Forum: Civil War?

Every week on Monday, the WoW! staff, community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: Civil War?

 Don Surber: No.

We are a non-military society that freaks at death. Impolitely, we are sissies. I mean, these people cannot handle chalked messages on the sidewalk.

But we are a nation of drama queens as well with the millionaire celebs screaming "The Resistance," even those who sang for Gadhafi and that freak in Uzbekistan who boiled his political opponents. All these brave poodles would cower if there were a fascist. Trump is the anti-fascist. We have not had a president this disinterested in power since Washington. Of course Trump is as Narcissistic as Obama, so I can see how people get confused.

There may be secession. Horace Greeley in 1860 preached, "let them go." But the odds are long.
The best way to avoid a civil war is to have the economy rebound. The last 16 years have been the malaise Carter talked about. Both parties are responsible. Trump's economic policies -- "capitalism"-- should bring the prosperity that calms everyone down.

 Rob Miller : Civil War? Well, maybe. It depends on what you call civil war.

We won't see large battles between  armies commanded by trained professional soldiers, at least not on both sides. Nor will we likely see whole secessionist states involved. Interior California, Washington State east of the mountains, Upstate New York and Southern Illinois are unlikely to go along with the program, to put it mildly.

And the program is important. What's going on now is a fight about the Democrats retaining their political power and a large part of their political base. The last Civil War was about Democrats keeping their slaves. This one is about them keeping a never ending flow of illegal migrants as cheap domestic servants and reliable voters.

If you notice, the actual violence and the most vociferous language is coming from Blue ruled Democrat urban fiefdoms. While the Left might be flooding congressional town halls with paid, organized 'protesters' (the identical, pre-manufactured signs and the trained seal, on cue unison chants are a dead giveaway), most of these people aren't prepared to risk their bodies. It's in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, Berkeley, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles where the more overt, violent stuff is happening. And college campuses. A big reason for this is because sympathetic Democrat politicians  can be relied on to order the police to stand down and limit their response to containment rather than suppression. And also, that's  where the citizens have normally been at least partially (and in the case of campuses totally) disarmed by restrictions on Second Amendment rights.

While that might also occur in urban Democrat enclaves in Red States, it' s less likely because these states tend to have Republican governors who will not put up with violent  civil disturbance, and armed citizens who would take matters into their own hands.

That's what we're more likely to see,  considerable urban violence in the Democrat ruled urban  areas I've mentioned,the late Sixties and early Seventies on steroids. As Napoleon discovered back when he was dealing with violent riots in Paris  for the Directorate, this sort of thing is easily cured by an injection of lead. Not so easily dealt with is lawfare and propaganda,  but  Attorney General Jeff Sessions is likely to do a pretty good job and the first one, and the media themselves have lessened the effect of the second.

Another way to settle things would be to simply arrest politicians who decline to enforce federal law on things like immigration for obstruction of justice. The picture of a couple of Texas Rangers ambling into Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner's office with a warrant for his arrest or the FBI doing the same thing to California Governor Jerry Brown or NYC's Rick De Blasio is both amusing and rather pleasant. Of course, in  the Big Apple, the NYPD would probably be immensely disappointed they didn't get to slap the cuffs on Hizzoner themselves.


Mike McDaniel : The seeds for civil war were sewn when leftists, with national scope and influence, recovered enough from the election of Donald Trump for their burning hatred of the American people and of actual American principles to burn through their disbelief and shock. One can only imagine the screaming obscenities and flying lamps and other furnishings in the environs of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and a variety of other criminals when it became apparent there would be a pause in the inevitable march of the progressive vanguard. As Barack would have put it--actually, he probably did--history was on the wrong side of history.

If the left had only done what most other sane Americans do when their candidate loses elections--resolve to do better next time, and work within the parameters of our republican system of government to advocate for their principles in the meantime--all would be well. But this time, things might be different. This time, Mr. Obama promises to lead a leftist opposition, and he has a community organizing cabal ready to lead the oppressed to the promised land.

