While everyone is watching the world stage and some are predicting WWIII, isn't there a good chance that the USA is getting close to some kind of civil war?

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Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

All the ingredients are there and it won’t take much to put it all together.

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droning_in_my_ears@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My country is going through a civil war right now.

The US is nowhere near close. You’ll be fine.

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- LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Where are you from?
  
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  - droning_in_my_ears@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sudan
    
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CADmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
First of all, disclaimer, I’m just a random weirdo on the internet. I don’t have a law degree, I’m not a politician. I’m probably naked and masturbating while writing this.

Are we going to have a Civil War 2: Now With More F150’s where it’s the north vs the south? No.

Are we going to reach a point where the US sort of falls apart into separate little countries after a lot of unpleasantness? I’m not as confident in saying “No”.

I think what will happen first is less “civil war” and more “societal collapse”. There are very few places in the US where someone can rent an apartment by themselves, and have a decent life with nice hobbies, while only having one income. Buying a house by yourself is even farther out of reach.

But I am noticing something that is a lot closer to everyone than real estate: food is getting expensive. A hamburger at a fast food joint used to be a quick and cheap, although not healthy, way to get lunch, but now a combo meal basically anywhere is $15. For one person. So cook at home, right? Ignoring the difficulties of cooking for oneself after working both jobs, or working all day at one job, that isn’t much cheaper. Making a healthy meal for yourself and your family is a skill that not everyone has, and groceries aren’t cheap either. I think the first thing that is going to happen is going to be mass food theft, followed by food riots. It’s already starting in fact, how many memes have popped up with variations on the saying “If you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t”? Stealing food from a large company is acceptable for a lot of people. With rising COL, we will approach a point where a majority of people cannot afford food, and food isn’t a house or a shiny new car. Food isn’t a choice.

There will be hysterical articles in NYT about how these poor struggling retailers are losing SO MUCH money (but not really) from theft, and you’ll start seeing two squad cars parked outside of every grocery store and walmart - even in “nice” areas.

And that’s where things will start to escalate. Not everyone likes police now, and seeing a neighbor thrown on the ground and arrested, if not just killed, in walmart because she was trying to get food for her family isn’t going to make them more popular. One or two cops cannot fend off everyone in a walmart. Oh, the cops have guns? That’s adorable, so do some people in a walmart. Political feelings about police won’t matter when it’s your stomach growling, when it’s your children going hungry.

I expect this would be the point where food would get locked up, only distributed by employees. Which would make it cost more, and more time consuming to acquire. There will be lines. There will also be people who will grow food - but not everyone can do that, and I’m cynical enough to think that some locales will pass laws against “backyard farming” in the name of “food safety”, pushed by grocery stores trying to get that extra .025% profit this quarter.

What will happen once people can’t get food, will be the local PD being completely unable to enforce anything.

Remember that it’s bread AND circuses.

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- PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  There will be hysterical articles in NYT about how these poor struggling retailers are losing SO MUCH money (but not really) from theft
  
  Yeah, that’s been retracted.
  
  Now the only reason to park two squad cars outside of every Kroger is to determine minorities into doing what they were already doing, i.e.: going grocery shopping.
  
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- sour@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  backyard farming was plan ._.
  
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  - CADmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My wife and I tried it this year, and we ended up with a lot of food from a spot ~110 m^2^ in size. We also have a couple of chickens, they are mostly pets that eat ticks and clear the ground while giving us eggs.
    
    I say we need more backyard farms.
    
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Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Tensions are definitely higher than last decade and the decade before. The collapse of the Soviet Union and relatively good economy of the 1990s relieved a lot of tension.

But we’re still a ways from WW3. We’re back into a pretty normal range for the Cold War. We know China and Russia have the will and the means to try and expand. But they know we have the will and the means to stop them in certain places. That’s important because the first two world wars have very different start points that we aren’t close to meeting.

