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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThought experiment: What would Civil War in the US even look like in the 21st century?
I can't imagine how and where it would be fought. I can't see phalanxes of red coats and blue coats squaring off in the middle of like Seattle, or Atlanta and shooting at each other. How would it even work? I'm a liberal in a fairly conservative outpost in Washington State, and what...roving bands of trump humpers are going to come to my door and slaughter my family?
Would the Dems and Repubs create armies?
I don't want a civil war, I'd be very happy if we all just agreed to split - and let the repubs HAVE the original name - they've ruined it anyway, let us split, we'll call ourselves something new and be done with the whole lot of 'em.
How do YOU picture 21st century civil war in the United States?
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FreepFryer
(7,077 posts)Chasstev365
(5,191 posts)The Northern progressive states can then merge with Canada and let "Dumbfuckistan" rule itself!
roamer65
(36,745 posts)New England and NY would be the first to leave.
They have more in common with Canadian provinces like Ontario, than they do with states like Alabama or Mississippi.
GaYellowDawg
(4,447 posts)It's clearly city vs. rural. There's red all over eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, middle Pennsylvania, western New York, extensive stretches of Ohio, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, and other "blue states" - your "Northern progressive states" would tear themselves apart first.
You are clearly not paying attention.
Chasstev365
(5,191 posts)Paladin
(28,264 posts)Generally launched at us here at DU by all-in-good-fun, playful, self-satisfied, coastal blue-staters. Ha ha ha.
If a civil war breaks out, I'll be taking up arms against my neighbors. Make a joke out of THAT.
Behind the Aegis
(53,961 posts)To even pretend the Northern states are "progressive" is a damn joke. Besides, there is more to this country than North and South now, and racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and the like are not contained to the South by any means. As someone said the other day, there are no completely BLUE states, but there are mostly red, some even completely red states. The "war" isn't between North and South, much to the chagrin of stupid confederates and idiotic Yankees, no; it is rural vs urban, and educated vs uneducated, and those things know no state boundaries.
Chasstev365
(5,191 posts)cwydro
(51,308 posts)Learn how to spell before you go insulting others.
ProfessorGAC
(65,076 posts)You said something about not being able to spell right here at DY, i throw out a joke post to you, and then 10 minutes later you're commenting on a dumb post where the spelling was bad!
I think i need to ask if you set that up???!!!???
If you didn't, the stars sure aligned, didn't they?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)
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jaysunb
(11,856 posts)Leghorn21
(13,524 posts)pnwest - they can't "organize" for shit, but they could surely do much harm.
What concerns me, though, is knowing that, like, blackwater (forget their new name, don't care), and tigerswan (did "security" at Standing Rock) are privately owned outfits. THEY can organize.
And where do ICE and Border Patrol cadres stand on murdering their fellow American citizens? I do not know right now.
There are most likely some state (fed?!) LE who might be "available" to wage war, as well.
I do not know, but I'm not the only one who's been wondering about this scenario for many months on end now...
OH
Sugar Smack
(18,748 posts)I wonder about that, plus what you mentioned, as well.
Leghorn21
(13,524 posts)little minds, utterly, as more is revealed...aw, maaan...
But I also "hear" that we'll be okay, so I shall cling to that bit of hope (sigh)-
Not Ruth
(3,613 posts)and health needs would be met. Your property would be redistributed. Eventually you would be swapped for citizens from the other side. Your could visit and possibly even work across the sides. After a generation, it would not even be a memory.
Essentially you would be the child in an amicable divorce.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,735 posts)not blue and red (that was the Revolutionary War). More importantly, the Civil War involved alliances of entire states into two separate (temporary) countries in contiguous geographic areas. We are no longer divided in that way. The "blue" states are generally in a group on the west coast, a few in the upper Midwest, and some more on the northeast coast, and within those states (and within many of the "red" states as well) there's also a significant urban-rural divide.
