Politics Podcast: How Likely Is Another Civil War? 538 Podcast

[Quixote1818]

In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, academics and journalists have increasingly taken seriously the possibility of more political violence in the U.S. And polls suggest Americans are worried about this too. In a December University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll, 62 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat concerned about violence in the 2024 presidential election.

In her new book, “How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them,” University of California at San Diego political scientist Barbara F. Walter goes a step further. After spending her career studying civil wars abroad, she writes, “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” It’s a bold suggestion, and in this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we interrogate it. Sure, America is polarized, but is it headed toward war?


Podcast at link. Galen Druke askes excellent questions and makes great points: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/politics-podcast-how-likely-is-another-civil-war/

[cilla4progress]

1. Couldn't we just have

an amicable divorce?

[bucolic_frolic]

2. I don't see how it could be a geographic one

despite red and blue states, the communications are instant and not regional or local in any sense, ditto the transportation. So it would be worse - small geographic bits everywhere, towns, neighborhoods, enclaves. The advantage might go to rural areas that have farms, open land for staging. And they're the ones that are prepared. I have no idea how this gets defused. It's more like a revolution brewing where extremists have to burn themselves out.

[vercetti2021]

3. Possible

But they underestimate us because we own weapons, Democrats have severed in the military, we are not stupid and all just hippies. I'd die fighting for democracy before bowing to fascists

[roamer65]

4. Bosnia, USA.

[haele]

5. It's not a civil war for secession, it's a civil war for a coup.

That's a big mistake most American pundits make, that the division is along geographic lines, because of a preponderance of "Conservatives" and poverty in former Confederate states.makes it easy to suggest that's where the divide is.
Self-styled Oligarchs and Dominionist want to take the US, not "Leave" it. And they've weaponized our two party system to do so over the past 50 years. Fifty million or so citizens becoming non-citizens and a quick fall to a majority squalid Third World status means nothing to them, as long as the elite think they continue to live their lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in comfort and security. That requires them to keep their somewhat privileged pet citizens isolated, stupid, fearful, and angry against the rest of the population. There must always be an insidious yet strangely "weak" enemy - intelligence and compassion - threatening these "true patriots" that can only be overcome by outright rejection and cruelty.

The Civil War coming up is a Class-Race Civil War using captured Courts, Religion, and Legislators.

Haele