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Notes -
Has the shot already been fired?
There seems to be an uptick in worst case scenario chatter, people imagining scenarios spiraling out of control until political violence increases up to the level of civil war.
Ignore whether any of these are likely. Assume a world where the US does descend into some sort of organized violence, the low end somewhere along the lines of the Balkans and the high end a slug-out like the Civil War.
When historians (and just assume historians exist, even if they're AI) look back will they identify something that's already happened as one of the primary inciting incidents? I don't think we've had a Fort Sumter but is John Brown's body already marching?
Alternatively - and again only under the pure assumption that it happens, no implication meant as to the probability - if you think it hasn't happened yet, roughly how long until it does?
Hasn't been fired yet, but there's some obvious places where it might -- conflict between state law enforcement and Federal around immigration is one. Imagine the Portland judge's decision that Trump can't use the National Guard the way he wants stands. Antifa gets cocky and turns Portland into a riot zone again. Local law enforcement appears but essentially protects the rioters. Trump invokes the Insurrection Act (in the middle of the night of course) and sends in some National Guard unit arguably (but not definitely) in defiance of the judge's orders. Portland and Oregon declare this illegal and the staties try to stop them... there's your shot.
Alternatively, the decision DOESN'T stand. Trump uses the National Guard in more and more blue cities. Local law enforcement gets in a conflict with them, shots fired.
Police, despite being dressed in blue, are overwhelmingly red. I find it hard to believe that a significant amount of local or staties would be willing to shoot feds even if given orders to that effect.
It doesn't take many.
If there is one single issue I think you will have trouble rallying cops to kill feds for I really think, "Actually we don't need to allow law enforcement to use greater force on criminals and we should decriminalize even more vagrancy and brazen public lawlessness" is it.
It is nearly infinitely more likely the cops grab their own balaclavas and join the NG and ICE than line up against them. Fuck, this is the purge most city cops have been itching for. They're gonna instead form a human wall against it because the dem apparatchik who 6 months ago was calling for their total defunding and disbandment tells em to? One might even think that constantly claiming the cops are racist murderers might not endear them to your cause.
France has also been rather running into this issue. It turns out that when you constantly side with criminals over cops that cops are less inclined to take massive personal risks just because you tell them to. And, of course, the politicians dearly want to gut the police for this but they also need them more than ever.
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