So, instead of an entire seceded country vs. the original country fighting along battle lines, mostly on or near borders as in the 19th Century Civil War, you'd have county-to-county fighting within the states. Where would the armies come from? There's no such thing as a county army. Would the fighting be conducted by small citizen militias? In my area it would be liberal, heavily populated Hennepin and Ramsey Counties (MN) vs. nearby right-wing Anoka and Stearns Counties. The same or similar situations would probably exist in many other parts of the country; you'd have liberal Madison (Dane County), WI vs. the wingers in Paul Ryan's district; the Seattle area vs. central and eastern WA, and so forth. It would be a free-for-all that would involve everybody in a very bad way.
pnwest
(3,266 posts)and your other point about allied states divided along a geographical line is what I mean when I say I can't picture how it would work - there's no "line" between us and our ideologies, we all live mixed up together in every county of every state. I mean, am I going to try to just live my life, and try to go to the grocery store and take my life in my hands cause the clerk might be a repub, knows I'm a liberal and they whip out a gun and shoot me? I'm having a hard time expressing myself. Would it be the citizenry just duking it out in the parking lot at the mall, or would there be dem and con militias, or the US Army fighting all of us? Which side would the US Army be on? I just can't figure what the what. I'm sorry I can't articulate what I mean - maybe that is a statement in and of itself about the ridiculousness of it all.
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)fallout87
(819 posts)I hope we dont have to find out! But it certainly seems to be headed that way.
milestogo
(16,829 posts)First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...low-level assassinations, terrorism, armies of occupation in the guise of Protecting Law and Order, drones, no fixed boundaries or battlegrounds...slowly descending into a Mad Max-style anarchy. Something along these lines could last for decades, just as in Ireland...
MedusaX
(1,129 posts)Local Sheriffs will deputize the RW Militia Wannabes to legally engage in physical violence against whomever they deem potentially seditious.
Their reward/incentive, in addition to the obvious joy they will derive from their legal power to maim & murder, will be the assets they seize from those whom they deem potentially seditious....
Paranoia will be fostered by encouraging the deputized to 'blend in' with the community...
or even to incite seditious behaviors under false pretenses...
This will be publicized in order to create fear and distrust amongst the community members...
Which, in turn, will result in diminished expressions of opposition and resistance.
However, the financial crisis & chaos will breed animosity amongst neighbors and will create an environment whereby basic needs (food shelter etc) will become increasingly difficult to satisfy and ultimately will require unlawful acts to be committed by typically law abiding citizens.
Societal conditions will continue to devolve as resources become scarce and government control increases. This will effectively double the threat -- as those community members that possess resources will have to protect those resources not only from unwarranted but legally authorized government seizure ...
but also from desperate citizens who no longer have sufficient resources of their own available to meet thei families' basic needs.
Welcome to the Trumptopian nightmare.....
StevieM
(10,500 posts)to the situation surrounding Donald Trump. I don't think Trump is the primary cause, but rather the ultimate example of a symptom.
How confident would you be about our future if we were currently experiencing the developing reality surrounding President Scott Walker?
Or what if the Supreme Court had gone all the way and struck down Obamacare in 2012? What would that have meant for the trajectory of our democracy?
The main impact of things like Trump winning--or not winning--is to make things happen quicker or slower. But either way we have long been heading down a very dark path.
roamer65
(36,745 posts)Ethnic and political cleansing, with a level of war crimes not seen since WW2.
I suspect the Russians and Chinese would eventually invade to quell the threat of failed state with nuclear weapons.
The Russians would come in from the east coast, the Chinese from the west coast.
Leghorn21
(13,524 posts)imagination...damn....
have mercy
brooklynite
(94,598 posts)The Civil War occurred because members of the South in the military or National Guard joined the fight. The Trump folks are not going to have access to the resource of our current Armed Forces which are now nationalized.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)brooklynite
(94,598 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)North and newly-emergent West stood resolute against any expansion. A rough century of compromises around this issue finally broke down over the slaveocrat's unwilingness to see slavery's continue circumscription.
