cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/17713638
““If we jail Trump, get rid of Maga, end the electoral college, ban voter ID, censor free speech, we’ll save democracy,” says one meme in a QAnon channel on Telegram that depicts Biden in a Nazi uniform with a Hitler mustache”
Apparently they at least understand their opponent’s view .
I put this on another post from another account, but I found it, and I’m going to paste it here:
Do it! DO IT!! Shut up talking about it, and let’s get the civil war started!! Because I suspect it will be over before supper time.
In reality all they’re going to do is talk about it, because they’re small weak little people. Look at the big bad Proud Boys. When faced with the consequences of jail, they cried like little girls and begged the judges to take pity on them. Only one defiantly yelled “TRUMP WON” on his way out is the courtroom, but that was even after he cried and groveled.
Point the first: no. War is awful no matter how short or long it is, just no.
Point the second: folks said the first American civil war was going to be short, too.
In summary, no.
People love looking at the first civil war in conversations like this, but the next civil war is going to be nothing like it. For a likely comparison, you’d have to look at the Spanish Civil War and The Troubles in Ireland.
Americans have no fucking clue what they’re asking for.
It drives me insane that every “you just have to vote!!” liberal thinks that a civil war is two armies meeting on a battlefield. That’s not how it works at all! There are no armies. It’s literally guerilla attacks meant to make the state ungovernable, and the enemy is very possibly your neighbor who saw your anti-trump post on NextDoor.
Or for a more recent events, Syria. I enjoy following modern history and geopolitics, but fuck me that is a mess of proxy forces, non-state actors, and local warlords.
If it pops off, somebody on the world stage is going to co-opt and prolong any US civil war/sectarianism to keep the US broken or distracted with a prolonged insurgency and COIN. Russia is already working to highlight any existing and/or astroturf internal division, and we’re seeing right now how effective proxies can be at causing an enemy to hurt itself in its confusion.
Iran knew that Oct7 would demand a firm response from Israeli civic and political society, and Netanyahu/the government fell for the trap. See also, 9/11.
I agree that a Civil War 2 would be vastly different, all I’m saying is that it would be anything but short.
Might be a good time to arm up(unless you’re mentally ill in a way that will make you hurt yourself or make you hurt others before any actual conflict has begun). Just in case of course.
Edit/Addendum: If you have kids, please get a gun case and please educate them about proper gun safety and how to properly check if there’s any ammunition in chamber, etc. In fact, might as well take a gun safety course yourself.
Parity is important. Why did the Soviets need nukes? Why did France?
The right sees the left as defenseless, because they see the left as the anti-gun crowd.
I will give up my 2nd amendment rights at the same time as my neighbor up the street with the “stop the steal” flags.
“The right” doesn’t believe any such thing. "The right’ doesn’t exist. MAGA believes it. Probably the GOP believes it. But those two groups don’t hold the patent on “conservative thinking”.
Never confuse the loudest for the most numerous. They are a minority of fundamentalists who have taken over the microphones of the GOP, but the vast majority of “everyday folk” are just trying to live their lives just like you or I.
The very proof of that is Trump’s guilty verdict. Do you think there weren’t at least a few “conservatives” on that jury? Of course their were. But a person can be conservative and still do their duty. I’m willing to be a number of service men and women in the military are also conservative, but I have no belief that they’ll suddenly “rebel” because at the end of the day, they aren’t insane. I’m sure some of the capitol police on J6 lean conservative as well. But guess what, they all just did their job.
Maga is not “conservatives”. In fact MAGA is not a political ideology at all; it’s a very loud excuse to use hate as a weapon, nothing more. While I may not be “conservative” in any sense of the word, and believe it’s a relic of history, it’s not MAGA. It’s a very real and tangible political thing that sadly never gets debated or talked about anymore because MAGA shouts over top of it.
The thing is conservatism IS MAGA. It is the seed that bears horrible fruit.
Conservatives have never ever been the good guys in the history of the United States.
Period.
Imagine pretending the arm isn’t attached to the armpit cuz it stinks less…
Hard disagree here.
I agree with you that Conservatism is an outdated concept that it’s done far more harm than good in the world. It’s a relic that needs to be relegated to the dust-bin of history, yes.
But Conservatism is nothing more than a series of economic and political ideals. Nothing more. There are a thousand different reasons for people to identify with one side or the other. Neither Conservatism nor the left equivalent are monolithic static things. They’re protean and change depending on the motivations of the people who currently hold their reins in the public sphere.
