Increasing Political Partisanship: [Insert Party Name] Is a Threat to Our Nation's Well-Being

Let's run down the bullet points of the GOP's prospective party platform:

* f*ck pre-K education
* f*ck LGBTQ+
* f*ck black people
* f*ck muslims
* f*ck the environment
* f*ck science in schools.
* "Elective" bible studies courses in public schools.

I could honestly sum most of that up as "f*ck everyone who isn't a straight white christian male".

That, to me, looks like an existential threat. I'm not really pointing fingers, but let us all just ponder for a moment on "Everyone is being so *divisive* about political parties!", when one of those parties is actively trying to suppress and supporting the extrajudicial murder of people because they're not straight white christian dudes.

I'm pretty sure "existential terror" is *precisely* the correct reaction.

Kannon wrote:

Let's run down the bullet points of the GOP's prospective party platform:

* f*ck pre-K education
* f*ck LGBTQ+
* f*ck black people
* f*ck muslims
* f*ck the environment
* f*ck science in schools.
* "Elective" bible studies courses in public schools.

I could honestly sum most of that up as "f*ck everyone who isn't a straight white christian male".

That, to me, looks like an existential threat. I'm not really pointing fingers, but let us all just ponder for a moment on "Everyone is being so *divisive* about political parties!", when one of those parties is actively trying to suppress and supporting the extrajudicial murder of people because they're not straight white christian dudes.

I'm pretty sure "existential terror" is *precisely* the correct reaction.

Yep. Trump gets all the press, but with another candidate this fascist platform would still be the official platform of the Republicans. Thankfully trump probably won't win where another R candidate may have had a chance.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Kannon wrote:

Let's run down the bullet points of the GOP's prospective party platform:

* f*ck pre-K education
* f*ck LGBTQ+
* f*ck black people
* f*ck muslims
* f*ck the environment
* f*ck science in schools.
* "Elective" bible studies courses in public schools.

I could honestly sum most of that up as "f*ck everyone who isn't a straight white christian male".

That, to me, looks like an existential threat. I'm not really pointing fingers, but let us all just ponder for a moment on "Everyone is being so *divisive* about political parties!", when one of those parties is actively trying to suppress and supporting the extrajudicial murder of people because they're not straight white christian dudes.

I'm pretty sure "existential terror" is *precisely* the correct reaction.

Yep. Trump gets all the press, but with another candidate this fascist platform would still be the official platform of the Republicans. Thankfully trump probably won't win where another R candidate may have had a chance.

Honestly? I suspect any candidate who got up on stage and espoused those views would be screwed. Trump just made the stuff more obvious for even the socially illiterate.... but those first three planks in the platform would sink just about anyone at this point.

Trump's not looking terribly sunk.

Kannon wrote:

I'm not really pointing fingers, but let us all just ponder for a moment on "Everyone is being so *divisive* about political parties!", when one of those parties is actively trying to suppress and supporting the extrajudicial murder of people because they're not straight white christian dudes.

In fairness to the left, Romney had the opportunity to run against Obama's drone policy but supported it instead.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Kannon wrote:

I'm not really pointing fingers, but let us all just ponder for a moment on "Everyone is being so *divisive* about political parties!", when one of those parties is actively trying to suppress and supporting the extrajudicial murder of people because they're not straight white christian dudes.

In fairness to the left, Romney had the opportunity to run against Obama's drone policy but supported it instead.

Yeah, I'm not saying the Democrat's hands are clean. Hillary's hawkish nature is my one big complaint, and Obama's drone wars (Well, and the crackdown on whistleblowers), are big issues. Now, considering what happened with the previous Republican president, I dunno, at least we're only blowing up individual hospitals, instead of f*cking over entire countries at once, so progress?

I just have a hard time wringing my hands about "But the blue team is hawkish as well!" Yeah, I know, it's a problem. The red team is cool with that *and* a host of other horrible sh*t, so...

EDIT: In case it's not particularly clear, I am just generally extremely cynical and disaffected with our tendency to go create whole new interesting problems by flailing our dicks around in the middle east. My current options no longer include fixing that, so I'm focused on fixing what I can, and hopefully moving us away from that sh*t in the future. In short, it's all bullsh*t, man.

Sort of related to the poll results above...I've actually started to wonder if there's a chance of a civil war occurring in the US in our lifetimes. It's still probably not likely - I think the number of people angered by politics is far less than the people who don't follow politics at all - but the animosity between informed voters on both sides is ramping up to a level that I think could be dangerous, at least enough to spark some sort of guerrilla warfare.