You must be careful when you use the word "because". Now it is true that many Southern state militia (hastily organized after John Brown's failed raid on Harper's Ferry) seized arms and munitions at various southern federal military institutions following the election of 1860 and the various resolutions of secession that quickly ensued. But that was in no way the "cause" of the Civil War.
brooklynite
(94,598 posts)...it's whether they have the ability to weaponize strongly enough to take on the rest of the Country. At the advent of the Civil War, the US did not have a large standing Army, and the States had direct control over armed militias. Those conditions are not in place today.
Amishman
(5,557 posts)Especially with Trump in the white house, the 'judge following orders' types would not be on our side either.
The few Marines I know talk about Mattis as if he were a religious figure.
As I said in another thread, if it comes to full open violence it won't go well for our side. We are heavily concentrated in major cities, and the transportation and utilities that make dense urban populations possible are extremely vulnerable.
Comatose Sphagetti
(836 posts)Nationalistic, nativist, authoritarian, "patriotic" fundamentalist ammosexuals suspicious of even "their own" and dumber than a bag of hair.
GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)Just as well as it did the Davidians.
These right wingers can't organize a nap on a Sunday afternoon.
No way they are splitting the country. Besides who would pay their SS and Medicare?
And if the red areas managed to leave they would need UN aid in 5 years. Without the Blue areas to pay taxes for everything they get they world be a 3rd world country.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Matthew28
(1,798 posts)
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)I live close enough to Canada, and am only a couple of generations removed from them. I know too much about the LAST American Civil War (it was bad enough).
CanonRay
(14,104 posts)There are no well defined, contiguous areas which are of the same mind, e.g.the South. It will be neighbor against neighbor. More like the guerilla war in Missouri.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)Springfield). Missouri was a particularly nasty arena, but one that gets rather short shrift from mainline Civil War histories and historians, mainly because the trans-Mississippi was never as interesting as the Virgina or Ohio and Kentucky theaters.
mbusby
(823 posts)...a nation wide Nerf gun battle. "I know you are but what am I..."
0rganism
(23,957 posts)the split, when it happens, will be neither peaceful nor pleasant, and be as much urban vs. rural as state vs. state
WheelWalker
(8,955 posts)
sfwriter
(3,032 posts)All that seems unclear is the size of the death toll.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)
SweetieD
(1,660 posts)But Rwanda is a more fitting example. It would seem to come out of nowhere one day and be incredibly violent. Also Rwanda conservative pro government talk show radio instigated a lot of the violence.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)One thing I have been more and more worried about is how Balkanized our nation is becoming. Our nation was not always as broken down by politics as to where people live nearly as much as it is now.
The rural/urban divide would be the line along which the battle lines are drawn most likely. That divide already exists now in mentality with especially much of the rural population feeding into the "us vs them" rhetoric.
The rural side is armed and knows how to use the arms. I'm not talkijbg about militia types, I'm talking about the farmer who is used to shooting running coyotes at night and the deer hunter whose scooted bolt action rifle can hit a deer at 500 yards.
The urban side largely is not.
The suburban areas would be caught in the middle and would become the bulk of the fighting area.
Urban areas are hugely, hugely dependent upon food coming in. If the trucks stop for just one week the store shelves will be bare- grocery stores don't have big back rooms full of stock, they take what comes in right off the truck and on to the shelves. The trucks stop and the shelves empty in a matter of hours.
Most people in the urban areas don't have more than a few days food on the shelves.
If the rural people stop the flow of food things get desperate fast. Riots follow. People try and leave the urban areas seeking food or safety and some leave seeking to fight or take what they want. The suburbs become a battleground of urban people trying to escape or seize food to survive, the suburban dwellers torn between protecting themselves and family and helping whatever side they are on and the rural types seeking to keep the urban people contained and stuck in the cities.
SweetieD
(1,660 posts)1st there are a lot of guns in urban areas. A lot. I'd say more than rural areas. How skilled people are in using guns. That's another story. I agree that people who hunt a lot would be better marksmen.
