No. Like you say, riots, and of course the ongoing epidemic of stochastic terrorism, possibly with more violence directed against politicians and the government, but it’s definitely not going to look like tanks shooting at tanks, and it’s also not going to look like people crawling through tunnels a la Vietnam. What American simultaneously cares enough about politics to risk their life over it, while also being willing to go live in a trench without their phone for a month? No, as long as it’s an option to live a normal life where you can return to your couch and watch or read the news while feeling righteously indignant and engage with social media however you like, that’s what people will do. Look at the January 6’ers, for example, who fully expected to return home and be able to post all about the exciting event all over social media.

Now, that all goes out the window of some lunatic decides to start WWIII with China and institutes a draft (assuming we don’t all just die in nuclear hellfire). You tell people they’ll have to give up their phones and go live in a trench anyway and maybe some decide they’d rather fight the people making them do that. Americans generally love war, but a lot of that comes from being completely and totally separated from any real life consequences from it. And of course, no insurgency would stand any chance of defeating the US government without foreign support.

Arguably the US is already in early stages of one. In fact, a model US themselves produced forecasts collapse and a likely civil war in the near future. https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/model-predicting-united-states-disorder-now-points-to-civil-war/12365280

Inshallah

We’re not going to survive global warming if there isn’t one.

I think the drug addiction crisis that they have is somehow preventing/delaying this to happen. But the elements for a civil war are there: weapons access, ideological intolerance, economical imbalance, evee-differing state and federal law and policies, corruption in government and the probable rise of a political group that lost the presidency causing the Capitol Attack out of resentment, between others.

Democracy in the USA feels like holding with pins. I see the country as conservative to far-right with very few space for other political ideologies.

Sure. Could happen. Imagine trump wins somehow. Then imagine he orders the military to help the Russians or even just orders some people round up like he promises. His disdain for our military is clear. Some generals will follow because he is the president. But others will refuse. And Trump is dumb enough to order his generals to arrest the other generals. Boom, civil war. Or if trump loses… his followers will look for someone else to follow. If someone actually competent shows up, similar path, just 4 years later.

The friend of certainty is time. One day perhaps then we won’t even call ourselves Americans. I doubt the 1860s will happen again anytime soon. Maybe something closer in scale to Blair Mountain.

Look to history. We’ve had two. Look at the words explaining the necessity of independence in the declaration of independence. Those were not hollow words but detailed a long series of abuses. Then look to the causes of the Civil War. A perfidious institution anathematic to the very core ideal of the nation, that all men are created equal.

Our times doubtless have our problems but the do not meet nearly the standard set in the past.

Haha no.

A lot of people don’t realise how shit a war can be, even when you’re hundreds of miles away from it. Your local economy fucking TANKS, jobs disappear, workers disappear on the next plane out, and you’re left with a population that’s struggling on all fronts, trying to make a brave face.

America is full of crazy disparity, but war doesn’t care. The one benefit is that the billionaire class would get fucking rinsed by the locals for every shiny trinket they have when suddenly food costs a fortune because your last shipment got shot up.

“War is only a few meals away” -idk

Of course it can. War can happen any time, anywhere.

Could? Ehhh… Not really, at least while the economy is profitable. Liberals will do anything to stay in a union with their conservative colleagues. If we see wall street deteriorate then there’d be a real possibility.

Just based off how comfortable Americans are, no.

Of course it could happen. Do I think it will happen in the next two months as we get through election season? Nah.

I also don’t think a civil war in modern days would look anything like it did in the 1860s. Aside from the obvious advance in weapons and tactics, there’s no convenient clear line between one half and the other like there was with North/South. It would look more like civil wars do in other countries in the 21st century.

Alternate question…

What the fuck is a ‘battleground’ state, and why does the media even have the nerve to use that term? I mean I know what it basically means, they should stick with ‘swing’ state, instead of putting the word ‘battle’ into nutjob’s heads just before an election.

I don’t care what people’s political opinions are, but we already have enough gun nuts out there, and at least a couple attempts on the former president’s life.

You can’t even feel safe sending your kids to school in numerous areas, and can’t even always feel safe in a Walmart these days.

Are you sure we’re not already in a civil war?

I think it would be very wise to just vote for the normal person so we don’t even have to entertain the possibility of an authoritarian government and a resulting civil war. Once we are no longer a democracy, or are a managed democracy like Russia, it will be extremely difficult to unring that bell.

I think that the US is primed to have a civil war. Ever since Reagan fucked the fairness doctrine in 1987, we’ve been getting more and more divided. Gonna sound like an old fogey here, but it used to be that everybody tuned into the same news, and watched the same anchors deliver the same updates about the same world events. We had differing opinions on world events, but we all agreed on what was and what was not reality.

We don’t have that now. It’s like two completely separate universes occupy the same physical space. In one universe, climate change is fueled by anthropogenic forces and is causing more and more catastrophic damage, viruses are real and vaccines are effective tools to combat them, and thousands of traitors tried to overthrow the government because their cult leader lost an election. In the other? Climate change isn’t real, and also the Democrats have secret hurricane machines that they are using to punish Florida for being a red state, COVID isn’t real, and also it’s a super virus concocted in a lab in Wuhang at the request of Hillary Clinton, vaccines don’t work, and also vaccines are secretly a government tool to kill people, and Jan 6th was a peaceful protest of patriots, and also it was a violent insurrection by Antifa.

We don’t share the same reality with each other. In one reality, Democrats are basically similar to milquetoast conservatives from any other first world nation, and they care much more about maintaining the status quo than they do about making progress. In the other reality? Democrats are evil incarnate, and they’re waging an active campaign to round up all of the patriots and send them to concentration camps, and they’re also pedophiles and Marxists. In that reality, it’s far more preferable to vote for a dead pimp than it is to vote for a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat.

And it’s not just the whole two-realities thing. Ever since Obama became president, the brains of a huge chunk of people in this country just broke. Some of the nicest-seeming people you’d ever met instantly turned into vile, hate-spewing racists, and started mass subscribing to every single conspiracy theory feed out there. That was 16 years ago. Their rhetoric has been getting more violent every year since. That’s to say nothing of the huge increase in terrorist incidents since then - according to the CSIS:

The number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined

So yeah. I think that this country is primed for organized, mass violence. At this point, all that it’s lacking is the organization. Thankfully, Donald Trump is an incredibly stupid man. I don’t think he’d be capable of organizing people to that level. He can stoke their hatred, for sure. He can inspire the craziest among them to firebomb a mosque or shoot up a Democrat’s office… but he ain’t built to lead people. If someone who had even 1/10th of his prowess as a cult leader, but who was actually intelligent and had a tactical mind came along… hoo boy.