For instance, while driving home from work last week, I turned on a local talk radio station, and they had Rush Limbaugh on. I wouldn't normally listen to him, but he was talking about the DNC, so I was curious what he'd say. He first railed about Michael Brown's mother being given the opportunity to make a speech, saying how irresponsible it was because it would bring death to more police officers, then said that this was no accident - that the democrats wanted this. He then went on to say how, at some point, you have to assume people who continuously do things like this are the enemies of both 'us' and the country at large, and should be treated as such. He closed by throwing in a mention that the same goes for the 40+% of the population that votes for them. It was a little chilling to hear, honestly.

So, when the election comes and one side loses, I'm starting to wonder if the losing side might start taking out their anger and frustration on people they know who voted for the winning side. And if an assassination attempt occurs against either candidate at some point before the election, that could really ignite a spark, especially since the candidate's fans will point at the other side and say that their rhetoric helped to encourage it. Some feel that you can't continuously paint someone as evil and then be surprised when a mentally ill person to try taking them out.

It's all probably unlikely, but it's concerning that I have to add 'probably' into my thoughts on this now.

Mormech wrote:

Sort of related to the poll results above...I've actually started to wonder if there's a chance of a civil war occurring in the US in our lifetimes. It's still probably not likely - I think the number of people angered by politics is far less than the people who don't follow politics at all - but the animosity between informed voters on both sides is ramping up to a level that I think could be dangerous, at least enough to spark some sort of guerrilla warfare.

The level of animosity between voters is very concerning, but I don't think there's a singular political issue that one political group would be passionately for and the other vehemently against that could trigger Civil War 2.0.

On top of that, that singular political issue would also have clearly divide American's geographically into two camps, something that would be really hard to do today because regional identities are much weaker. There's more linking a city dweller in the South to a city dweller in any other region than a Southerner who lives in a rural area.

So while a full blown Civil War might not break out, I do see a future where there will be a lot more Bundy's and McVeigh's. Doubly so because gun ownership is rapidly becoming the single biggest predictor of someone's politics and America's gun culture is steeped in the idea that they're tools for political revolutions and that it's perfectly OK to use violence to get rid of people who you disagree with politically. (And doubly so on that because each side increasingly views each other as not just being wrong or having bad policies, but to being dangerous and an active threat to America.)

Stay safe.

I don't think there's a singular political issue that one political group would be passionately for and the other vehemently against that could trigger Civil War 2.0.

Abortion could do it.

Malor wrote:
I don't think there's a singular political issue that one political group would be passionately for and the other vehemently against that could trigger Civil War 2.0.

Abortion could do it.

"I'm going to wage a war that will destroy cities and kill millions of fellow Americans because every life is precious."

OG_slinger wrote:
Malor wrote:
I don't think there's a singular political issue that one political group would be passionately for and the other vehemently against that could trigger Civil War 2.0.

Abortion could do it.

"I'm going to wage a war that will destroy cities and kill millions of fellow Americans because every life is precious."

Life is so precious that we are going to drastically and intentionally increase our already over-populated earth because if that fertilized human egg can't live, then by God and all that's holy, NONE of us will live! Bern it down!!!

Mormech wrote:

Sort of related to the poll results above...I've actually started to wonder if there's a chance of a civil war occurring in the US in our lifetimes. It's still probably not likely - I think the number of people angered by politics is far less than the people who don't follow politics at all - but the animosity between informed voters on both sides is ramping up to a level that I think could be dangerous, at least enough to spark some sort of guerrilla warfare.

When the shootings happened in Dallas I was about 40 miles from Dallas visiting family. For a few hours there I was positive those were the first shots of the next American civil war. That right wing gun owners who supported police would retaliate and the whole thing would boil over. To my great surprise and relief we kept our sh*t together.

But yeah, it certainly "feels" like anything is possible right now.

OG_slinger wrote:
Malor wrote:
I don't think there's a singular political issue that one political group would be passionately for and the other vehemently against that could trigger Civil War 2.0.

Abortion could do it.

"I'm going to wage a war that will destroy cities and kill millions of fellow Americans because every life is precious."

I mean, it's not like folks on the fringes that side haven't already basically operated under that quote. Plenty of assassinated abortion doctors, not to mention that dude who shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic where abortions were not even performed.

Right... the conservative side of that argument has demonstrated their willingness to engage in violence on the issue. If, say, Trump gets in, and tries to override Roe v. Wade, and liberals felt strongly enough to fight about it, that could be the flash point.

I believe that conservatives would absolutely go to war over the issue. I'm not sure about liberals.

Malor wrote:

Right... the conservative side of that argument has demonstrated their willingness to engage in violence on the issue. If, say, Trump gets in, and tries to override Roe v. Wade, and liberals felt strongly enough to fight about it, that could be the flash point.