2nd as far as food supply most people in rural areas are not totally self sufficient for all food stuffs. Most people I know in rural communities still go to the grocery store. And the people I know who have animals (cows, pigs) send them out to someone else to get slaughtered.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)Now, your gun crime is concentrated more in urban areas, but that is not indicative of overall rates of ownership. It just is indicative of the trend that more criminals there use guns.
According to Pew at the below link rural households are more than 2 times more likely to have a gun in the household.
http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/12/section-3-gun-ownership-trends-and-demographics/
28% or urban households vs 59% or rural households is a huge divide. And in rural areas where people hunt or have farms where guns are seen as tools those households probably have a lot more per household.
Your right on self sufficiency. But rural America can exist and feed itself without the urban areas. Households don't need to be self sufficient the areas just need to be able to sustain themselves as a region. Distribution would change and choice would be lower, but they could still keep people fed. Urban areas absolutely cannot subsist without a constant flow of goods from the rural areas. If you simply closed the interstates into urban areas for 3-4 days it would be panic.
Katrina is a textbook example of this. There were rural areas that were also badly damaged that didn't suffer near the societal breakdown that New Orleans saw.
SweetieD
(1,660 posts)areas when many are illegal/unregistered.
As far as Katrina I disagree on the so called societal breakdown. There were a lot of other factors at play there.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)I know the media makes it seem that way- but it isn't so.
Your criminals who are willing to have illegal guns in urban areas are what percentage of the population? Maybe 1-2% tops. Most people are law abiding and even much of the criminal population doesn't seek to illegally have guns.
You are talking as if a huge percentage of urban populations are illegally armed violent criminals. But the stats don't support that. Your criminal element gets lots of publicity but in a typical urban city or district it's a tiny sliver of the population.
For your claim to be true more than half the households in NYC and Chicago would have to be illegally possessing firearms to exceed the rural numbers. That simply isn't reality.
And the gangs are not sitting on giant stockpiles of thousands of guns to make up for that difference.
spin
(17,493 posts)area. With only a couple of exceptions most of my co-workers owned firearms. A good number had concealed carry permits. i worked in a large electronic factory which manufactured high tech components for civilian and military aircraft, missile and satellite guidance systems and computers for the space shuttle. Most of those I worked with were fairly well educated and many were college graduates.
Florida is known as the "Gunshine State" for good reason. In Florida you can carry a loaded handgun in your car without a permit as long as it is properly secured (for example in your glove box which does not have to be locked). Florida is also a "shall issue" state and a concealed carry permit and the required training to obtain one are reasonably priced. Over one million resident Floridians have one.
Obtaining a firearm or a carry permit in many other large urban areas such as New York City, Chicago and San Francisco is far more difficult and expensive so they are not as common as in gun friendly states like Florida and Texas. Consequently in such large blue state urban areas gun ownership is not as common.
In passing many Democrats in Florida own firearms and have concealed carry permits. It's not just a conservative characteristic although probably a higher percentage of conservatives own firearms than liberals.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)And as the link I showed above notes your suburban areas are in the middle on ownership rates.
You are correct in that your blue state big cities probably skew that statistic a good bit in places like NYC and Chicago and D.C. where they structure the laws such to make gun ownership very difficult.
spin
(17,493 posts)If anything the gun ownership here is as high or higher than in the Tampa Bay Area. Of course that may well be because hunting deer and feral hog is quite popular and far more convenient than in the Bay Area of Florida.
I remember when I first moved here listening to an elderly woman bragging about how she bagged her first deer of the season to a clerk in a hardware store during the black powder season. This hardware store has a firearm section that sells everything from handguns to semiautomatic "assault" rifles such as AR-15s. During the Obama administration the store's shelves were bare of ammo and you had to put popular firearms including handguns on back order and often wait months.
The crime rate here is fairly low compared to Tampa or St. Pete but many women I know carry a loaded firearm in their car.
Oneironaut
(5,504 posts)You might also have cities and towns rebelling and becoming hostile zones. Some politicians would secretly support the rebels, but no states would outright leave the Union. It would be pointless and unconventional, with terrorism being the main weapon of the side opposing the government.
