Saw this thread, and it really hit a chord with me, as these similar fears tend to constantly weigh on me (for various reasons- being trans, ethnic Chinese, commie, etc).
I think we all (leftists, but also just most minorities) know, shit is bad and will get worse, it’s just a question of how bad it will get. People mention it offhand without usually going further into the details, and similarly in other spaces - non-leftist ones as well, for instance Asian diasporic and LGBT spaces in my experience, these fears come up, but ultimately we keep the bulk of our concerns to ourselves. What are our expectations here, for the west? Not just for the US, but the Anglosphere and Europe?
I say at least in the USA its going to be a big civil war, probably going to looked like a mix of the chinese and russian civil wars with warlords and fascist armies fighting for territory and the main goverment federal faction slowly losing territory to them
The Syrian civil war but with 1.2 guns per person instead of 0.08
The Syrian civil war is a really good example I think, because in a US civil war you will still have an existing rump government like you had with Assad and areas that are superficially peaceful and unaffected, meanwhile religious fundamentalists and all sorts of other militias will be duking it out with the government and each other in the disputed areas. And it might all ulitmately settle to an uneasy truce with the country nominally the same state, but chunks of it not controlled or occupied by foreign troops to protect strategic assets.
Is it too much to hope that the result could effectively be a great purging of reactionary settler elements (the bulk of these fundies and militias)? Fingers crossed… though I suspect it’ll more likely/definitely be those elements being embraced lovingly by the lib state just as they always are when shit comes down to it.
One could hope that might happen. But I imagine if faced between bombing a Christian Dominionist militia that executes non-whites and LGBT people and any BIPOC/queer friendly civil defence organisation that springs up to prevent that, the rump government would probably choose the latter.
Yeah that is exactly what I think will happen here. We’re perfectly set up for it.
Many areas already have little government presence outside of the local sheriffs department. There are heavily armed ultra religious freaks everywhere, a group that heavily overlaps either the aforementioned sheriffs.
Add onto that our crumbling infrastructure. A few attacks on some important pieces of infrastructure and it’s not hard to imagine the federal government struggling to maintain control.
It’ll be lots of terrorist attacks and militias fighting each other and the remaining state trading control of territory.
Robert Fedvans has only done one thing I really liked, and it’s the original 10 episode series of “It Could Happen Here,” before he made it a long running more news-y show.
Oh yea that also made me think, its posible for any faction to get their hands on the non nuclear WMDs mostly the bio weapons and use them against their enemies
Nukes
if you look at the bright side, modern nuclear missiles only work if you have the codes so it posible they get lost (like with for example the collapse of the federal gov) during the conflict which would mean no one can use them
the real problem would be tactical nuclear weapon since those dont need a code to work since they are conventional weapons
Dirty bombs
Dirty bombs have never been used in a conflict and may not even actually exist beyond something theoretical. I mean, there’s plenty of missing nukes from the fall of the USSR and not a single one was converted into dirty bombs in the 33 years since. I’m not saying it’s not possible but the concept feels more like anti-terror propaganda than a real threat rn.
Seriously, you think they never use bombs with dirt or mud on them? I’ve seen photos of US military bases and their hygiene is not up to par. Guarantee some of the bombs they use are dirty.
Didn’t the US design such weapons and similar? (weapons with a focus on killing a populace while leaving infrastructure intact) Also even beyond that- when pushed I think the US could truly be (and many elements among its elite absolutely are) mad enough to do it.
I’m not a doomer (though I’m realistically concerned all the same, because doom is also a very real possibility) but my hopes mainly stem from the rank-and-file up to even some of the upper brass and other such cogs in the machine recognizing their common humanity- if not with their victims abroad, then with probably 99% of their fellow citizens, their family, friends, relatives…
But seriously, look up what kind of logic drives the US. The Wolfowitz doctrine and “Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” are two excellent examples, but you just need to see exactly what circles all these hawks/neocons/unipolar hegemonists run in and how tight their control of the ship is…