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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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I think all this civil war talk is massively overblown.

Let's consider Russia for a moment, in the 1990s. The economy shrank 40%, looters stole much of what remained. Millions of people are unemployed in a country that has no experience with unemployment, or their wages just aren't paid. If they are paid, often they can't buy anything. There are no working social services. Life expectancy dropped 8 years. It's really, really bad.

There are some extremely dubious elections, in a country which has barely even had a chance to get used to elections. The communists (numerous and well-organized) had many very good reasons to dispute them, given that capitalism had proven to be a massive disaster thus far.

The President (a retarded drunk) had the army shell the White House with tanks. Hundreds of government representatives and officials died. There was a disastrous war in Chechnya. It was the nightmare-fantasy version of what Trump will do to America but real.

Still no civil war! Rich countries with strong bureaucracies do not have civil wars unless there are extreme circumstances. I count Russia in the 1990s as a rich country - the US is extremely rich. US security forces have many things that the Russians didn't, drones and internet surveillance. And then there are the American nuclear forces, who have many good reasons to want to stick together and resolve things peacefully.

For a civil war to happen in America, the power of the government has to be broken. At minimum, there'd need to be a decisive military defeat by China prompting an economic depression and delegitimation of traditional authorities. But even then you might just get a socialist/fascist takeover or a breakup rather than a civil war. One dead guy does not cut it.

For a civil war to happen in America, the power of the government has to be broken.

It seems to me implicit in this is defining a (future) civil war in America to be between two armies, like the blues vs. the greys, or a large insurgency like the Tamil Tigers. I agree that neither of those will come to pass while there's still a strong central government. But a state of affairs similar to the troubles in Ireland (similar in methodology, i.e. bombings, assassinations, etc.) is within the realm of possibility if something doesn't change, though there's something inside me that insists we'll all come to our senses before that happens.