02-07-2017, 05:04 PM
(02-07-2017, 04:06 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-07-2017, 01:11 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: Increasingly, I can no longer dismiss out of hand the possibility of a cold civil war, roughly along red and blue lines, and perhaps leading to the dissolution of our republic, much as happened with the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. And even that seems farfetched.
But armed conflict? Are we indeed nearing the flashpoint--like the parlays of old--where the generals of two sides arrayed for battle finally say to one another, "Enough talk, it's war now!"
Do you discount violence entirely, or only the potential for an armed conflict? There's a lot of anger out there, and Trump has working the audience. I still don't see him succeeding, but I think he can trigger a mess if he wishes. As a professional glad-hander, he seems ill suited to the task.
I would never discount the potential for violence. After all, I'm old enough to remember the "revolutionary" violence of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers (the latter "more sinned against than sinning," perhaps.) Indeed, in order to refresh my teenage memory and gain a more mature perspective, I watched the recent documentaries about these two militant groups.
As for armed conflict, I'm not hearing the calls for violence, much less the kind of eliminationist rhetoric, that might spark an outright civil war. It takes a militant leader with a "megaphone" to begin an insurrection against the state. I don't see any Mark Rudds and Huey Newtons on the horizon. Do you?