The Civil War of 2025

[Rhea]

I would hope Dems do not roll over. We need to hold ground and gain ground for democracy now.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Q did get a few things wrong, though, and I know, 'cause I'm a DSSC1 (Deep State Senior Consultant, Grade 1). We don't kidnap juveniles for sexual bondage!!! C'mon, who does that? Way too much heat on that kind of commerce. We kidnap grandmas. You thought the low life expectancy figures in Third World countries was due to malnutrition and disease? Hardly. When those grandmas vanish, it's 'cause we gagged 'em and bagged 'em and sent them to holding centers around the globe. There they are trained to make granny porn, both print, viral, and DVD (top sellers: Ethel's Big Red Snapper, The Golden Girls Gone Wild, and Muriel's Damp Depends.) Why else do you think the second and third items on the DNC expense accounts are usually Boniva and Hull-less Popcorn?

 

[Elixir]

I agree with Elixir that they are ignorant blowhards. I do not think this is dismissive. It is simply calling a very weak bluff.

They don’t care about voting. They care about overturning elections and will do so through crooked and illegal procedures and outright violence.

.. and so they will end up in jail, unable to legally vote ever again. I call that a win for society.
So far, our democratic controls, weak and held together with chewing gum and thread, are nonetheless holding. So far. More or less. Sort of.

Yes, but what happens if they overturn elections through out right theft? Suppose in 2024, Arizona and Georgia go for Biden again, and he needs them to win. Then their legislatures overturn the will of the people and appoint electors for Trump. What do Dems do? Just roll over and take it? It may not be the Republicans that start the violence, but the Democrats! And rightfully so!

Bring in the Cyber Ninjas!

Seriously, what you lay out is the likely scenario. Only if Dems can gain in both houses in ‘22 can a full autocratic takeover in 2024 be averted. IMO locking up perpetrators of violent coup attempts is what democracies should do. Elected officials who gave support, aid and comfort to a violent insurrection need to be imprisoned; they’d have been executed not too long ago.

 

[Trausti]

Yes, but what happens if they overturn elections through out right theft? Suppose in 2024, Arizona and Georgia go for Biden again, and he needs them to win. Then their legislatures overturn the will of the people and appoint electors for Trump. What do Dems do? Just roll over and take it? It may not be the Republicans that start the violence, but the Democrats! And rightfully so!

Bring in the Cyber Ninjas!

Seriously, what you lay out is the likely scenario. Only if Dems can gain in both houses in ‘22 can a full autocratic takeover in 2024 be averted. IMO locking up perpetrators of violent coup attempts is what democracies should do. Elected officials who gave support, aid and comfort to a violent insurrection need to be imprisoned; they’d have been executed not too long ago.

Yeah. Really need the DOJ to charge at least one of these J6 unlawful paraders with insurrection. The Narrative requires it.

 

[Gospel]

I see things are carrying on as usual around here.

 

[SLD]

Bill Maher sees it happening too. Here’s his take on how it will go down:

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/7cR4fXcsu9w[/YOUTUBE]

I think he’s right. 2024 will be violent. The markets will crash. They will come armed this time and in far greater numbers.

 

[lpetrich]

Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties’ - NOEMA

We predicted political upheaval in America in the 2020s.
This is why it’s here and what we can do to temper it.
By Jack A. Goldstone and Peter Turchin
September 10, 2020

Almost three decades ago, one of us, Jack Goldstone, published a simple model to determine a country’s vulnerability to political crisis. The model was based on how population changes shifted state, elite and popular behavior. Goldstone argued that, according to this Demographic-Structural Theory, in the 21st century, America was likely to get a populist, America-first leader who would sow a whirlwind of conflict.

Then ten years ago, the other of us, Peter Turchin, applied Goldstone’s model to U.S. history, using current data. What emerged was alarming: The U.S. was heading toward the highest level of vulnerability to political crisis seen in this country in over a hundred years. Even before Trump was elected, Turchin published his prediction that the U.S. was headed for the “Turbulent Twenties,” forecasting a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe.

They note that elites are greedy, and that their greed causes a *lot* of trouble. They try to take more of the overall productivity for themselves, they try to ensure that only their descendants get access to valuable resources, like education credentials, and they resist paying taxes, thus depriving governments of needed revenues. "Such selfish elites lead the way to revolutions."