World War 1 was started by chains of alliances between countries. They were meant to keep balance but they were decentralized. So there was no committee ruling on Article 5 or bringing new members in. Which is how anarchists in Serbia set off the alliances like a chain of explosives. Both the CSTO and NATO contain rules preventing such a thing. WW1 was helped by cultural views on war. Europe hadn’t had a proper industrialized war yet. So everyone thought it was going to be another affair with picnics and a couple large set piece battles.

World War 2 was started by a specific ideology in a country run by meth heads. Hitler was as high as he was crazy. There were a lot of problems left over from World War 1 that gave him an opening but at the core of it all, if he had made a level headed assessment he’d have known he could never win against the US/UK/RUS alliance.

Neither Russia nor China wants the economic devastation that would result from a World War 3. They aren’t meth heads and the glory of war is long dead. There’s some rumors too that the Chinese are looking at what western equipment can do in Ukraine and they’re currently purging some officers who insisted we were exaggerating our capabilities. (They built plans and bought equipment over decades on those recommendations). Russia couldn’t invade a cardboard box much less a NATO country at this point.

Now, American Civil War 2. It’s not likely for two reasons. One, fighting a war is far more complicated than it used to be. You could gather a bunch of rifles and cannons to have a serious force in 1861. Now days whoever the Army sides with will win in hours. It’s not an exaggeration to say a militia could run off a town’s police force, set up checkpoints, and take over. But while they were celebrating they’d get hit by air to ground missiles and 25mm rounds from a single helicopter they will never see or hear. And they certainly won’t see the special forces team in the woods designating targets. If for some reason they did need to be engaged by the regular infantry it would not go well for them at all. They need to deal with drones, snipers, mortars, artillery, and light tanks. Furthermore there have been head to head practice fights between veterans and militias. (Reality TV in the 2000’s got wild.) It never ended well for the militia. They would be outmaneuvered, pinned down, and dead, in about 5 minutes.

Two, the modern model is terrorism. In a Civil War you need a large percentage of support. You have to field whole divisions and the logistics therein. But for political violence you need support from 10 percent of the population in a region to have places to hide and logistics. Also, you can cause havoc with a force the size of a company.

I would say it’s highly likely we’ll see more political violence before we either come back together as a country or we allow a region to become autonomous or even independent.

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- ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Furthermore there have been head to head practice fights between veterans and militias. (Reality TV in the 2000’s got wild.)
  
  A British youtuber hired a few retired SAS to play paintball with him and his friends. Spoiler: the SAS guys won every round
  
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  - someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You sometimes hear about the paintballers winning, but when you’re not actually at risk of death you take more chances.
    
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  - MechanicalJester@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I played a little paintball, and the most impressive game was when I had sprinted along the perimeter to get a sniper angle on a path, wait 20 seconds, and have a Marine Recon AD barrel roll from behind a tree 30 feet from me that I never heard and put a single round in my goggles before I knew what was happening. It bounced but I wasn’t about to call that anything but legit AF.
    
    I saw the military haircut and asked him after the round.
    
    I’m great against paper targets…but that’s not the same as combat and I am crystal clear about it.
    
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- charliespider@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  whoever the Army sides with will win in hours.
  
  And what if the army splits in two? That happens in civil wars ya know!
  
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  - Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Unlikely. The military has a weird culture. It’s far more likely to stake out a position in the center for as long as possible. Going after violent extremists on both sides. In the end though it will choose the Constitution over anything else. So if there’s one side still trying to use that, that’s whose going to get the military. For reference, the military was so supportive of Trump and his anti Constitution rhetoric that they voted blue in 2020. That’s not because it suddenly had more progressives or liberals. It’s because the conservatives in the military are Constitutionalists.
    
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- Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  All I an interested in is this…
  
  Reality TV in the 2000s got wild.
  
  Now I am familiar with the dystopia masterpiece that was kids Nation.
  
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  - Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That was an episode of preppers. I can’t remember if it was Discovery or History that ran the show. But yeah they thought they were going to blind night vision with flashlights. It didn’t work.
    
