Now, congress and the courts, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I can’t just laugh at these dimwits forever.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Now, congress and the courts, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I can’t just laugh at these dimwits forever.
They won’t. They The spineless Dems won’t because of they’re too afraid the resulting backlash from undecided voters sympathizing with the “persecuted” Republicans will hurt their already precarious 2022 congressional prospects. Also, let’s not forget the understanding in Washington D.C. that the government just doesn’t punish the wealthy and/or powerful.
Also, let’s not forget that the mindless American masses just don’t give a shit about Jan 6. They don’t care if America becomes a fascist , white supremacist, Christian dictatorship so long as their favorite Reality TV shows get renewed and their Amazon Prime order arrives on time.
Edit:
TheyThe spineless…Congress and the courts are doing something about it. Congress is digging into it. There have been over 700 arrests and quite a few convictions already, although those are the small potato folks. The process is slower for the big shots…they’ve got teams of lawyers…but it can happen. Despite the usual negative projections of our local seers of the future, the rich and powerful can fall. It just takes time to build a case and maneuver around their delays.
For those not old enough (or too old) to remember, it was slightly over two years from the first arrests at the Watergate Office Building (June 17, 1972) to Nixon’s resignation (August 9, 1974). Many of us at least suspected that this crime went all the way to the top from the beginning. Many of us were doubtful that Nixon and his crew would be held accountable, but they were. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Colson, and others served time. Nixon did resign. I’m not overly optimistic because of the narrow margin Democrats and Independents have in Congress which could change, but I’m going to at least acknowledge that some members of Congress are trying to do something.
Incidentally, Colbert referred to Dumpster as a “crack wipe” in his monologue where they aired that piece. Colbert refuses to use Dumpster’s name on air.
Colbert also had on Amy Klobuchar who talked about the day. She was interviewed by Colbert remotely the night of January 6th so something a reprise. He asked her about being in the safe room with the other Senators including the Republican scum bags who have since backpedaled from their initial condemnation. Apparently when then President-Elect Joe Biden went on air to address the situation (before Dumpster), she says everyone cheered…as I recall Colbert confirmed that included the scum bags.
If by accountable you mean David Frost interviews, book deals, a reputation as a senior statesman, and favorable comparisons to Ronald Reagan by liberals (in fairness, accurate ones), then yeah.
However, by traditional standards of accountability (oubliette, island exile, or public execution) he got a pretty good deal.
@ 3
<
blockquote>Congress and the courts are doing something about it.
Really? Then why are the fascist fuckers responsible–from the members of the redneck rabble all the way up to the scumbag at the very top–still alive? I mean, besides the fact that we only consider brown, foreign people “terrorists” deserving of visits from hellfire drones and Navy SEAL kill teams?
True, it is only silly little countries like France that would press criminal charges against an ex-President. Well, and Peru.
Does it really matter? Even if Agent Orange gets hauled away in a matching orange jump suit, do you think MAGAt nation is just going to stay home and cry in 2022 and 2024? Unless by some miracle the Democrats can turn around climate change promises, fair wealth/taxation promises, or at least any positive perception that will lift up the eyes from mobile devices for more than 10 minutes….
Get used to saying “Desantis/Pompeo” or “Desantis/Haley” or “Pompeo/Desantis” or “Haley/Desantis”, or some abominable combination of those names…
We. Are. Fucked.
@7 Yes, it really matters. It won’t solve every problem, but ignoring this one makes things even worse.
For me the root of the problem is that the majority of the public don’t take what happened a year and a day ago seriously. If the Democrats went after the leaders who encouraged the mob – Trump and other Republican politicians – they would probably lose overwhelmingly in the next couple of election cycles because lots of people would see it as political persecution rather than punishment for an attempted coup. Too many people are willing to give the Republicans a free pass for just about anything because they don’t want to rock the boat – or are afraid of a civil war.