Top leadership matters. Leaders who aim to be inclusive and solve national problems can manage conflicts and defer a crisis. However, leaders who seek to benefit from and fan political divisions bring the final crisis closer. Typically, tensions build between elites who back a leader seeking to preserve their privileges and reforming elites who seek to rally popular support for major changes to bring a more open and inclusive social order. Each side works to paint the other as a fatal threat to society, creating such deep polarization that little of value can be accomplished, and problems grow worse until a crisis comes along that explodes the fragile social order.

Then they describe how they collected a variety of measures of well-being and social dysfunction, measures like (median income) / (GDP per capita), (maximum personal wealth) / (GDP per capita), degree of partisanship in Congress, and social and political violence like lynchings, terrorism, and riots.

They found nearly two complete cycles. There was first a rising phase that peaked in the 1820's, the aptly-named Era of Good Feelings. But that did not last, and in the Jackson era, the US entered into a falling phase. "... political polarization and economic inequality rose sharply in the years leading up to the Civil War. The crisis indicators peaked in the 1860s but did not fall sharply after the war; instead, they remained high until 1920 (the years of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Gilded Age and violent labor unrest, and the anarchists)."

But the US did not collapse or fall apart into hostile coalitions of states, especially not in World War I or the Great Depression.

The reforms introduced during the Progressive Era and clinched in the New Deal reduced inequality and strengthened the economic share of workers; during and after World War II, the country agreed on new tax policies and increased spending on roads and schools.

The 1950s were a golden age of worker progress and party cooperation; even in the 1960s and 1970s, despite serious racial conflicts, the country’s leaders were able to agree on remarkably far-reaching reforms to improve civil rights and environmental protection. However, the 1960s were a high point in our indicators of political resilience; in the 1970s and 1980s, things began to turn, and by the 1990s, a new wave of rising inequality and political divisions was well underway, exemplified by Newt Gingrich’s policies as speaker of the House. In the next two decades, the crisis indicators rose just as sharply as they had in the decades before the Civil War. It was not just that by the late 2010s, overall inequality was rising to the levels not seen since the Gilded Age; median wages in relation to GDP per capita also were falling to historically low levels.

They wrote in 2010, Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade | Nature
and some years later, a book, Peter Turchin Ages of Discord - Peter Turchin - Peter Turchin Age of Discord II - Peter Turchin

Thus predicting "Turbulent Twenties"

 

[bilby]

Bill Maher sees it happening too. Here’s his take on how it will go down:

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/7cR4fXcsu9w[/YOUTUBE]

I think he’s right. 2024 will be violent. The markets will crash. They will come armed this time and in far greater numbers.

I don't think that it's slow moving. It's moving at the usual speed of such upheavals; perhaps even a little faster than some.

There were ten years between the Beer Hall Putsch and the Nazis gaining control of the German government. Because you can read even the most detailed history of the NSDAP's rise to power in a few hours, it's often difficult to grasp just how slowly things changed from the perspective of those who lived through it.

Most coups d'état take a very long time to develop, even if they appear sudden to those who didn't notice anything was happening until the day the glorious leader declared himself dictator, or until the mass arrests of his political opponents started.

The NSDAP, Mussolini's fascists, Lenin's Bolsheviks, and many other aspirants to total power (both successful and unsuccessful) all start out as a bunch of silly clowns, mocked by the press and the intelligentsia. Sometimes they don't stop laughing until it's too late.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Maher makes sense. As usual, they're doing it right in front of us. Notice also how his predictions work even if it's not Trump and for whatever reason it's Abbott or DeSantis or McCarthy..........

 

[Swammerdami]

As pointed out in The Atlantic's article "The Real 2024 Election Nightmare: Trump could win, fair and square" Trump may be restored to power in 2024 even without stealing the election. Winning "fairly" would steal the thunder from the democratic opposition. Biden's 2020 electoral-college victory was razor-thin; Biden's popularity is already falling; there is no obvious strong candidate to take Biden's place. And the QOP has three more years to operate its Bullshit Machine: already, just at Google News' home page, I see FoxNews stories that run narratives opposite to reality.

