This is not something you need to piece together yourself from first facts, nor is doing so likely to keep up with the state of the field. A lot of very solid work on this has been done, already collecting a lot of evidence, getting a lot of perspectives, doing a lot of reasoning and historical comparisons and sociological analysis.
This has been extensively discussed in mainstream news in the US and internationally, analysed academically (e.g. whether this will necessarily escalate to another civil war, and how the dynamic might be different under modern conditions, how the US is situated in global democratic backsliding trends); this topic became popular to the point where there are TED talks and books on it, just google US second civil war. It is essentially accepted fact internationally, to the degree where large scale nations and unions have altered their internal and foreign policy under the assumption that the US is now an unreliably ally or weakened enemy because their political system has become unstable, though we have been watching curiously whether Biden might stabilise some of this again. The current instability is not without historic precedent, but is still unstable to an extremely worrying degree in a country so powerful. “Do you reckon the US will slip into civil war?” is absolutely something you can discuss with friends in a bar in the EU, and everyone present will have an opinion on whether, when and how (e.g. whether we would see one massive escalation past a tipping point, or intermittent escalations). In Germany especially, we are analysing parallels to Germany’s own fall extensively, down to students discussing it in school. From ordinary housewives to conspiracy theorists, everyone agrees that this situation in the US is unstable, the question is mostly how and whether it can still be stabilised, and what exactly will happen if it is not. Our politicians have been holding speeches over how the EU can be changed to deal with the US suddenly getting flaky, because everyone agrees we cannot bank on the US functioning anymore. Heck, the literal Wikipedia article on democratic backsliding ended up with such a long subsection on democratic backsliding in the US that it became its own article. You could present this conclusion as a premise at a conference, and if anyone actually spoke up and disagreed, I would suspect the person is disingenuous and wants attention unless they had a really great argument coming through historical comparisons on how this stuff historically righted itself and they are seeing hints of that now.
I think putting it at 0.8 to 0.75 is putting it very charitably.
Heck, this list is incomplete.
The US supreme court was politically vulnerable from the start (the judges are appointed by the president?!?), and is now politically stacked (a supreme court, politically stacked, how is this even a thing?).
The US voting system is absolutely not fit for purpose; it is crazy to me that the candidates getting fewer votes can still win, that one can only choose between two parties, that if you live in the wrong state, you might as well not bother to vote at all; the Bush vs Al Gore thing was already a travesty, and by the time Trump got elected, outside observers in the EU plain lost it, it was marked as complete madness. By the time the capital got stormed, this all just felt like watching a dumpster fire.
The US executive is scarily strong—the US president combines three roles that in European countries tend to be separate—and many Americans are in favour of making it stronger, not less strong.
Both parts of the US feel under existential threat, but for different reasons. E.g. in the left wing camp, the loss of reproductive rights has been felt by many not just to be inconceivably bad backsliding in rights, but a harbinger of more losses in rights to come, e.g. losses of privileges to queer people. Queer folks are terrified, women are furious. Fictionalised accounts of how the US might turn into a dystopia became bestsellers and extremely popular series, because this is on people’s minds; there is a reason people dress like handmaids from The Handmaid’s tale at protests—Atwood precisely wanted to drive home that rights can be lost again, and that we are seeing the warning signs. Meanwhile, the American right also feels existentially threatened. I think their fears are misguided, but they are legitimately agitated.
Throw into the mix that your country has a highly armed populace due to the gun rights, a hyper armed police and military wing and the death penalty, racial tensions, tensions on gender issues, climate catastrophes, the Russian interest in stoking riots in the US, a radical right actively preparing for combat, and modern social media escalating things, and the potential for violence is terrifying. Which is why people are putting a lot of thought into how this might play out, and how it might still be mitigated.
You cannot just take what TED talker say about politics for granted. People in the media, academia, etc. talk about civil war because it’s exciting and they want to believe they live in an era of history where such things are still possible, not because they actually think insurrections are likely.
The claim was the we “fail to alert on what is happening”, namely democratic backsliding in the US.
I pointed out that, to the contrary, this topic is absolutely on people’s minds, widely analysed and discussed. People are completely aware. There are lots of exciting things one can talk about, there is a reason this is the one people keep reaching for.
A lot of these people do not think it will come to a violent civil war like we saw previously, because they believe too many circumstances have changed. But that generally does not mean that they do not think the situation is dire.
I don’t think academia, the media, or even the average person on the street is an idiot who cannot think for themselves. I’ve talked to a lot of people who are clearly sincerely concerned, and have original thoughts on the topic that clearly arose from reading up on it, speaking with others, and reflecting alone in the dark hours, because they are very worried. The writing for this one is really on the wall.