Adding to my previous comment, I can understand people who are afraid of civil war. I have a harder time understanding those who just won’t admit that anything serious happened.
springa73@10 I would put myself in the camp of those who understand something very serious happened but don’t feel there is much they can do about it at an individual level. I suspect that aside from Republicans and nutty libertarians who support the insurrection, that’s a very large category. Just put it out of your mind and go back to the rest of your life, which also requires attention and has a lot more to it that’s actionable. I’m not always this passive. I paid a lot of attention during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, wrote letters and made phone calls to senators. I may get back to that level of engagement, but right now I’m exhausted. If congressional Democrats won’t address the insurrection, there’s little I can do to kick them into action. I also have little optimism about the current investigation, but who knows. It feels little like Robert Mueller redux, with Merrick Garland in the lead role.
Right now, my main worry is being so complacent that I fool myself into thinking I’m safe in “coastal” America. I have potential ways out before the shit hits the fan and I ought to be exploring them while I have the luxury of time.
We’re basically laughing into oblivion. I’m glad the white trash minions are getting their slaps on the wrist for their fascist Beer Belly Putsch but the people who have the true power are very likely going to skate.
Even if they were held criminally accountable, the next corporatist, right-leaning occupant of the Oval Office, regardless of party, would just pardon them. This is just an illusion of justice.
So they’d rather live under fascism than deal with a necessary civil war.
Typical.
“… a necessary civil war”
Wow. Clearly, you have no idea of the severity and the consequences of an actual civil war.
(But hey, perhaps you might find out. I don’t think you’ll find it to be all that good, though)
Well, this will also cheer you right up.
A Qanon “Star”, Cirsten Weldon (who is so famous no one has ever heard of her) was a militant antivaxxer. She just died from…Covid-19 virus.
One of thousands of antivaxxers, that also died today.
As a bonus, one of her friends is now claiming the hospital deliberately killed her and is threatening revenge.
“McKay proposed the hospital staff be sentenced to death, or be murdered in vigilante violence.” This is BTW, both terrorism and stochastic terrorism.
as I see it there are 2 problems involved in this situation There is the investigation and any criminal charges that arise from it. there is the congressional investigation which i think has not offered any immunity for testimony a mistake that has been done before and the DOJ investigation that is taking its time (not like TV cop shows)
the other problem is the political problem I am sure that the politicians know very well that they have to proceed carefully so as to be seen as not being some political prosecution and hope in the process to convince the majority of the public that there was a crime committed and that it was promoted and led by dumpster and his lackeys for his sole benefit alone
That this crime had a very large racist white supremacist make up and the crime was completely against the practice of a free and impartial election.
it was an attempt to subvert the will of the electorate thus indicating his lack of respect for the voting public.
@ Akira MacKenzie, #13
“Necessary” or not, a second civil war in the United States really only ends one of three ways:
1.) The MAGAts win, and accelerate their time table on exterminating the rest of us. They’ll go to war with everyone who assisted the resistance and, when it becomes clear that they’re going to lose, nuke everything rather than accept defeat. Most of the biosphere dies in a couple of years time, and humanity probably goes extinct. I’d say this one has about a 50% chance of being the result.
2.) The MAGAts realize they’re about lose, and nuke everything rather than let anyone else control the country. Most of the biosphere dies, yada yada yada. I’d rate this one at about 30%.
3.) By some miracle, the MAGAts are defeated and we manage to keep them from starting a global nuclear war. The US spends the next few decades splitting into a number of failed states, as climate change nibbles away at our population. A few nukes go missing in the unrest, one goes off in the wrong place, and the Big Fire moseys in a few years late. I’d give this outcome a 19.9999% chance at my most optimistic.
That last 0.0001% is for, like, meteors or aliens or divine intervention. Not really worth putting on the list. There’s no scenario in which we “win” a second civil war. Which kind of sucks, because it’s probably inevitable, at this point. The Democratic leadership seems determined to dither away our last feeble hope of escaping fascism, which involves them having actual, major accomplishments to tout in the months leading up to the 2022 midterms. Accomplishments like BBB, or trying and convicting the seditionist ex-president of some of his many illegal acts.
