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Two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead late yesterday night as they were walking just outside the Capitol Jewish Museum. The Capitol Police have identified the suspect as one Elias Rodriguez of Chicago. Reportedly, Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” as he executed the couple, who were engaged to be married.
I have been meaning to write a “Civil War vibe-check” top-level post. My intuition was that the danger of such a nightmare scenario was receding, having peaked twice, with the mass-shooting at the Congressional baseball team practice game, and the George Floyd Riot/January Sixth Riot forming a stockbroker’s double blow-off top before a consistent decline in risk.
Recently multiple events have made me question this. The Zizian cult killings, the suicide bombing in Palm Springs over the weekend, and now this, make me feel like something is perhaps coming. Maybe not a full Syrian Civil War, but at least another Days of Rage similar to the period in the 1970s after the great wave broke and began to recede. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts.
America dodged a bullet when Trump dodged one.
Don't think any other event in my lifetime has been so close to setting off a civil war.
I know at least two men that are a combination of drunk, belligerent, massive Trump supporters, and in possession of enough firearms that they could have easily turned into a problem. The problem is that I don't know tons of country rednecks, maybe a dozen. So that is probably a bad sign of just how fucked things might have gotten.
Their goal wouldn't have been taking control of the government, it would have been shooting the politicians they didn't like.
At best it wouldn't have been a civil war, just a decade or two of people deciding it's ok to shoot politicians they don't like and all the impacts of that norm.
By comparison we are fine nowadays. There is always going to be a low background noise if violence and murder in a country this size. Certainly sucks when it's you or someone you know that is the victim. But as long as you are staying out of certain cities and areas you are unlikely to be that victim.
What sets off ugly civil wars is being forced to choose sides. "Help me find the rebels or I torture you until I'm satisfied you don't know" vs "Help me hide from the government or my friends come back and kill you and your family". It doesn't start that bad, just a case of ping ponging escalating consequences.
What do you think would be they impacts of that norm? I have always had the suspicion that in a sufficiently polarised setting, it might actually result in better leadership if the leaders had to not only optimise for getting reelected (make their ingroup happy) but also for not getting assassinated (don't make their outgroup too unhappy).
Show your support for the ingroup by rolling coal on the outgroup. Doing whatever enrages them the most. Then only travel with a team of armed security and only 'publicly' present yourself in closed secure venues.
They'd culture war as hard as possible, and call you a terrorist for criticizing them.
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Base voter preferences would still be mostly the same, and I think politicians mostly respond to voter desires.
There would end up being two types of politicians. The demagogues that flaunt the risk, and the timid that shy away from it. The demagogues would have even more power because there would be few to opposed them.
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This treats the polarization as binary collectives, rather than clusters in a much, much broader sea of actors of various willingness to murder. An example of the distinction is Mexico- there is political polarization, though at the current time one 'pole' has achieved relative dominance, but there is also a heck of a lot of political murder.
Mexico is not generally considered a producer of better leadership, not least because the group they need to not get assassinated by more (Cartels) are not only different from the political outgroup pole, but fractious enough that there is no coherent [Cartel group] as a national level. Which means more potential conflicts, for more potential assassinations, and so on.
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