Yes? Obviously?
This is not something you need to piece together yourself from first facts, nor is doing so likely to keep up with the state of the field. A lot of very solid work on this has been done, already collecting a lot of evidence, getting a lot of perspectives, doing a lot of reasoning and historical comparisons and sociological analysis.
This has been extensively discussed in mainstream news in the US and internationally, analysed academically (e.g. whether this will necessarily escalate to another civil war, and how the dynamic might be different under modern conditions, how the US is situated in global democratic backsliding trends); this topic became popular to the point where there are TED talks and books on it, just google US second civil war. It is essentially accepted fact internationally, to the degree where large scale nations and unions have altered their internal and foreign policy under the assumption that the US is now an unreliably ally or weakened enemy because their political system has become unstable, though we have been watching curiously whether Biden might stabilise some of this again. The current instability is not without historic precedent, but is still unstable to an extremely worrying degree in a country so powerful. “Do you reckon the US will slip into civil war?” is absolutely something you can discuss with friends in a bar in the EU, and everyone present will have an opinion on whether, when and how (e.g. whether we would see one massive escalation past a tipping point, or intermittent escalations). In Germany especially, we are analysing parallels to Germany’s own fall extensively, down to students discussing it in school. From ordinary housewives to conspiracy theorists, everyone agrees that this situation in the US is unstable, the question is mostly how and whether it can still be stabilised, and what exactly will happen if it is not. Our politicians have been holding speeches over how the EU can be changed to deal with the US suddenly getting flaky, because everyone agrees we cannot bank on the US functioning anymore. Heck, the literal Wikipedia article on democratic backsliding ended up with such a long subsection on democratic backsliding in the US that it became its own article. You could present this conclusion as a premise at a conference, and if anyone actually spoke up and disagreed, I would suspect the person is disingenuous and wants attention unless they had a really great argument coming through historical comparisons on how this stuff historically righted itself and they are seeing hints of that now.
I think putting it at 0.8 to 0.75 is putting it very charitably.
Heck, this list is incomplete.
The US supreme court was politically vulnerable from the start (the judges are appointed by the president?!?), and is now politically stacked (a supreme court, politically stacked, how is this even a thing?).
The US voting system is absolutely not fit for purpose; it is crazy to me that the candidates getting fewer votes can still win, that one can only choose between two parties, that if you live in the wrong state, you might as well not bother to vote at all; the Bush vs Al Gore thing was already a travesty, and by the time Trump got elected, outside observers in the EU plain lost it, it was marked as complete madness. By the time the capital got stormed, this all just felt like watching a dumpster fire.
The US executive is scarily strong—the US president combines three roles that in European countries tend to be separate—and many Americans are in favour of making it stronger, not less strong.
Both parts of the US feel under existential threat, but for different reasons. E.g. in the left wing camp, the loss of reproductive rights has been felt by many not just to be inconceivably bad backsliding in rights, but a harbinger of more losses in rights to come, e.g. losses of privileges to queer people. Queer folks are terrified, women are furious. Fictionalised accounts of how the US might turn into a dystopia became bestsellers and extremely popular series, because this is on people’s minds; there is a reason people dress like handmaids from The Handmaid’s tale at protests—Atwood precisely wanted to drive home that rights can be lost again, and that we are seeing the warning signs. Meanwhile, the American right also feels existentially threatened. I think their fears are misguided, but they are legitimately agitated.
Throw into the mix that your country has a highly armed populace due to the gun rights, a hyper armed police and military wing and the death penalty, racial tensions, tensions on gender issues, climate catastrophes, the Russian interest in stoking riots in the US, a radical right actively preparing for combat, and modern social media escalating things, and the potential for violence is terrifying. Which is why people are putting a lot of thought into how this might play out, and how it might still be mitigated.
You cannot just take what TED talker say about politics for granted. People in the media, academia, etc. talk about civil war because it’s exciting and they want to believe they live in an era of history where such things are still possible, not because they actually think insurrections are likely.
The claim was the we “fail to alert on what is happening”, namely democratic backsliding in the US.
I pointed out that, to the contrary, this topic is absolutely on people’s minds, widely analysed and discussed. People are completely aware. There are lots of exciting things one can talk about, there is a reason this is the one people keep reaching for.
A lot of these people do not think it will come to a violent civil war like we saw previously, because they believe too many circumstances have changed. But that generally does not mean that they do not think the situation is dire.
I don’t think academia, the media, or even the average person on the street is an idiot who cannot think for themselves. I’ve talked to a lot of people who are clearly sincerely concerned, and have original thoughts on the topic that clearly arose from reading up on it, speaking with others, and reflecting alone in the dark hours, because they are very worried. The writing for this one is really on the wall.