Absent that, they’ll lose both houses in the midterms, and Republicans won’t waste any time. The MAGAts will legislate away democracy, and there will never be another remotely free or fair election in the US. They’ll keep Democrats around in the minority for a while, because they’re too good a scapegoat to immediately dispense with, but they’ll have throw them to the mob eventually. Just like they’ll have to start the mass extermination of “undesirables” at some point- that’s just how the brand of fascism they’ve wedded themselves to works. Eventually, the country will collapse, and then we’re back to nuclear Armageddon again.
There are ways to avoid all this. There’s still hope, right up until the missiles fly, but a civil war won’t do anything but get us all dead.
@17
there is one aspect of this country that the maggots and the racists over look it is a capitalist country and that is this countries stability has up to this point been based on business as it is constituted today. Much of “big business” the corporations are very much have become international. They know that a civil war is even more disruptive then a mere pandemic and that such a war here would probably have a very negative effect on the world’s economy. I think that businesses interest in stability was in some part why Nixon resigned after of course the coach was appointed VP.
How it works out I have no idea but the racists and the other maggots are not upper middle class conservatives nor are they a part of the corporate class nor the investor class.
They are the rabble who can be manipulated as it turns out to believe any dam fool shit but they do not really control very much. and are being “led” by criminals and opportunists who also do not control very much themselves but are beholden to their corporate masters
Yeah, I don’t see why any liberal should be looking forward to a civil war, badly outgunned as we are.
Unlike vucodlak, I don’t think the MAGAs would resort to nukes. But it would still be very, very, very bloody.
An eventual splitup into 3-5 smaller nations seems like the most likely outcome. East coast, west coast, the Contederacy (named after its new monarch), the Midwest, and maybe the southwest splitting off too.
My guess as to the closest model would be the India/Pakistan splitup. There would be some house-swapping for folks to get into their preferred areas, and also a lot of folks…encouraged to move out, vertically or horizontally. The rural versus urban conflicts would make for an interesting twist.
I wonder if the state boundaries would stay in place in such a war, or if there would be further breakdowns over borders. There is already east.vs west Oregon — we could see the same thing with north vs. south Illinois and Indiana, eastern vs. western Virginia, and probably lots of other states as well.
I doubt the southern Black population is going to sit passively by and let their hard-won rights be taken away. Lots of potential bloodshed there.
Nope, there is no way that anyone would come out well in a civil war aside from the worst of the worst. Oh, and anybody who talks about secession or “national divorce” like Cruz and Greene is leading us down this path as well — that’s a message we need to send out as loudly as we can.
@16
Unclefrogy, the same folks keep showing us why they lose. They want their win and they want it NOW!!!!!1111eleventyone. But they aren’t willing to put in the same work as the Fascists do.
Which is why the Fascists keep winning.
Various intonations of ‘charge the people at the top!!!’.
Lisen up: That isn’t how that shit works in the real world. Well, it does if you want to lose. Against the legal firepower the Fascists will have defending them, you need air-tight cases. And air-tight cases require air-tight evidence. And solid witnesses. and shit tons of other things to boot. Assembling this takes a great deal of time, effort and money. Your feelings are irrelevant.
You work from the bottom up, and get the peons first. Running around looking like a tub of lard dressed in cammies, packing an AR-15, and festooned with Tacticool gear might be fun, but stripped of that crap in a courtroom looking at time in jail isn’t.
And even if you have all of the above things, things can, and do, fall through. Remember that SEAL who got the worst of his charges dropped a while back? Yeah, it happens.
You have to win with the system you have. When you win, THEN you can go about changing the system. The Fascists understand this, and FAR too many of you people do not.
I think civil war in the US would look more like former Yugoslavia in the 90s than Nazi Germany. Just an impression. One thing about American “fascists” is that they don’t seem to have the slightest interest in running a government. That doesn’t stop them from causing a bloodbath but I’m not sure what their endgame would be. I also doubt very much that they could get a functioning theocracy going. Self-identified white “Christians” aren’t especially devout. They just use it as a tribal marker.
None of this is great news for liberals, to be clear and I don’t want a civil war, nor will I fight one. I want to get the fuck out of here before it happens. My kids complicate this. It’s also far from inevitable. The decline could be much slower.
