The right side of history: the partisanship/civil war thread

[BurtReynolds]

I think the truth is that is nothing out of the boring norm will come of any of this. Discontent will be pacified into apathy as usual. Then we’ll forget and move on.

Yes. The cycle goes round and round. "Every generation thinks its the last"

.

I wonder if that's what the Romans said.

[Strat]

I think the truth is that is nothing out of the boring norm will come of any of this. Discontent will be pacified into apathy as usual. Then we’ll forget and move on.

Yes. The cycle goes round and round. "Every generation thinks its the last"

.

I wonder if that's what the Romans said.

You know romans are still alive ya?

[simple schoolboy]

i think although americans seem increasingly 'divided' their won't be a 'civil war' because most of the GOP untermensch are too lazy or stupid to construct anything durable. they are definitely capable of a one or two-off act of 'shit where we eat' style rioting. but to construct anything orderly like an insurgency (if the propaganda they consume tells them to think they are now the underdog), or a pogrom (if their propaganda tells them to think they are the alpha dog), is well above their collective cognitive ability at this point

they are a generation of people that have been groomed to be taken advantage of

they could be tricked into dying in the middle east again but it's not in the oligarchy's best interest to trick them into attacking their own countrymen domestically

too disruptive to GDP

When is the last time righties shat where they ate? Pogrom? you've been reading too many fan fictions about hitler trump.

As to the worst case scenario:

There may just be enough righties in leftie bastions (and the opposite is definitely true) to cause chaos.

Consider following these guys: https://twitter.com/hradzka https://twitter.com/jonst0kes

[Bammer]

I don't believe this is the only time the country has been so divided, nor that in this day and age, the federal government could be subjected to a war against it by states. It's not the 19th century anymore...the days of muskets and trenches are long gone. Division will likely be cured by the inevitable failure of the two-party system, as each caters more and more to the extreme elements of its ideology, and the rise of a new party that has more centrist views that represent a majority of Americans. If you watch the news all the time and how Congress behaves, you'd think there was a war in the streets between liberals and conservatives, but the truth is the vast majority of people in this country go about their day thinking little about all this, doing business with and getting along just fine with people who think and act differently.

And airing their grievances ferociously on twitter. Keyboard warriors.

[BurtReynolds]

If anyone would like to answer my first question, I'm all ears.

[BurtReynolds]

Never mind I was wrong Kanye will bring us together

[96583UP]

If anyone would like to answer my first question, I'm all ears.

a war for existence will unite

e.g. WWII

Just ask Israel!

[96583UP]

i think although americans seem increasingly 'divided' their won't be a 'civil war' because most of the GOP untermensch are too lazy or stupid to construct anything durable. they are definitely capable of a one or two-off act of 'shit where we eat' style rioting. but to construct anything orderly like an insurgency (if the propaganda they consume tells them to think they are now the underdog), or a pogrom (if their propaganda tells them to think they are the alpha dog), is well above their collective cognitive ability at this point

they are a generation of people that have been groomed to be taken advantage of

they could be tricked into dying in the middle east again but it's not in the oligarchy's best interest to trick them into attacking their own countrymen domestically

too disruptive to GDP

When is the last time righties shat where they ate? Pogrom? you've been reading too many fan fictions about hitler trump.

As to the worst case scenario:

There may just be enough righties in leftie bastions (and the opposite is definitely true) to cause chaos.

Consider following these guys: https://twitter.com/hradzka https://twitter.com/jonst0kes

trump is an imbecile and comparing him to hitler is an insult to die führer

this was about hypotheticals. what would prompt a civil war

if a left vs. right thing - i don't view the left as 'starting it', because the left is too 'nice' in this country. while prone to their own version of self-imposed blindness, and bouts of aggression, the core of their purported value system is based on hippie-like ideals, which ultimately is their weakness. they won't play realpolitik. and they don't own guns

the under-educated, under-capitalized GOP under-class has been groomed now TV generation #4 and is useful for revving up into anger and misdirecting them at things

so one might think the righties underclass would do it - but as i mentioned in my post - they are too unreliable to engage in anything that organized. they are better suited for getting angry at their TV and then going out and acting in one-off acts of maliciousness. and their owners won't rile them into destroying assets in this country, because it is too disruptive to their profit-making enterprises

in terms of a lower class v upper class civil war,

the righty underclass will not become self-aware, and turn against their makers, which take their healthcare, social security, medicare, etc from them and blame their ills on obama or similar scapegoats. instead they will just continue to struggle as their lack of useful skills in the automating economy make them increasingly unnecessary. their response is likely to continue to vote for shittier and shittier candidates who continue to abuse their trust and ratchet the inequality machine even tighter against them under the guise of representing their interests

the lefty underclass is much smaller, and as stated above, their core values inhibit them from violent revolution (and their lack of guns)

i do expect an increasingly volatile 'public' discourse between the groups, however, it is entirely synthetic as it exists only on television channels and tweets. it's the illusion of a democratic process for all and they are increasingly powerless to save themselves

[---]

I wonder how this thread's respondents would address the Good Samaritan Paradox.