A second Trump term will be much more dangerous than the 1st term. QOP controls SCOTUS. GOPsters who opposed Trump in 2016 are either pro-Trump now, or will be primaried out of Congress. And

... More pliable legislative and judicial branches would help Trump, but he would also have better control of the executive branch. He assembled his first administration from misfit toys and castoffs, staffers who would never have gotten such jobs in another presidency because they were too inexperienced, too incompetent, too abrasive, or too extreme. On his return, he'd do better. Those staffers are now seasoned and more able, and fewer veteran Republicans would remove themselves from consideration next time.

The government lost many able, conscientious civil servants during Trump's presidency, but others calculated that they could weather four years. These people both kept the government functioning when political appointees couldn't, and also pushed to ensure rule of law where Trump tried to erode it. (For their pains, they were labeled the "deep state.") Many of these people would probably quit if Trump came back to power.

 

[SLD]

Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties’ - NOEMA

They note that elites are greedy, and that their greed causes a *lot* of trouble. They try to take more of the overall productivity for themselves, they try to ensure that only their descendants get access to valuable resources, like education credentials, and they resist paying taxes, thus depriving governments of needed revenues. "Such selfish elites lead the way to revolutions."

Then they describe how they collected a variety of measures of well-being and social dysfunction, measures like (median income) / (GDP per capita), (maximum personal wealth) / (GDP per capita), degree of partisanship in Congress, and social and political violence like lynchings, terrorism, and riots.

They found nearly two complete cycles. There was first a rising phase that peaked in the 1820's, the aptly-named Era of Good Feelings. But that did not last, and in the Jackson era, the US entered into a falling phase. "... political polarization and economic inequality rose sharply in the years leading up to the Civil War. The crisis indicators peaked in the 1860s but did not fall sharply after the war; instead, they remained high until 1920 (the years of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Gilded Age and violent labor unrest, and the anarchists)."

But the US did not collapse or fall apart into hostile coalitions of states, especially not in World War I or the Great Depression.

The reforms introduced during the Progressive Era and clinched in the New Deal reduced inequality and strengthened the economic share of workers; during and after World War II, the country agreed on new tax policies and increased spending on roads and schools.

The 1950s were a golden age of worker progress and party cooperation; even in the 1960s and 1970s, despite serious racial conflicts, the country’s leaders were able to agree on remarkably far-reaching reforms to improve civil rights and environmental protection. However, the 1960s were a high point in our indicators of political resilience; in the 1970s and 1980s, things began to turn, and by the 1990s, a new wave of rising inequality and political divisions was well underway, exemplified by Newt Gingrich’s policies as speaker of the House. In the next two decades, the crisis indicators rose just as sharply as they had in the decades before the Civil War. It was not just that by the late 2010s, overall inequality was rising to the levels not seen since the Gilded Age; median wages in relation to GDP per capita also were falling to historically low levels.

They wrote in 2010, Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade | Nature
and some years later, a book, Peter Turchin Ages of Discord - Peter Turchin - Peter Turchin Age of Discord II - Peter Turchin

Thus predicting "Turbulent Twenties"

Interesting analyses. I’m curious about the impact of state welfare policies on such developments. Income inequality is real and the fundamental issue. But transfer payments go a long way towards reducing the inequality. But they come with a high cost. Both budget deficits and significant ill will between those who take such benefits and those who work enough not to need them have resulted. To what extent do these fuel or moderate the tendency towards instability. Maybe it’s a wash.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Completely true. He would assemble 100% sycophants, no "adults in the room", not that that meant much in practice, and his bizarre and ignorant notions would be carried out. Just try to imagine the Supreme Court at the end of another helping of Donald. It's too depressing to think about for long.

 

[Elixir]

Both budget deficits and significant ill will between those who take such benefits and those who work enough have sufficient income or wealth not to need them have resulted. To what extent do these fuel or moderate the tendency towards instability. Maybe it’s a wash.