PaulBC @21:
I agree that the QAnon/white supremacist folks wouldn’t actually do the work, but they wouldn’t be the ones to run the government; the oligarchs would. They’d be happy to do whatever it takes to speed the return of feudalism, and the rabble would be cast aside.
I laughed and had tears in my eyes at the same time.
I have a hatful of worries about this country, but in the end it is still my country and I sure as hell don’t want to see it devolve into christo-fascist, one party state. Look around the globe and see how well that works out for most people. If Trump were to be reelected – a very real possibility – I don’t know what I’d do. After shrieking into the small hours of election night and then going on a week-long bender there would only be two options left, leave or fight. I’ve got the financial resources to retire to another country. But, I’m not ignorant of the USA’s power and reach. The Republican poison couldn’t be contained within our borders. It could come after mouthy expats like myself. But, what would fighting look like if the game is rigged and no Democrat can ever win the presidency again? Imagine the horror of a president Hawley or DeSantis or even Don, Jr.? The Supreme Court could twist and interpret the Constitution any way they wished. Look at how they simply ignored the ‘well regulated militia’ part of the 2nd Amendment. A free press? That’s the first things autocrats go after. The right to free speech? For some, and then only about certain topics. I can’t see California or New England accepting this as the new status quo. The social and political strains could become too much to ignore. The USA is a huge, continental sized country. It’s not inconceivable that it could fracture into four or five smaller nations. There’s no way that would be a peaceful process.
I’m a veteran but I’m getting a little long in the tooth to pick up a weapon again. The mere fact that I’m truly worried about things like this happening tells you that something fundamental has shifted in the U.S. Nations rise and fall, but do you really want to be there when it happens?
@17 Where are they going to get these nukes?
davidc1@24 I think the implicit assumption was that the military would be infiltrated by white supremacists. It’s unclear, really, but I’m not optimistic enough to believe the military is going to protect me from gun nuts. I agree that Proud Boys aren’t going to figure out how to enrich uranium. They might not have to.
the problem with trying to picture what a new US civil war would look like and how it would break up in the end is very difficult Going by election results population distribution and percentages it is only vaguely geographically divided. The last election kind of points in that direction and I think that is part of the problem. the right wing the conservatives and the racists are being threatened, they no longer have unquestioned dominance every where.
A new civil war may look more like Northern Ireland or Syria or Lebanon then the US in 1860.
Unless there are a huge number of people willing and able to relocate across this continent while maintaining any equity they have acquired and any retirement plans they will not likely be going any where. Any way you look at it besides the death and destruction such a war would generate the result would be an economic catastrophe of monumental scale. Like it or not we are living in a market driven era with the US market playing a very large part in the prosperity of the entire world economy The “Oligarchs” world wide and those living here know that
But we are still just people who some times do the stupidest things over and over again.
@24 I don’t think there will be enough good old boys in uniform with access to nuclear weapons.
Anyway don’t the US Armed Forces swear an oath to defend the country from enemies ,both foreign and domestic?
Off topic,slightly,but those bastards at the fecking guardian are deleting my posts again.
I posted that the only hope for America is to form two countries ,one with all the redneck batshitcrazy wackaloon gun fondlers ,RNJ’s in one ,and all the nice liberal sensible people in the other
Or words to that effect,what’s wrong with that.
Also,in a article about Bruce Willis’s films someone mentioned Pulp Fiction.I commented on Samuel L Jackson’s use of the word Negro when he is talking on the phone to Mr Big.I wonderd if it was a more respectful among Black people than the N word that he was normally using.
davidc1@27
Like Ashli Babbitt? The oath clearly means different things to different people, including what country they think they are sworn to defend.
Nukes are low on my list of worries, at least in the early stages of a US civil war. But when you look at how quickly some members of congress as well as military officers like Michael Flynn have come to the defense of insurgents, there’s no reason to assume the military or part of it can’t be turned into officially supporting a new fascist government.
The “reasoning” goes that the “real” United States is the white Christian one and that the majority who would vote them out is illegitimate. We already see this in the attitude toward voting. While researchers will tell you till they’re blue in the face that there’s no significant voter fraud, the people railing on about it define “voter fraud” as Black and Latino people voting for Democrats. That is the “fraud” that “Stop the Steal” is aimed at.