[Strat]

I wonder how this thread's respondents would address the Good Samaritan Paradox.

Steven Orla Kimbrough will not survive the end of the world.

[Dscans]

If anyone would like to answer my first question, I'm all ears.

This isn't exactly what what you asked for, but this column talks about why we are so polarized.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... bb41d2c8ef

Urban vs. rural divide: people are moving to areas with like-minded individuals. This is also explored in The Big Sort and The Complacent Class.
Newt Gingrich: enacted changes during the Clinton years that discouraged friendliness between the two parties.
More news sources: 24 hour news and social media diffusing the influence of NBC, CBS, and ABC. (I have more thoughts on this.)
War/common enemy: brings people together against a foreign power.

I don't have enough faith in the American people to look at this issues and consciously take steps to undo them. What's more likely is that some event (like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor) takes place and has an unintended side effect of reversing the course of any of these changes.

We should have united against Russia after they tried to influence our elections, but even that became politicized. I'm kinda losing faith that even a war would bring us together.

*edit: in the article I linked to and in other instances, Haidt has referenced a study by Robert Putnam as evidence that immigration increases racial tension. Noah Smith took umbrage with this study and listed several more that show either no decrease in "social capital" or even an increase. So it seems inconclusive for now.

[Dscans]

Okay, now for my thoughts on the media portion of my last post. I'm copying and pasting this from a blog post so hopefully it makes sense out of context.

Is it possible this course reverses direction and media becomes consolidated again? Seems impossible, information is way too bottom up and widely accessible now.

But is it?

The big 4 (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple) keep growing and swallowing up their competition. Jeff Bezos even owns the Washington Post. People regularly get their news from Facebook and Twitter, accessing it through Google Chrome on their iPhone.

I know, these are content aggregators and not content producers like NBC, ABC, and CBS. But what's to stop them from filtering content or eventually producing their own content?

We've already seen Alex Jones' Infowars get banned from pretty much every online platform. If the big 4 decide to ban unpopular messages, they can control the content to make it more bland. They might tone done dangerous rhetoric at the risk of drowning out important dissent. Then most people would be getting their news from 4 main outlets once again.

I'm still not sure if this would be a good thing or not.

[Dscans]

Seems relevant.

Okay, now for my thoughts on the media portion of my last post. I'm copying and pasting this from a blog post so hopefully it makes sense out of context.

Is it possible this course reverses direction and media becomes consolidated again? Seems impossible, information is way too bottom up and widely accessible now.

But is it?

The big 4 (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple) keep growing and swallowing up their competition. Jeff Bezos even owns the Washington Post. People regularly get their news from Facebook and Twitter, accessing it through Google Chrome on their iPhone.

I know, these are content aggregators and not content producers like NBC, ABC, and CBS. But what's to stop them from filtering content or eventually producing their own content?

We've already seen Alex Jones' Infowars get banned from pretty much every online platform. If the big 4 decide to ban unpopular messages, they can control the content to make it more bland. They might tone done dangerous rhetoric at the risk of drowning out important dissent. Then most people would be getting their news from 4 main outlets once again.

I'm still not sure if this would be a good thing or not.

[Peeps]

i think there is a difference between unpopular and flat out false information so alex got what alex deserved

[96583UP]

so funny reading some of these now, 2 years later

[BurtReynolds]

i think there is a difference between unpopular and flat out false information so alex got what alex deserved

You are utterly incapable of understanding the point.

[Peeps]

i think there is a difference between unpopular and flat out false information so alex got what alex deserved

You are utterly incapable of understanding the point.

make a valid point and i will try to understand it

[BurtReynolds]

Let's just make lying illegal, right? That would just fix everything.

[verb_to_trust]

As long as we don't make muskets illegal

[E.H. Ruddock]

Let's just make lying illegal, right? That would just fix everything.

Yeah I'd be down for that