    I was also trying to generalize personal experience where someone would bring their “friends” to mandatory fun paintball. Well now that became a lot more fun real quick.
    
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CaptainProton@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not really: for context, the civil rights movement in 50’s and 60’s was far more violent, like actually violent with military being called in across many American cities.

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- SupraMario@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Civil wars happen when people are hungry, lack shelter and jobs. None of that is happening here right now. Protesting and rioting is nothing when people have homes to return to and McDonald’s to pick up on the way home.
  
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  - clockwork_octopus@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Uh, lots and lots of people are hungry, lack shelter and jobs. Almost 600,000 people in the US right now are unhoused, and one in eight homes are food insecure (roughly 44 million). The only area where the US is doing good right now is the unemployment rate, which is currently sitting at an ideal 3.7%.
    
    As for causes of civil war, economic inequality plays a large role, as does political deprivation, both of which are rampant (you can thank late-stage capitalism for the first, and the far-right for the second). There are other factors at play, of course, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility for the US to go there.
    
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  - Illuminostro@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Well there’s civil war with actual armies and military actions and such. That’s really not likely to happen.

Now civil unrest? Yes that may happen.

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callouscomic@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Love how people don’t know our history and presume that things are somehow more divided now than all the other times.

It’s always been like this.

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Furball@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Gonna put it simply: No lmao

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- EatYouWell@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, there will be some domestic terrorist cells that pop up, but my bet is 90% of the people who want to participate would shit their pants and run the second bullets start flying.
  
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  - RippleEffect@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I know I’m not trying to participate in a war.
    
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Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The first Civil War was started when slave states sent squads up north to round up "escaped slaves" which frequently included all black people in a town, even if they'd never been enslaved. The free states tried to stop this, and then they threw a hissy fit and got their shit kicked in.

I can definitely see red states sending cops to arrest women fleeing to get an abortion, and free states trying to stop them and that leading to violence.

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- someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  slave states sent squads up north to round up “escaped slaves” which frequently included all black people in a town
  
  Wow never heard of this.
  
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bradorsomething@ttrpg.network ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Robert Evans did a great series on how it might play out called “It Could Happen Here.” iheart.com/…/the-second-american-civil-war-307510…

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- dellish@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Is that the Behind The Bastards Robert Evans? Love his work.
  
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  - Pea666@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The same guy yes.
    
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Sensitivezombie@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Civil War? No. What is possible and already happening at State levels is following the direction of Hungry. Authoritarian judges, politicians are being installed across the US and progressive and even moderate laws being challenged. Roe vs Wade comes to mind. On the federal level we see the installment of far right federal judges and Supreme Court justices. All coming together to help install far right authoritarian in the executive and legislative branches. Yes, socially, Americans have been more divided in the past, but this time there’s is a deliberate attempt to change the governance of US from the inside through brute force.

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gzrrt@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The US has a pretty severe urban / rural divide in most of its states, but I don't think it's enough. You'd usually need a pretty clean split along territorial lines for that.

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- chaogomu@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You don't need a clean territorial split for a civil war. You just need clean lines of separation between different groups. There have been civil wars based on ethnic lines, religious lines, and even ideologies.
  
  The wars without clear territory get messy. Like genocide messy.
  
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graycube@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There is a movie coming out in a few months about a US Civil War: https://youtu.be/aDyQxtg0V2w?si=oRudiMaKVQmBy2R_

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- DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nice, A24. I’ll see that one in the theaters!
  
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- null@slrpnk.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Oof, that was more chilling than I expected.
  
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  - blazeknave@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Kind of ruined my day
    
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520@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Almost fucking did happen. If the Capitol Riots achieved what they were meant to, it almost certainly would have ended up with civil war.

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- ElleChaise@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I sure hope you're right. If enough of the country hasn't realized this dude isn't on their side, we will see a dictatorship unfold, with all the bells and whistles that come with.
  
  Where two groups who are diametrically opposed to one anothers' ways of life must share a home, war is inevitable.
  