Without the direct cooperation of the US military, it is also possible for large parts of the US to become fascist through an unwillingness to do anything about it. If states begin to secede, there is no reason to assume the federal government will show the same resolve it did in 1860.
A second civil war would be nothing like the first. And it’s a practical impossibility for the country to fracture into four or five smaller countries. The problem is that people hear about red states/blue states so much that they think it’s real. It’s not. Conservatives, progressives, unaffiliated, etc. are intertwined throughout our country, like veins of mold in bleu cheese. Yes, there are high concentrations in some areas, but it’s not a simple red/blue binary. I live in NY, nominally a very blue state, however, the county I live in has had a Republican county executive for the last 40 years straight and most towns and villages have had a long string of Republican rule. The largest city leans Democratic. It reminds me of something I heard about the politics of Pennsylvania many years ago: There’s Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and in between there’s a whole bunch of Alabama. There is no practical way that the country can split apart the way it did in 1861. You can’t even split it up by urban/rural. They only way you can get two or more countries out of it is if the majority of people are forced to move and just how is that supposed to work?
Like everything else in the USA, the only way a real second civil war comes about is if the investor class figures out a way to make more money on it than they stand to lose from it. And that’s the entire class, not just the people who own a particular media interest.
@ davidc1, #24
The president is the Commander-in-Chief of the military. Once they have the presidency, which they will unless congress passes federal voting rights legislation before the midterms, all they have to do is get one missile base, one bomber wing, or one nuclear submarine crew to follow attack orders in order to start a nuclear war.
The Air Force is likely the biggest threat in that regard. White Christian nationalists have heavily infiltrated their ranks, and they control the vast majority of the United States’ massive nuclear arsenal. These aren’t “good ol’ boys” so much as they’re nice, clean-cut fascists who will only get caught if their commanders don’t share the same viewpoint.
They also swear to obey the chain of command, of which the president is the top. Because ‘it’s not illegal if the president does it’ is basically the law of the land now, one could argue it’s not even illegal for the president to order the United States immolated. Also, keep in mind that there were dozens of active and former military involved in the coup attempt a year ago.
Basically, the only safeguard that exists against the president ordering a nuclear strike on a whim is for the military to effectively a military coup. I believe the majority of the military would refuse to follow such an order and fight back, but the beauty of our massive military industrial complex and huge nuclear arsenal is that it only takes a small portion of our military to destroy the world.
jimf@29
The US is hardly unique in having potentially opposing factions living in close proximity but disproportionately. In fact, that’s almost the preconditions for a genocidal civil war as each region attempts to “purify” itself by driving out or killing the minority.
I can think of three scenarios by which a civil war might start. In order of least to most dangerous:
1. Trump runs and loses in 2024, calls fraud again, and tells his followers to go to war. It’s unlikely — he doesn’t have the vision or the cajones to go big like that, so the only way he might try this is if it was the only alternative to a jail cell. I don’t think either he or anyone else in his circle is enough of a strategic thinker to be able to pull off any kind of big plot, so I doubt this would have any more effect than his coup attempt last year. I would just expect some random militias to run around committing acts of terrorism, but the Trumpist military infiltration hasn’t reached most of the officers, so that wouldn’t be a danger.
2. Trump wins in 2024 through dubious means, and the left rises up to oppose him. If it’s just normal Republican voter suppression I doubt we’d do much, but if it was something egregious like stacked local voter boards disqualifying tons of Democratic votes, or red legislatures disregarding the voters and choosing their own electors, we would have a constitutional crisis and most of us would probably be heading to the barricades. Our goal would be to cause enough disruption that the oligarchs get spooked and the Supreme Court and possibly the military overrule the bogus election.
3. The worst-case scenario would be if some state holds a successful secession vote, which both Cruz and Greene had said would be a fine idea. (Not necessarily Texas, either – California might try it if Trump won, for instance.) For the reasons JimF @29 gives, this would have the potential to turn into a long-lasting bloodbath. I don’t share his faith in the oligarchs’ ability to prevent this, either – they were none too pleased about Trump getting the nomination in 2015, but they weren’t able to stop him, so they’re hardly all-powerful. I think in this case we might eventually end up with four or five smaller countries, but not until thousands or tens of thousands had been killed.
