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Notes -
The copypasta:
The point being the drone pilot could certainly terrorize his fellow Americans. But does his wife, children and mom also never leave secure facilities?
Having read about the Troubles it is not clear to me an American police state enforced by drone murders could actually stop that. The panopicon is fragile and relies on complicated systems actually working. A hypothetical ongoing civil war may break much of it.
I also notice the UK is a nuclear power. A sophisticated one with Trident missiles, etc. Somehow that didn't much help during the Troubles. Like who were they going to nuke: themselves?
The Troubles wasn't a civil war, fighting was much less intense than in the Cultural Revolution or Germany squashing the communists. The UK government won and could've won harder at any time, if they were willing to use force more aggressively, if they didn't care about the media and fully committed to crushing the insurgency. What Cromwell did in Ireland, that's a civil war. There are major battles, sieges, multiple armies and an enormous death toll, mostly civilian.
Nuclear armed militaries have strong incentives to be united, they don't want to fight a nuclear war against themselves.
When it comes to inflicting atrocities, the state enjoys escalation dominance. They have everything militias have and much more. Even in the era of pikes and muskets (surely more accommodating to the untrained than today's weapons) Cromwell's army could singlehandedly dominate Britannia. People certainly tried to resist but the army crushed them. Only when the army divided could anything change.
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The troubles had the advantage of a land border with a state that was broadly sympathetic with the struggle and reasonably off limits to incursions.
Also the actual casualties being like 50,000 over a 30 year period and fatalities being like 100 a year. The troubles generated a hell of a lot of vibes but in realistic terms weren't actually that big a deal
Are you trying to argue that a proper shooting war between "red" and "blue" would not include a land border?
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