None of us want to live in a war-torn state. That’s why I and most others voted for harm reduction. What we’re facing now is terrorism. The USAmerican people are being terrorized by federal forces.

People are not calling for violence for a economic policy we don’t like, which is what the first USA Civil War was fought over. We’re dealing with federal forces who are hell-bent on terrorizing us. What politically-aware people have been calling for, for the better part of a year, is the next degree of harm reduction. Targeted political assassinations. Fighting ICE agents. Storming the capital, perhaps. With each month, this government gets more empowered and more violent.

War is awful. Violence terrorizes people. I have severe C-PTSD from the police response to the BLM riots in 2021, still. I have vivid nightmares, still. I understand, and I felt that when I saw Trump take office. I felt that watched that university student get abducted by ICE at the beginning of this mess. I feel that with every clip out of Minnesota.

We all know war is terrible. No one thinks the USA going through a Civil War will be exciting. People see violence and they want it to stop, and they see massive peaceful movements that have not worked, in the face of a government that shows no hesitation in threatening or attacking its people; and those people are desperate.

What is the alternative? We let federal agents keep shooting and abducting people until some magical aspect of Democracy manifests and pushes them out? How do we actually envision that happening? What do we do for the three years until our next presidential election? Every person who is killed, abducted, disappeared is a life permanently lost.

For those who talk about peaceful protests and voting the fascists out, how do you expect to win elections when your voters are being killed? It’s not just the ICE agents, either, though they certainly are violent. Consider: Layoffs, Homelessness, Imprisonment, Emigration, Suicide. The people here today are not going to be the same people here in three years.

The reality is, the people of the USA are under violent occupation. We are living the terrors of war. Violence does not require mutual-consent; and when only one side chooses to fight, you end with a massacre. That is what we have been living through – a slow-rolling massacre. No one knows what will stop this, but maybe, just maybe, ICE agents would think twice before going on deployment if half of the last three squads never made it home.

What OP doesn’t mention is that the memes are gonna be so on point!!

I would prefer peace. But let’s be frank, that isn’t likely to happen, because the Trump Regime consists of people who don’t value a peaceful, kind, and just world.

“Do Not Split”

Learned about it from this episode of the Team Human podcast

But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.

And when they are, that’s going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it’s going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we’re not going to criticize them openly, and they’re not going to criticize us openly.

If we’re the pacifists, we’re not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don’t know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we’re not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.

It’s not like they have to come out and tell the media, oh, we approve of our more sort of confrontational colleagues. They just keep quiet. They just keep quiet.

Understanding that a range of tactics is probably going to be necessary. Nobody really knows what’s going to work. But if everybody’s pushing back against a particularly violent state, then everybody’s really on the same side.

My roommate watched a woman get dragged from her wrecked car, bleeding and screaming for help, being disappeared by ICE. They were recording and I’ve seen the video. I’ll probably never forget it. I carry a whistle now but I pray I’ll never need it. We’re like two weeks into whatever the fuck this is and I’m already sick of it. I’m tired of running to the window every time I hear a car alarm, I’m tired of wondering if I hear the wind or a whistle. I’m tired of worrying about more people I know getting abducted, and scrutinizing every vehicle that drives past if they’re going to fuck with me because I’m visibly queer and also trying not to be mistaken for the gestapo occupying my city. Is this an occupation? And I know war is worse. Fuck all of this.

Well at least the US will let other countries alone

Relax, Americans aren’t used to seeing and responding to an actual oppressive regime nor have the capacity for supporting meaningful change. Plus the military structure is so well defined, there would be very little chance anyone would fragment or opt to join a “side” except for the active government. Most you would see is a bunch of useless resignations.

In true American fashion, everything you fear will just happen really half assed. If there is even a hint of a civil war, it’ll be snuffed out by your favorite 3 lettered agency long before it begins.

I doubt that America as we know it can survive, period. There needs to be a change - whether that’s about wealth classes, political beliefs, or various -isms. We can’t use a system that was intentionally broken to fix things. The words of slavers from 250 years ago are too weak. The way that things have developed across the regions of this massive, unwieldy, federation needs amendment.

Unfortunately, right now the pendulum is swinging hard in one direction. There’s no meaningful fighters on the other side. So us little people have to cling to hope - and that hope is increasingly looking like it has to come from force, and from the barrel of a gun.

“You speak so lightly of war. War is a terrible thing!”

So everyone will be killing everyone, but you still think people are going to go to their jobs to pay bills?

If a civil war happens, no one is going to work. Anyone that does will get gunned down.

If anything pops off, my first priority is protecting my family, which means staying home and barricading and waiting a few days before leaving to do recon.

From there either we’ll know if police, national guard, and/or the military will be involved. What states are doing what, and you’ll have local families/communities forming.

Money won’t be a thing, no one is going to work.

Which is why a civil war won’t happen, it’ll crash the economy globally and the 1% can’t have that, so all of this is moot.

The first U.S. civil war never really ended, it has just gone into a long “cold” phase.

Those times are ending.

I totally agree with this post. We don’t need violence or a civil war. I really believe peacefully organizing and changing the minds of voters can make a big difference. We can win the midterms big in 2026. We first reach out to undecided voters and then flip them to blue and keep building momentum such that by the time it’s November Democrats will flip so many seats.

We don’t have the spine for a civil war. Closest thing we’ll feasibly see are a few targeted political assassinations. Things will get kinda noisy after that in a bickering kind of way, but most of us won’t even remember it by the following Monday. It’ll fizzle out.

It’s worthwhile you mention Sarajevo, and in reference to that I will post this tidbit posted by a MetaFilter user in 2009 regarding their experience in the siege of Sarajevo. I have it bookmarked and post it from time to time where it seems appropriate. The reality is though, you’re correct, Americans by and large don’t know what they’re asking for.

Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.

Of those who couldn’t leave my city, Sarajevo:

Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the “long haul” - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.

Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of “preparation” to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don’t know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it’s worth something.

But here’s the main point: “Preparing” for the disaster really didn’t do anyone much good. Those who “prepared” ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.

We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren’t attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I’d take a bite of a friend’s salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I’d never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.

Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.

You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn’t. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn’t have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.

Those who’d prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can’t swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us. Again, I can’t swear it, but I hear stories, and it seems that these people suffer from post-war trauma, guilt and nightmares more than the rest of us.

Those survivalists, I feel sorry for them. It’s no way to live.

posted by Dee Xtrovert at 9:33 PM on January 28, 2009

I think the country splits into multiple nations before a true all out conflict. Maybe a 4 part split.

Old South Northeast Some kind of Texas southern alliance with other states in the Louisiana purchase Northwest and Pacific coast.