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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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they're going to be even less effective in the parts of the US where the most competent soldiers actually come from.

At best this is a trade. The military's logistical pipelines become an order of magnitude less complex, the terrain they're fighting in becomes less rugged and more familiar, and if they're eradicating freedom fighters they'll still have 50% of the population (bootlicking soy boys) out to rat on whoever shows up at a convenience store with a Gadsden flag patch.

Don't get me wrong, I think an armed resistance in the US would do better than many people think, but I think some of the optimism here is unwarranted.

The military's logistical pipelines become an order of magnitude less complex

With collapse of US (and world) economy, logistical pipelines become nonexistant.

Do not imagine masses of shiny wunderwaffen crushing the rebels, imagine Second Civil War as two (at minimum) African style armies with pickup trucks and jerry rigged armored vehicles duking it out in Mad Max apocalypse land.

The military's logistical pipelines become an order of magnitude less complex,

They also became far, FAR more vulnerable to monkeywrenching and sabotage. A decent portion of the insurgents and freedom fighters will actually just be in the military already, and a decent portion of them will be veterans as well. How much of the military is going to be wasted patrolling and securing electricity substations or any of the other countless pieces of infrastructure required to keep cities functioning? Think about how dramatic the purges of the military will have to be to make sure that nobody with any kind of power or responsibility has any ties to the broad swathes of the country they'll have to occupy.

if they're eradicating freedom fighters they'll still have 50% of the population (bootlicking soy boys) out to rat on whoever shows up at a convenience store with a Gadsden flag patch.

This only really makes sense if you believe that political affiliation is distributed in a perfect balance all through the country. In most of the areas that these insurgencies will be operating out of, that portion of the population will be vanishingly small (and it isn't like people in those areas are just going to forget about the small minority who had an I'M WITH HER sign on their lawn). The rural/urban divide in terms of political affiliation is incredibly meaningful in this kind of hypothetical scenario, and I don't think it paints a very good picture for the hypothetical Federal Occupation Force.

Don't get me wrong, I think an armed resistance in the US would do better than many people think, but I think some of the optimism here is unwarranted.

I'm not optimistic about it at all. A real armed resistance in the US would case immense amounts of suffering - one of the first tactics would doubtless be the total destruction of all infrastructure supplying major cities. Outside the direct military conflict, the flow-on consequences would be responsible for a lot of death and misery - economic disruption, supply chain disruption, water infrastructure destruction... Even worse, it isn't like this conflict would just cause the entire rest of the world to stop existing - Russia and China would doubtless do their best to make sure that the conflict is even worse and more destructive, not to mention mine the conflict for devastatingly effective propaganda. Footage of the US military going into small town America, stepping over dying fentanyl addicts and going door to door wiping out local prominent conservatives would probably be a big hit on foreign social media platforms.