This [feel-good comment thread] cheered me right up
davidc1 @27
If you saw Pulp Fiction, you should know none of the Black characters, including Sam Jackson, were using the N-word. It was only said by the white characters particularly the director Quintin Tarantino’s character.
@30Oh well,in that case I think America is well and truly fecked.
@34Au contraire, Mr Big uses the N word when he is telling the Hilly Billy boys what is in store for them.
Maybe you are right about Mr Jackson and his use of the word,but he does use it a lot in Jackie Brown.I will have to pay more attention the next time I watch Pulp fiction.
Anyway,what about my question regarding the difference between Negro and the N word?
Is there a difference?
davidc1@35
Yes, there’s a huge difference. “Negro” is no longer used for the most part and potentially offensive, but it did not start out as a disparaging term. For example, the United Negro College Fund, founded in 1944, still uses it in its name. Except for a historical reference (e.g. “Negro league” in baseball), it should not be used. Analogously NAACP stands for “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People”, and “colored” is no longer used in this way (though “people of color” is current and more inclusive).
The N word was always disparaging, and conveys contempt or at least the assumption of inferiority. Don’t use either, but it’s basically the difference between a mistake and hate speech.
@36 Thanks for clearing that up,it was just the way Samuel L Jackson used it when he was talking to
Mr Big on the telephone.I don’t use either by the way.
Don’t wish to keep on ,but when I mean a difference,I mean the way people of colour talk about other POC.
There was a way it sounded when Samuel L Jackson was talking on the phone talking to Mr Big,when he told Him
Wolf was on the way,he cheered up a bit and said “Damn,Negro ,That’s all You Had to Say”.
Maybe I am talking bollox about this,it has been known to happen.
davidc1@38 I can’t even attempt to answer that one. Though I think a Hollywood portrayal, even by Samuel L. Jackson, is not a very reliable source.
@39 Anyway thanks for answering.
Anyhow,back to the idea of the American Civil War II ,”This Time With 24 Hour News Coverage”.
I still think the US Armed Forces would not be on the side of the traitors,and I think Democrats
and old time repubs have guns of their own,and I don’t think they are going to sit still and
let it happen.
And if the number crunchers are right and POC and Latinos,and other groups of people are going to be in the majority,
I don’t think they are going to be very happy with a bunch of traitors who think they are not proper amuricans.
Plus doesn’t the FBI and Homeland security keep a beady eye on wackaloons who want to overthrow the govt?
davidc1@40
The same way Kenosha police keep an eye on teen vigilantes? I’m sure plenty of them would be happy to hand a water bottle to a thirsty white supremacist, even one who wasn’t already working for them.
The federal government has had significantly less enthusiasm for identifying American extremists since the backlash from Ruby Ridge and Waco in the early 90s. Homeland security is newer than that, but in practice focuses on foreign, i.e. Muslim, terrorist threats. And I guess they enforce copyright law too if I can believe that notice that pops up when I put on a DVD. Them and Interpol, protecting the world from bootleg DVDs.
Anyway, maybe it looks different outside the US. But I definitely don’t share your optimism. The people that are supposed to protect us employ too many of the people they’re supposed to protect us from.
davidc1 @ 35 & 38
There is no real difference when Black people use it. It’s just a term to show acceptance really. I will say “negro” is generally used to more comedic effect. This was also the case in the Wayans brothers TV sitcom. I’m not sure if that was shown England.
Anyway this is complicated because it’s divisive who can or cannot use the word and in what context. Not to mention how it’s pronounced (e.g. “hard r” or not). In the scene you referenced, Marcellus used the “ga” form which is widely used. In fact, it’s not clear he was referring to only Black people in that clip as he has whites who work for him as well.
@41 Oh well,in that case America is well and truly,madly,deeply fecked.
@42,Thanks for the reply,can’t say if it has been shown in the UK,yes it is complicated.