FIFY. (Just a niggle.) There's probably a tipping point. When income and wealth disparities are a needed feature for economic growth, that's fine until too many people have too little. Then, pitchforks. (Except in .223 form.) But up to that point, rock on with the billionaires' economy. Subsistence living becomes middle class, multimillionaires are "upper middle", billionaires own everything else and poverty makes you an expendable commodity for anyone to exploit if they are able. Then things get hairy.

 

[Shadowy Man]

As pointed out in The Atlantic's article "The Real 2024 Election Nightmare: Trump could win, fair and square" Trump may be restored to power in 2024 even without stealing the election. Winning "fairly" would steal the thunder from the democratic opposition.

There’s no longer such thing as a fair election. If the Republicans think the Democrats can steal an election so easily and leave no evidence, why wouldn’t the Democrats be able to claim that the Republicans can steal an election the same way, especially if it comes out of states with Republican legislatures? The days of reporting results and respecting the outcomes are over. Welcome to the new paradigm that Trump has created. Whatever it is I’m not sure it’s democracy anymore.

 

[ideologyhunter]

There's a difference between spinning a tale that you lost because of fraud (Trump) and, hypothetically, calling out the fraud involved in a red state legislature throwing out the vote (or the part of the vote they didn't like) because they claimed there was an appearance of fraud. From what I've read of the Georgia law, they want to empower themselves to take over certification if fraud is simply alleged. If that's the case, it allows and encourages the kind of corruption that kills the election process altogether. Who knows what the Mighty Nine Umpires would choose to do about it?

 

[Elixir]

Whatever it is I’m not sure it’s democracy anymore.

It's a reality show called "The Sorest Loser".

 

[lpetrich]

Writing in October 2020, "Democrats are certain that if Donald Trump is re-elected, American democracy will not survive. Republicans are equally certain that if Trump loses, radical socialists will seize the wealth of elites and distribute it to undeserving poor and minorities, forever destroying the economy of the United States." (typo fixed: underserving -> undeserving)

Both sides are also concerned that the other side will fix the rules of the game so that they will always win no matter what.

Trump was very unlikely to win the popular vote, and he didn't win it the first time around. "If Trump wins narrowly in the electoral college but loses the popular vote by a large margin, there will surely be massive demonstrations protesting the outcome, calling it illegitimate and demanding allegiance to the will of the majority of Americans." Trump would likely call out Federal troops to suppress these protests, and that would provoke even more protests.

If Trump loses, he is likely to contest the outcome as a “rigged” election. But that action will again lead to massive popular protests, this time to insist that the election results be honored. If Trump again puts federal security forces in the streets, governors may ask their state troopers or even national guard to protect their citizens and defend the Constitution. Or Trump may call on his many armed civilian supporters to defend their “all time favorite president” (as he put it) against so-called “liberal tyranny.”

As it happened, his lawyers filed 60+ lawsuits, only to be rebuffed in nearly every one, sometimes with strong words from the judges. Then he invited his followers to come to DC and then march on the Capitol building to make his Vice President declare him the winner. Pretty much the scenario in the last sentence of my quote.

The authors then argue that if Joe Biden has a big win, then Trump would say that such a victory could only be the result of vote fraud on an enormous scale.

 

[lpetrich]

"From the birth of the nation, the unity across economic classes and different regions was a marvel for European observers, such as St. John de Crèvecoeur and Alexis de Tocqueville." That fell apart in the middle and late 19th cys., but as a result of the New Deal, a new social contract was formed, one that made the 1950's seem like a second Era of Good Feelings. "But since the 1970s, that contract has unraveled, in favor of a contract between government and business that has underfunded public services but generously rewarded capital gains and corporate profits." -- Gilded Age II.

As a result, American politics has fallen into a pattern that is characteristic of many developing countries, where one portion of the elite seeks to win support from the working classes not by sharing the wealth or by expanding public services and making sacrifices to increase the common good, but by persuading the working classes that they are beset by enemies who hate them (liberal elites, minorities, illegal immigrants) and want to take away what little they have. This pattern builds polarization and distrust and is strongly associated with civil conflict, violence and democratic decline.

At the same time, many liberal elites neglected or failed to remedy such problems as opiate addiction, declining social mobility, homelessness, urban decay, the collapse of unions and declining real wages, instead promising that globalization, environmental regulations and advocacy for neglected minorities would bring sufficient benefits. They thus contributed to growing distrust of government and “experts,” who were increasingly seen as corrupt or useless, thus perpetuating a cycle of deepening government dysfunction.

