Preparing for the Collapse of American Democracy
Here’s a discussion on the potential for the breakdown of the U.S. democracy. Various commenters’ viewpoints are in bullets/italics, with my remark at the end.
• I’m curious to know how this “collapse” will manifest. Going to watch it on TV. If the morons start killing people, it’ll be interesting to see the response from law enforcement.
• Especially since most of law enforcement seems to side with the White Supremacists.
• Making friends in New Zealand
• Yikes! Elaboration on what you think might happen?
• Republican State legislators are going beyond gerrymandering to the point where they are putting partisan hacks in charge of “counting the votes,” putting up insurmountable obstacles to poor, urban people’s ability to vote, and otherwise stacking the deck to make it virtually impossible for Democrats to take control of the state legislatures. Police forces are made up overwhelmingly of White Supremacists. The GOP base supports Trump and others whose primary platform position is the dismantling of our democratic institutions. Right Wing nut jobs own the vast majority of guns. With all these forces aligned, it seems highly likely that another Trump “presidency” (either Donald or Ivanka) would be the last democratic election this country sees. It also seems likely that, under Supreme Leader Trump, the Right would start to violently stomp out dissent. Would California and the Northeast start a civil war in an attempt to break away? Maybe, but that would get really ugly, really fast. I’d much rather my kids were in Lisbon, Barcelona or Amsterdam when that went down.
• London calling.
• I was thinking about Costa Rico this morning.
• Empires only usually last for around 250 yrs. We’re coming up on that quickly. This week’s events (China surpassing us as richest country in the world, Rittenhouse), are pretty clear mile markers / messages. I don’t think any of us is prepared for what could be coming…I don’t want to be doom and gloom, but like any good Boy Scout, you have to be prepared. Plans have always been in place, and after living through the burning of Minneapolis after the Floyd murder, those plans became more concrete. My number one goal before ‘24 is to get passports for my family and me.
(Me) For years I’ve been saying that a civil war, in the event that one starts, will be over in about 15 minutes because of the superior strength of law enforcement over a bunch fat racists with AR-15s. That was before I realized that we had lots of white supremacists from law enforcement in the Capitol on January 6th.
It could come down to the U.S. military, which will definitely not be a part of a Trump-led coup, and will happily squash it like a cockroach. The upper echelon of our armed forced are dedicated Americans who detest Trump, and fascism more generally.
Unfortunately, world politics is nothing like what it was in 1860, and the secession of the red states is not a logistical possibility. If I were Lincoln in 1860, I would have gladly accepted the secession of the Confederacy. Yes, slavery wouldn’t have been abolished immediately, but the south would have found themselves with no friends and trading partners, no technology R&D, living only on agriculture like nations did 8000 years ago. It would have sputtered and died within a decade or two, only to be re-subsumed by the U.S.
