Quote (IceMage @ Jun 11 2023 08:37pm)
Increased political violence is very possible but I don't even see how a civil war would work. Many states are made up of a lot of Democrats and a lot of Republicans. What would the uniforms be?
A Civil War is an idea that deranged right-wingers fantasize over because they want to kill their fellow Americans. Democrats don't. So in reality it'll be more attacks from right-wing nutters on government buildings or Democratic groups.
The outcome is similar to January 6th. The people who do violence go to jail, and the politicians who enabled it continue to hold power, and Democrats do better electorally because most Americans aren't nutters.
Just because an actual civil war isn't in the cards doesn't mean our democracy is beyond breaking. What happens if Trump is locked up under a cloud of politicization and overreach, the elections are held in a firestorm, Republicans wind up torn between a right wing who vow to boycott the illegitimate elections and centrists who want to grasp for the last vestiges of power, Democrats sweep and wind with a 90%+ margin and take over swing states, right wing states openly talk about seceding and do not recognize the results as legitimate. It doesn't need men marching into cannonballs to reach a point where national democracy dies in America and whatever is left, is either fractured and balkanized, or crushed under an authoritarian heel.
This is a pretty direct path towards the issue the folks screaming about January 6th were using as a bludgeon to attack the right: The legitimacy of our elections and shared civic acceptance of their outcomes. If half the country feels disenfranchised by a regime arresting the opposition candidate, there's no way a democracy survives. Its happened in plenty of other countries, what makes us immune to it?
I said many times it was good for our nation for Hillary to get a free pass since any attempt to persecute her would only lock up one woman but harm the fabric of an entire nation, the 'Nixon standard' as its been thrown around the past few days. And at that point she was a powerless has-been with no bearing on actual political outcomes. Now we're talking about the front runner in a 2 party system in an election year, the highest possible stakes in the whole world, and the best excuse the Democrats could conjure to lock him up is him doing something stupid and harmless.