They were unwilling to do much to challenge the Gilded Age II political consensus. Clintoncare was an unintelligible mess. Obamacare was tinkering around the edges.

"What we need is a new social contract that will enable us to get past extreme polarization to find consensus, tip the shares of economic growth back toward workers and improve government funding for public health, education and infrastructure."

The two authors then discuss some previous cases of nations that avoided bloody revolutions.

The United Kingdom in the 1820s was coming apart. After defeating Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington became the leader of an elite group that sought to maintain the dominance of the traditional landlord elites. As prime minister and then leader of the House of Lords, Wellington sought to ignore, rather than adjust to, the new realities of the booming cities of Birmingham, Manchester and other burgeoning cities of the fast-growing industrial economy. Meanwhile, the workers of these cities demanded political reforms that would give them a voice in Parliament.

They protested such things as the "Corn Laws", protectionism for British landlords that kept the price of grain up. (For speakers of American, in Britain, "corn" is grain in general, US corn is "sweetcorn".)

Then such incidents as the Peterloo massacre at a workers' protest.

Nonetheless, Wellington not only refused any legal changes, he sought to clamp down on the agitation for voting reforms. New laws were passed to expand police power and block public assemblies; newspapers were closed; protestors and journalists were jailed. Still, popular agitation continued, and there was even an attempt to assassinate several cabinet ministers.

Would Britain have a revolution?

The solution was for leaders to accept the Reform campaign, which sought voting reforms that would reduce the power of the landlords and support the new industrial working class. After the growing confrontations of the 1820s, in 1830, Wellington’s Tories lost control of Parliament, and a Whig leader who supported the Reform campaign, Lord Grey, became prime minister. Grey’s initial efforts to pass a Reform bill were frustrated, and Grey threatened to have the King create enough additional Whig peers to force the bill through. The Tories then relented, and in 1832, Parliament passed the first Reform bill, which expanded the franchise, undermined the clientage of the landed elite and gave representation to the residents of the factory cities. Additional Reform bills followed, allowing Britain, despite continued large-scale workers’ movements, to avoid the revolutions that wracked the continent and emerge as the leading economy of Europe.

In effect, Lord Grey threatened to pack the House of Lords.

The authors then discuss the US in the Great Depression, and I must note that FDR once planned to appoint additional Supreme Court Justices when the SC invalidated some of his New Deal efforts. Packing the SC was politically a flip, but the SC stopped challenging the New Deal.

 

[lpetrich]

How did Lord Grey and FDR do it?

The formula in both cases was clear and simple. First, the leader who was trying to preserve the past social order despite economic change and growing violence was replaced by a new leader who was willing to undertake much-needed reforms. Second, while the new leader leveraged his support to force opponents to give in to the necessary changes, there was no radical revolution; violence was eschewed and reforms were carried out within the existing institutional framework.

Third, the reforms were pragmatic. Various solutions were tried, and the new leaders sought to build broad support for reforms, recognizing that national strength depended on forging majority support for change, rather than forcing through measures that would provide narrow factional or ideologically-driven victories. The bottom line in both cases was that adapting to new social and technological realities required having the wealthy endure some sacrifices while the opportunities and fortunes of ordinary working people were supported and strengthened; the result was to raise each nation to unprecedented wealth and power.

Seems like the present-day left.

 

[southernhybrid]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/14/wisconsin-election-review-gableman-errors/

Oh, don't worry. Trump is saying that Republicans aren't going to vote in 2022 or 2024 because of all the fraud in 2020.

“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Trump said in a statement Wednesday urging further reviews of his debunked claims, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It is the single most important things for Republicans to do.”

That's right Republicans. Don't vote. Your cult leader said it's the most important thing for you to do.

( I meant to give the article, but forgot. Sorry about that. )

It's an article about the fools who are still trying to find fraud in several states to prove that Trump won.

Hopefully, these people are too stupid and fucked up to take over the country. Let's hope so and make sure that every decent person votes, and the rest of them listen to their foolish cult leader.