-child of Harry Reid and Mitt Romney would rise to power from there, and twelve years from now be elected President.
Really, you may think the global economic melt-down stopped the developers, but it just thinned them out. They’re worse than cock roaches, and much less pleasant to deal with. They’ll be back.
The unholy love-child of Harry Reid and Mitt Romney would rise to power from there, and twelve years from now be elected President.
Said love child would be created through genetic engineering, and his growth rate would be massively accelerated. Papers would be forged for him, but by that time he will refuse to release them. All financial records, tax records, academic records will be carefully concealed from the public (despite being excellent forgeries) AND he’ll tell you where to shove it when you ask to see the birth certificate.
Seriously, if you’re going to go down the paranoiac path, do so with some flair.
What’s really going to happen is a long, drawn out period of degeneracy in our cultural, economic and political institutions. We’re already smack in the middle of it. Somewhere down the line a decision will be made on bloody revolt against the elites, or meek submission as the elites throw off the last vestiges of the Republic. (And I do mean vestiges – the Republic is already a thing of the past in truth.) Personally I suspect the latter – meek acceptance. That’s why they’ve been electing a new people for the last 47 years. Another couple of decades of importing Third World peasants and we’ll look like Mexico, or maybe Russian. That’s where this thing is headed.
And, oh yeah,
BRING IT, MELBOURNE!
Sorry, but according to my wife, Orlando must go to expand the Harry Potter portion of Islands of Adventure into a full-scale feature.
Sorry, but according to my wife, Orlando must go to expand the Harry Potter portion of Islands of Adventure into a full-scale feature.
Is that all? Universal has enough adjacent, empty land to build two more full-size theme parks. Just drive up behind the property on Turkey Lake Road and you can’t miss it. (Are your kids about high school age? Move over here, then, and get them in Doctor Phillips High School (public) – it sits right across the street from Universal Orlando.) And they’re tiny. There’re huge amounts of undeveloped land all over Orange County, even after excluding all the stuff on the east end that’s basically the St. Johns River. Room we’ve got. But if all you want is more touristy plastic pablum, just give it a couple of years. Universal is creaming itself over the Harry Potter thing. They’ve finally got something popular enough to make a profit, even with the licensing deal.
Steven Speilberg has made far more off Universal Orlando than the corporate owners have, through the years. They’ve always just been a break even deal at best. UNTIL Harry Potter. J. K. Rowling is the most popular person over there! (And I imagine her children are less bratty than Speilberg’s, too, but that’s another set of stories.) Harry Potter is even bigger than Halloween Horror Nights for them.
You want more Potter? It’s just a matter of Universal figuring out what they want to do and how they can do it without shutting everything else down in the meantime. Logistics, bitchez!
Actually, I never really looked at the adjacent land, but the Harry Potter section is way too small – I’m surprised there haven’t been crushing deaths there yet. Universal pissed me off though and screwed me out of $200, so I won’t be going back there again if I can help it.
And actually, the only part of Orlando I really detest is International Drive. Why don’t we split the difference and just agree to carpet-bomb that? And that big McDonalds at the corner of 482 needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice.
Hey, as long as I’m given enough notice to get my family out of here I don’t care. I was born and raised in Orlando. I’ve spent 36 of my 44 years living here. You’d think that would make it home, but this is Florida. The Orlando I grew up in doesn’t exist anymore, and hasn’t in over 20 years. I can’t go home again, and I really never left.
Four years ago I wrote:
So bombs away!
I looked at the adjacent land on a map just now, and it’s smaller than I thought – they could only fit one more theme park on it. I had forgotten about one of the resort hotels they built out there a few years ago, which occupies the rest of the land I though was open. But they could always buy the high school from the county….
Ice,
I have a lot of the same feelings about my hometown of Denver. So many more people and so many more assholes. It really has become a little version of California and lost the little bit of frontier, western spirit it had when I was growing up. And then there are the Rockies. I-70 through the mountains is still 2-lanes wide. Traffic was terrible back in the 1980’s, but it’s worse now with twice the population.
Still, I’d move back to Colorado if I could, but I’d probably live somewhere besides Denver.