Sunday, May 31, 2020

US Civil War

Last year I did a bit of research into the possible paths into Civil War the US could fall into.




With the explosion of riots following George Flynn's murder, things have definitely gotten hot. I don't think many people are laughing about the risk of civil war now as they were back in 2013 when I started to get anxious about it. Obama's symbolic embrace of interesectionalism and all the structural problem of classical racism was always guaranteed to lead to some major problems. This doesn't mean it was anyone's fault (including Trump). It just means there were some much deeper processes at work that would take an exceptionally lucky super-position of choices to escape.

Tim Pool is probably one of the wiser news people here.  He's obviously not well informed technically, but he has a good sense of the left, and seems to get the anxieties of the right. And, he's reasonably good at filtering the news and understanding how their spin processes work.  Coming from a poor Chicago neighbourhood he also gets inner city dynamics, and can juxtaposition those with West coast progressivism.



The civil war vector Tim suggests is a fairly novel one. He suggests civil war will be based on a series of legal insurrections.


LEGAL INSURRECTION WAR
Sanctuary cities based on immigration have inspired sanctuary counties based on 2nd amendment. At the same time you've got sanctuary states emerging, and the very real possibility of counties moving from one state to another (see eastern Oregon & Washington and Virginia).

Right now you have Twitter declaring themselves immune from a vengeful application of Iranian sanction law. I don't think they saw that one coming, and, other than crying that application is vengeful, I doubt they have much of a legal leg to stand on. Only judicial activism and #Orangemanbad can save them. And it might.

But Trump's long overdue designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization really solidifies the legal insurrection vector into civil war. Are all the progressive elites who materially support Antifa going to double down against the president and brazenly embrace the Antifa rioters who are destroying inner city neighbourhood under the guise of "doing it for the black people' they're razing? I suspect there will be a decent amount of double down. For instance, I imagine Biden has enough dementia for his hip staffers to push him into it.  After all #OrangeManBad. And if the legacy DNC system can save image by avoiding Russiagatehoax prosecutions, they might as well throw a hail mary. Doubling down (on both sides of the aisle) is the rule of the day.

That will leave the States with even more deep state problems than it now has. Will you have half the FBI (the Brennanites and Commeyites) subverting the Barrites to protect what they feel is an unjust application of the executive authority? Probably. I just don't see how you'll avoid that.


FUNDAMENTALLY
The problem, fundamentally, is you now have a weak state (US federalism) that is splitting apart. Divisional processes follow a 2 state bifurcation model rather than a total collapse into chaos. The "protestant" side is bouncing around a landscape that will ultimately select for grievance sacrilization. In that sense, the ultimate aim of the riots isn't for concession A of concession B. Nor, is it about total reform as the rhetoric may say. That is mainly motivational. Ultimately, it is about finding grievances that can't be fully understood, and thus can't be infiltrated or countered by the other side. These are a special type of sacred value. Any affront to them, as with 1600's protestantism, is grounds for violent insurrection. And, any legal claims that would go against such values are themselves illegitimate. Not because of any failing with the law per se, but because their intent and outcomes are counter to the bifurcation process itself.


CONCLUSION
These are very interesting times. I've deleted my twitter in protest of the information banning they've done against Trump (and have long since deleted facebook for their "curation" tendencies & mindless people's braindead political spam). Like him or hate him, I think one sided political censorship is a cure that is worse than the disease. While it may seem good and fair, based on my reasoning cited early, it will only energize the next big backlash cycle. Institutional domination by the left and a huge overton window shift in that direction makes the right feel as if they are backed up against a wall. Right now Trump is the only figure really holding that flood back (at least in their minds).

The stakes are high, and while Trump's terrorist designation and framing of his fight as that FOR minority business rights and economical success, I just have a feeling that deep state energy is too great to contain. This is an unexpected fit into Peter Turchins' elite overproduction reasoning. Neat.

2 comments:

  1. Chris, I stumbled upon your blog. I love it. It brings back fond memories of us in Lumiar with you putting together your scripture chain of how the US was doomed for destruction. Those were good times.

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  2. Hi mark. It's been a while since Lumiar. I keep thinking about those pasteis de natas downtown. If only I was a millionaire and could go back.

    I don't remember much about those ideas back then. Interesting to see how they stuck with you though.

    Since 2006 I started to get way more into complexity, cultural evolution and the science of religion & group dynamics. Most of these thoughts came out of trying to understand why Education tended to resist reform and go through cyclical patterns. Turns out understanding that requires understanding a lot more secular (and religious) dynamics than I ever could have imagined. Fun stuff. But, I think I've sort of maxed out what there is to know. The last couple of years I started to look into woke-ism as religion. Interesting, but the move back to de facto theocratic governance is depressing. Pluralism was nice while it lasted... Right now I'm having to decide how much time I should devote to trying to keep Ed in the province pluralistic and non-religious vs how much I want to do other things. Fighting woke zealots is not my idea of fun...

    James Lindsay is a good twitter account to follow on this. But, I've deleted most social media stuff as I just can't see the moral value of contributing to purposefully polarizing institutions.

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