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- zbyte64@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This. Another Jan 6th is the best we can hope for at this point. If Trump wins, it will be much worse than the first time. If he loses, but wins the coupe, then we get a civil war. I don’t like how 2 of the 3 options are a national shit show as opposed to a failed insurrection (best scenario at this point).
  
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  - 520@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don't think Trump has the political capital to stage a successful coup at this point.
    
    Even those that still believe in the big lie would be hesitant to join another coup attempt. They've seen how the Jan 6th attempt failed and how the participants have fucked around and found out. Donny did not protect them like they thought he would. Not to mention he only uses his own Truth Social now, which kneecaps his reach when compared to his old Twitter account.
    
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dan1101@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Can’t afford to take the time off work to fight a war. Unless the corporations will sponsor us.

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- Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You know they would. They’d love to be the next government.
  
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Unsustainable@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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- Jaysyn@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You should probably take your meds.
  
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- theKalash@feddit.ch ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  and make anyone making any sense look like a conspiracy nut.
  
  You’re not making any sense and still look like a conspiracy nut. The system must be rigged or something.
  
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- kpw@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Please leave Lemmy, your kind is not welcome here.
  
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- DarkThoughts@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fucking hell. Take your pills. Like seriously. Get help.
  
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- otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  ,>make anyone making any sense look like a conspiracy nut.
  
  You’re telling on yourself here that you think conspiracy nuts make sense.
  
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Pratai@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I mean, the gravy seals may try and overthrow the government again in 2024, but they’ll be embarrassingly squashed within a half a day.

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angrystego@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No civil war. The transition to dictatorship and religious totality seems to go smoothly.

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uphillbothways@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Civil war didn't happen when Gore "lost" on some technical bullshit, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

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- someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There wasn’t a clown leader and Fox hadn’t amped people up for 22 years.
  
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- zbyte64@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Imagine the libs actually taking up arms. I can’t.
  
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You don’t need the USA to be involved for a World War to start. If anything, a civil war in the USA could help spark one.

The peace built after World War II was mainly founded on American and Soviet force not intervening with each other, then American military dominance. Without a USA like power acting as a guarantor of the current international system, it is very likely that decades of pent up aggression will start to spill forward across the globe, including between other major powers.

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ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s already underway and the cold civil war between Republicans and everyone else is one of the battle fronts. Ukraine is another.

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wabafee@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
From an outsiders perspective. I think USA is heading there, though probably way up there like 20-30 years from now. My reasoning, both side of parties refusal to compromise, government shutdowns, and radicalization of the both parties. Then there is Trump egging to be the first Dictator. Then there is proud boys, antifa given time will eventually militarized. There is also increase in inequality. This all eventually buildup someday to the point of conflict.

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Mr_Blott@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Can’t see it. People who own guns are the most cowardly people on earth, change my mind

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xc2215x@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
We won’t have World War 3 but there will be wars happening.

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Bizarroland@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
All I'm going to say in regards to any kind of American civil war is this: Whoever fires the first shot loses.

That's the primary issue everyone is up against. They don't want to be the ones to fire the first shot because that will justify the national guard being rolled out and a massive escalation.

It's not going to end well for the loser.

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  On Jan 6, armies of magats attacked the Capitol Building with the explicit goal of lynching the vice president and Congress. The president was actively targeting the vice president and it was pretty much the premise of like twelve different Gerard Butler movies and is pretty much the reason that we pretend that soldiers are supposed to question the chain of command and so forth.
  
  The military and national guard actively sat on their hands and waited to see how things would shake out. As much as I hate to acknowledge it, the Secret Service and The Boys in Blue are the ones who saved the country that day.
  
  So no. The first shot doesn’t matter and there is no guarantee that there would even be an escalation in the face of a violent insurrection. Because there wasn’t.
  
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- Melkath@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes... that is how civil wars occur... Fed vs alternative government...
  
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  - Entropywins@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes... that is how you miss the forest for the trees... skipping interesting assertions and waxing philosophical on the definition of civil war
    
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