I believe that conservatives would absolutely go to war over the issue. I'm not sure about liberals.

The people who have actually engaged in violence over abortion have been overly religious whackadoodles. They've been fringe players and extremists.

The average religious American isn't going to suddenly say "I need to murder my neighbor's entire family and burn their house down because they think women should be allowed to have an abortion."

There's simply a tremendous gap between a conservative who feels that abortions are morally wrong and a conservative who thinks the same *and* is willing to take up arms against their government and kill their neighbor to prevent another abortion from happening.

If the latter were common there wouldn't be an abortion clinic that hadn't been bombed or burned and every surviving abortion doctor would have at least one story about the time some Christian extremist tried to kill them.

Which just makes it all the crazier to me that we actually had a group that was willing to kill their fellow countrymen for the sake of owning slaves when most of the rest of the western world had outlawed the practice.

If the latter were common there wouldn't be an abortion clinic that hadn't been bombed or burned and every surviving abortion doctor would have at least one story about the time some Christian extremist tried to kill them.

I'm not sure you really get just how fast we could end up exactly there.

Demosthenes wrote:

Which just makes it all the crazier to me that we actually had a group that was willing to kill their fellow countrymen for the sake of owning slaves when most of the rest of the western world had outlawed the practice.

Not exactly--the rest of the western world just imported the raw materials harvested by our slaves, and then when that wasn't enough, went out and created new colonies of their own.

Malor wrote:
If the latter were common there wouldn't be an abortion clinic that hadn't been bombed or burned and every surviving abortion doctor would have at least one story about the time some Christian extremist tried to kill them.

I'm not sure you really get just how fast we could end up exactly there.

And I think you're vastly overestimating how willing Americans are to kill other Americans over an issue most everyone considers an intensely personal and morally gray concern.

That's not to say that a group of Christian nutters couldn't or wouldn't try violence. But it wouldn't become Civil War 2.0. It would be the US government stomping down on a Christian version of the Taliban, a terrorist group that your average church-goer would chew off their hand to distance themselves from.

And I think you're vastly overestimating how willing Americans are to kill other Americans over an issue most everyone considers an intensely personal and morally gray concern.

A huge chunk of the population could be "weaponized" with amazing speed. Driving people to violence really isn't that hard, and the modern American ground is an extremely fertile place to plant those seeds.

All it takes is some demonization of the "bad guys".

It happens fast. Look back through history... all it takes is economic distress and a demagogue.

The issue is that you usually need some semi-direct avenue to divert that economic anger into social anger. "They are trying to take away our slaves to collapse our economy", "the immigrants are stealing all of our jobs", "the jews collapsed the banking system". You don't really have that with abortion.

Even if you did ("there aren't enough young people to pay for our social security!" is the closest I can come up with) the solution isn't immediate. If you kill enough Yankees you get to keep your slaves. If you kill enough immigrants the rest will go home and you'll have your job back, if you kill or intern the jews you can take back all the riches they pulled out of your financial system. If you kill enough abortion doctors: 18 to 23 years later more young people will enter the work force to pay into social security...

There's just not enough punch or urgency there.

Hmm, yeah, you're probably right... I was thinking, "Liberals have destroyed the country, and you can see who's a liberal by who's getting an abortion!"... but I don't think that would work.

Immigrants, though? That could do it. They're easy to 'other'. And get some violence going, and American police will badly overreact in retaliation. Things could get real dicey.

Malor wrote:

Hmm, yeah, you're probably right... I was thinking, "Liberals have destroyed the country, and you can see who's a liberal by who's getting an abortion!"... but I don't think that would work.

Immigrants, though? That could do it. They're easy to 'other'. And get some violence going, and American police will badly overreact in retaliation. Things could get real dicey.

What you get there is a white populace that's more than willing to let cops take more and more brutal measures, not a white populace that's willing to take up arms to protect the cops from immigrants, after all the cops are the ones who are supposed to be protecting those "good, white folks" from the immigrants.

You're assuming, there, that all the white people would end up on the side of the police.

OG_slinger wrote:

On top of that, that singular political issue would also have clearly divide American's geographically into two camps, something that would be really hard to do today because regional identities are much weaker. There's more linking a city dweller in the South to a city dweller in any other region than a Southerner who lives in a rural area.

There's the clear impediment. I could see an increase in domestic terrorism, and a growing divide between urban and rural, but if anything were to happen, I'd imagine it'd be more like a heightening of what minorities currently feel trying to get between major cities and having to cross through Real America, and planning to stop as little as possible in between. "We can't stop here, this is Trump country."