RE : Civil War & the break up of the United States of America discussed by various people here, we do have historical precednts – the collapse of the Soviet Union, the break up of Yugoslavia, the partition of India into Pakistan and then Pakistan into Bangladesh too, The independence struggle of East Timor from Indonesia, the Western Sahara (Saharawi?) attempt to become independnet from Morrococo – and the amicable split between Czeck and Slovak republics ending the former Czeckoslokaki-too late at night to get spelling right.. Then too I guess stretching it, there’s the examples if that’s the word Brexit and off top of head Catalonia (?) in Spain as well as the Basque separatists
As an erstwhile SF and horor writer with a fialry vivid imagination I can imagine a lot of possibilities of varying likellihoods and generally levels of appalling carnage & human misery and needless suffering followed by decades of hostility and intermittamt conflict bewteen split apart fragments..
In the case of the USA we have multiple states already having separation movemnts of various strnegths if memory serves right? Texas obvs, also California and maybe Hawaii?
I can image a scenario where once one state declares enough and breaks off , others join in either following as sepaate states themselves eg Texas or Californa splits off first followed by Hawaii followed by New York City etc .. . or where whole blocs depart en amsse eg Southern new Confederacy which shatters and take stheBible Belt leaving Eats and West coasts as either two or one other new nation.. who would get to call itself the United States then if naybody? Who keeps the flag, the nathem? The etc .. Oh yeah, the nukes and military?
I’m not sur etalking about it is agood idea or plants the seed sof the scenaruios we really want toavodi here so .. yeah.
I can also imagine a worst case exmaple that I don’t wnat totlak about really don’t becuase, well its close and extremely ugly but if the Republicans win the mid-terms who becomes third in line for POTUS and what might then .. shit. NO. Hopefully not. Really hopefully not.
But really do hope the Democratic party makes this moot in practice by winning those midterms and keeping the Speaker in Democratic hands. Also can Biden do something about the (at leats last 2) wrongly appointed partisan Justices on SCOTUS who should NOT be there already please?!
Sorry for typos, lack of coherency, already pretty much asleep about now..
Part of the trouble with American politics is this scrap of paper called the US constipation,or something like that.
Written when the Nation in the making was just a thin strip of land.You could start by ditching that and starting again.
By the way ,do they actually write the new amendments on the original bit of paper?
@ ^ davidc1 : The USA badly needs some major political reforms. One simple logical reform would prevent that nightmare scenario & I may even contact Biden (well, his people) privately and urge him to make it. Apologies again for the late night over tired post – been wanting to say it and feared I’d leave it too late with work and things getting in the way so decided to push on & do it when I could rather than wait. Hope people get the gist despite my typos and grammatical errors in # 44 above.
Also sorry Czechoslovakia, just one of the words I don’t use often and find exceedingly hard to spell and frustrating. I imagine in their own language and probly alphabet (do they use a cyrillic one? must check.) their name makes sens e but how it became what it is in the english version I really don’t know. Again, must google and find out I guess. Looks like it’d be pronounced “Seeezeeeck” phonetically for me rather than “Chheck” but .. yeah, sorry.
I think we need an internationally agreed mechanism that is globally applied and maybe UN monitored where if region A wants to leave nation B – or for that matter join it – there needs to be a fair and peaceful democratic process where the people can vote on it and have it go ahead or not. Like in the Velvet divorce of the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia * or the proposed independence plebiscite for Scotland. Or in theory the votes that led to East Timor staying then leaving Indonesia though the latter really didn’t end well..
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia
PS. Does the United States of America as a set of varied, clashing, internal societies and groups still want to stay together or do too many people living in it have too bitterly opposed ideas of what they want it to be and too serious a dislike of who they share it with to enable it to work anymore? Should the USA have a democratic poll on whether parts of it peacefully depart and from their own separate nation(s) and where would that lead? Could this be done Scottish referendum / Czecho-Slovak style and not be a disaster? IF the USA is “destined”(horrid word I know. If it is going to maybe?) to fracture into other nations and too unweildy and large could that be done without wars and violence now? If parts of it do go their own way what of those living in them who would then be actually persecuted and suffer as a result and how would the now separated parts get along in the future?
A possibility that might be worth discussing? Dunno here. Others?