Does Conservatism (ie. The Right) generally attract more people with intolerant beliefs and hateful dogmatic behaviours? You’ll get no argument from me there. But the number of them that are willing to pick up arms and commit treason because of it. The number of the right that is wiling to use their intolerance as an excuse for violence, is still the minority no matter how many ways you slice it.
Conservatism might be old and outdated. It might be a haven for the uneducated and the intolerant. But here’s the thing…
It always has been.
And if it always has been, than why were the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, all violence free? Why was there heated debate between the two sides, but not violence? What’s changed now?
And you know the answer to that.
And if it always has been, than why were the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, all violence free? Why was there heated debate between the two sides, but not violence? What’s changed now?
This is the most straight white comment ever. Most of those decades still had lynchings. And why are you ignoring the '60s while looking back at our history? Seems like you don’t want to look at that decade specifically. The reality is that conservatives have been murdering liberals for as long as this country has been around. Even people as conservative as West Virginia coal diggers were massacred by conservatives using police and the pinkertons for being just liberal enough to believe in getting paid fairly.
But Conservatism is nothing more than a series of economic and political ideals. Nothing more.
Uh huh, and what do those policies look like?
- No right to vote. (See: Kansas Supreme Court)
- Government decides who you get to marry. (No gay marriage)
- Government-enforced dress codes. (No Drag or “Transgenderism”)
- Book Bans. (Criminalizing LGBTQ+ literature or writings by non-white authors)
- Expanding the Death Penalty to include non-violent criminals. (Currently targeted at sex offenders, but with a clear aim to target LGBTQ+ people)
- Expanding the justice system to include torture and other deliberate forms of cruelty. (Currently targeted at sex offenders, but with a clear aim to target LGBTQ+ people)
- Right Wing Dictatorship. (Crush “Wokeness” and make the Democratic party illegal)
- Genocide. (Calls to “exterminate” trans people at CPAC)
- Genocide. (Calls to completely wipe out Palestine)
- Genocide. (Openly celebrate police killing PoC)
- Genocide. (Lots of literal Neo-Nazis, including in elected party positions)
- Genocide. (Happy to let poor people die from lack of access to health care)
- Genocide. (Regularly calling for Nuclear War, especially against Arab/Muslim nations)
- Genocide. (Regularly calling for Civil War because they want to wipe out their political enemies)
- Murder. (Calling for citizens to engage in vigilante justice, such as running people over in the street or throwing them off of bridges)
- Murder. (Celebrating killers like Kyle Rittenhouse and calling them “heroes” for killing democrats/leftists.)
So yeah, “Nothing more” than some perfectly normal “political ideals”. Nothing to see here. /s
I have no idea the point of this argument. You have to be living in a fantasy world where a rational Republican party exists. Many people will argue that this was a time in the past, but honestly, there has never been an era of a rational Republicanism.
In America “The Right” = “Conservatives” = “Republicans” = “Trump/MAGA”
in 2016 63 Million people voted for Trump. In 2020 74 Million people voted for him.
Roughly half of American voters are backing the Republican Party and Trump in 2024. The Republican party is dominated by MAGA-style culture wars.
I get that it is comforting to believe that Fascism isn’t mainstream Conservatism, but it absolutely is, and ignoring that fact does nothing to protect us against the threat that it poses to this nation and its people.
I agree with you, but I want to point out that this conflation is a direct result of our election system because it mechanically cannot support more than two parties.
Any other political interests need to merge together into one big entity that is nearly impossible to disentangle from the rest, so now maga = conservatism and we lose a lot of nuance in or political decision making and ability to be represented.
I’m pushing for Election Reform this election to move past First Past the Post voting.
So when are all you “enlightened centrists” going to finally admit that radicalizing fascist rhetoric is not protected free speech? When are you going to admit that broadcasting blatant lies for political gain is in fact enemy combatant and insurgent behavior and that those rhetoric mills- created by the 1996 Telecommunications Act- must be shut down with extreme prejudice?
Probably never. Not because I necessarily disagree with you in spirit. This speech is damaging and without redeeming value. My only problem is that the process of deciding what speech is and isn’t permissible is more dangerous than this speech.
It’s not hard to figure out. Are you representing a blatant lie as truth? Are you doing it to destabilize democracy? To the cage you go.
When are you far left communists gonna admit that we shouldn’t be teaching children how to “make prison hooch”?
When are you extreme anarchists going to fess up that we shouldn’t be melting the elderly?
When are all you far leftists gonna admit to things you already probably agree with?
Silly, no one is mobilizing. Another scare tactic to make people vote Democrat.
The US died under Reagan as anything but a capitalist exploitation farm.
Right-wing peasant ignoramuses are darkly hilariously concerned about preserving the structure of their owner’s money printer and their own subsistence.