LonePirate
(13,426 posts)haele
(12,660 posts)But it really depends on how the Federal Administration and Congress, and the Courts want to handle it.
We need to remember, we went through the first salvos a "mini-Civil War" through the 60's and 70's with the recognition that there was an inherent social rot in the country and a need for Civil Rights reform. Some people would push that back to the New Deal, but that was more of an economic fight - wresting power from monopolist and the "monied class/ownership society" that most citizens thought was won in the 1950's.
As in the case of the 19th Century Civil War, Civil Rights reform was what gave ammunition to the wealthy to fight against the Federal Government enforcing a Constitutionally guaranteed legal and economic "fairness" in American society.
They could group and point out the "Liberal Social Favoritism" those who didn't fit in with "the majority" and de-legitimize their rights as citizens using stereotypes and wedge issues - and ultimately promote fear.
"These people aren't really people because they're not like you", and "The laws are going to let them take away the benefits and other comfortable stuff you, your parents, and your grandparents 'worked hard' for and that's just not fair, is it?" But ultimately - it's the effort to cut down trust the Government so as return a form of unregulated "Plantation/Company Governance" over everyone's daily lives to local wealthy Bosses, who will *own all the local economies and legal resources* - and will only share with the rest of the citizenry as they see fit.
We have still been fighting that battle off and on because of push-back from certain segments of the population that are frankly fearful of progress - of having to modify their status of privilege over others so that everyone can share in progress, not just the few who can afford it or look "normal" enough to claim it.
Haele
citood
(550 posts)Any future civil war would not at all be like the past one. I think it would not be state vs state, as much as it will be federal vs state. There are a host of issues where the feds and states are at odds right now - Exhibit A being legalized mary jane. Another example would be the Bundy bunch - they are directly challenging not only federal ownership of lands in the west, but also (through local sheriffs) challenging the authority of federal 'forces' from the BLM and other agencies. Also, right now we have a lot of cities and counties pro-actively passing legislation to defy federal immigration enforcement...and it is getting 'dicey', with INS agents going to local courtrooms to make arrests, in direct opposition to the courtroom judge. My state (Kansas) has recently passed laws that essentially state we won't comply with federal law if gun control is ever passed.
Any one of these seemingly small issues could ignite into a state vs feds disagreement where the term 'secession' gets thrown around.
Now, nobody will start shooting, until there is something to shoot over. So, if a state decided to take an issue far enough to start seizing federal lands, buildings, etc, then we're at DEFCON 1. I also wonder about the National Guard. Surely some of the equipment is financed by the federal government (if not in a status of long term lending). Similarly, many police departments sporting armored vehicles don't truly own them - they are lent long term by the federal government. So disputes over military equipment like this could quickly involved people in uniform.
Etc, etc.
spin
(17,493 posts)There would be plenty of attacks on the infrastructure of our nation including the power grid, the rail system and the interstate highway network. A good number of people in our nation have served in the military and a significant number of those have combat experience in war zones and therefore have a good understanding of guerrilla tactics as they experienced it.
Also keep in mind that Americans own 50% of all the guns in the world.
(Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/guns-in-america-statistics/320409/)
Of course some states would secede from the Union and likely split the nation down the middle rather than north and south.
It would be one hell of a mess. Fortunately I don't feel that at this time we are anywhere close to an uprising. We are living in a very contentious time frame but our nation has lived through such times and held together since the Civil War. I suspect we will once again resolve our political disagreements at the ballot box.
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)And since most gun owners in this country are also right-wing, we wouldn't have much of an insurgency either.
We're hopelessly outgunned. Would be better just to partition the country.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)We wouldn't have General Lee 2.0 facing off against General Grant 2.0 with crisscrossing regimented armies.
The first civil war was neatly regional and also a relic of 19th century Napoleonic styled warfare. There was a clear geographic break between the sides. Any future civil strife would likely be far more chaotic and not a simplistic two sided conflict with regular armies.
Response to pnwest (Original post)
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