In the past, Democrats at least tried to hide their disdain and outright hatred for most of America. No longer. They are now advocating “resistance,” disrupting, as a set of new normal tactics, peaceful townhall meetings, and sending paid thugs into protests to beat, burn and destroy property. They have stepped over the line of peaceful, honest protest into conspiracy and organized gang violence. Presumably, Barack Obama and other “leaders” are smart enough--though I wouldn’t bet on it considering their egos--to keep themselves sufficiently removed from active planning and participation in crime, but they need not be directly involved. Their anarchic minions know what is required.

And the media no longer pretends to be objective and professional. The Democrat party might as well be paying their salaries. Oh, there will always be media of a sort, but they are, day by day, damaging their influence. Eventually, enough of the public will turn against them, considering them not merely a deceptive annoyance to be ignored, but agents hostile to America and to the daily interests of Americans. I wouldn’t want to be a reporter when they manage to cement that realization in the minds of the public.

Open warfare now? No. Actual Americans are patient people. They will endure a great deal before taking up arms.

What would it take? America will never allow things to degenerate to the point of California, a pseudo-state wholly owned and ruled by the Democrat Party, with all of its corruption and bizarro world fantasies. In a way, the east and west coasts are a sort of safety valve where Communists, Socialists and other totalitarians can live as they choose. What, one wonders, would life be like for them if everyone that didn’t share their ideology fled to America?

Should lawlessness become too out of control, should progressives ever again seize power and aggressively act--as they surely would--to ensure they would never again lose it, should America be in jeopardy of becoming California, and most of all, when progressives try to seize individually owned arms, as they surely would and must, then would Americans take back America.

To be sure, some federal officers, perhaps even some of our military, would side with leftist leaders in the hope they would end up on the winning side, but most would not. The overwhelming majority of our military members still come from America. Even outside the military, the training, knowledge, ability, and arms necessary to prevail are virtually all on the side of liberty. I’d put one American woman against 20 progressive pajama boys any day. Should that day arrive, the fight would be brief, and those that sided with tyranny would be accorded no mercy. If it ever “progresses” to that level, liberty would be forced to stamp out tyranny for all time, or at least as far as possible.

And all that’s necessary to avoid it is for the left to behave like honest, non-violent citizens of the republic. Hillary Clinton lost. Donald Trump is president. The Democrat ideology has been soundly rejected by most of America. That’s the way democracy works. Shut up, sit down and figure out why and do better next time. Unfortunately, the Democrat party is on the verge, as I write this, of electing a Muslim, anti-semite lunatic and lightweight to lead their party, and they show no sign of abating the deranged hatred they seem to universally feel for most of the American electorate.

They would do well to remember, as the Japanese learned, what happens when the sleeping giant is awakened.

Dave Schuler : I think that unless we're very careful we're headed towards civil war. While it's possible to protest peacefully, it's not possible to guarantee that a protest will remain peaceful. Protests are likely to escalate in the level of violence. That will encourage retaliation if only in self-defense. The largely detached strategy that local police have taken prevents over-reaction but they don't protect the targets of violence.

The opposing sides are too far removed in views and too isolated in geography. There are also too many inherent conflicts in the positions being held by the anti-Trumpers. For example, it is just not pragmatically possible to maintain open borders, the logical conclusion of what passes for an immigration policy among them, and have an expansive welfare state.

Laura Rambeau Lee : The enemies within might want a civil war, but I am afraid they have failed to form a cohesive platform for their supporters to rally around. They have created too many aggrieved categories and classes of people to be able to come together to overthrow anything. They can’t even figure out what sex they are or which bathroom to use… and without firearms it might be a tad difficult to pull off. What the radical left hoped to create were useful idiots but I am afraid there is nothing useful about this millennial generation.

On the other hand, conservatives in this country have become more united and been able to forestall the progressive movement in America. After years of hard work on our part, if our Republican controlled presidency and both houses of Congress fail to deliver on the many promises that got them elected I can see an overthrow of the political elite, although I am not sure how that would play out. Our immediate past presidents, starting with George H.W. Bush (if not before) have advanced the agenda for a global communist New World Order and a free and armed America is the only thing standing in the way of achieving their goal. What will start it will be another collapse of the economy which will be much worse than we saw in 2008. If the economy crashes again all bets are off. Better to be aware and prepared than be caught by surprise.

Well, there it is.

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