UPDATE: I forgot to include a hilarious bit of business involving the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation vs. the Millersville (TN) Police Department. Have added it below:
Sean Paul’s post on the 2nd Amendment got me thinking about the prospects for civil war in the USA, in particular this spicy quote:
So, Sean Paul, what does this have to do with the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms?
Everything to do with slavery, and nothing to do with holding our government accountable. Seriously, do you honestly think a couple thousand Texans with AR-15s could out fight an armored brigade? GTFOH.
It won’t be lard-ass militias that matter if there is a civil implosion in the US.
These things always come down to intra-elite splits and/or intra-military splits.
There seems to be a split between the Trump-supporting majority of American police forces, right-wing military personnel, some military officers & at least some FBI vs the Trump-hating “Deep State” CIA, NSA, Pentagon elite and the rest of the active duty military.
As NPR reported in 2021, some po-po’s were even willing to put their bodies on the line for whatever it was they were trying to do on Jan 6.
Nearly 30 sworn police officers from a dozen departments attended the pro-Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol last week, and several stormed the building with rioters and are facing federal criminal charges as well as possible expulsion or other discipline.
The officers are from departments large and small. There was veteran officer in Houston, the nation’s eighth-largest department; a sergeant in the small town of Rocky Mount, Va., and a group of Philadelphia transit officers.
Note that caveat in the headline about the vast majority of them being retired. Are we too “demographically advanced” ie old to get a war on?
Also check these nifty stats from Seton Hall’s “A Demographic and Legal Profile of January 6 Prosecutions”:
The government has won all but 12 cases brought to date (five died, four fled, one acquitted, two dismissed);
517 of 716 (72%) were charged as the result of tipsters and informants;
Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, and California are home to 43.9% of those charged;
Only states not represented among the 716 arrested were North Dakota, Nebraska and Vermont;
35.1% of defendants were identified as going to the Capitol alone;
25% were armed;
18.5 % had a background in law enforcement or the military;
Largest employment group identified is the Business Owner group, which accounts for 24.7%;
Only 35 of the 716 individuals were identified as unemployed;
22.2% had a criminal record.
Note that a disproportionate amount of the Jan 6ers came from just five states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, and California.
And two of those states are “solid blue” and even the red and purple states each feature very Democratic cities.
If there’s no geographic continuity to the two sides are we just going to have a nationwide running gun battle instead?
But wait, the case for imminent civil war has a couple more points to make.
TX Gov Greg Abbott turning the Texas National Guard against the US Border Patrol was a very ominous sign:
Most explosively, Texas Governor Greg Abbott in January deployed the state National Guard to block the U.S. Border Patrol from accessing a 2.5-mile-long section of the border in the city of Eagle Pass. The section includes Shelby Park, a 47-acre city park along the Rio Grande named for a Confederate general who fled to Mexico rather than surrender. Border Patrol officials had been using the park for processing encountered migrants. Now, they are effectively locked out of the park, and are mostly unable to access a heavily crossed border area to do their jobs.
Fl Gov Ron DeSantis’ creation of the Florida Guard outside federal control and his proposal to send them to the Texas border is another clown show that is also actually quite scary:
DeSantis established the Florida Guard on June 15, 2022, purportedly to enhance Florida’s capacity to deal with hurricanes. It was announced as a civilian force of approximately 400 volunteers to supplement the Florida National Guard, which balances both state and federal government control. The governor asked for $2 million.
Within a year, DeSantis and the super-majority Republican Legislature converted the small volunteer force into DeSantis’ expensive private army.
MORE BUDGET, MORE POLICE POWERS
House Bill 1285 skyrocketed the budget to $107.6 million, with half of the funds designated for “military” equipment. The number of “volunteers”— handpicked by the governor — increased from 400 to 1,500, and they were granted “police powers” to detain and arrest.
Although there is a titular head of the volunteers, the Guard may be “activated only by the governor and is at all times under the final command and control of the governor as the commander in chief of all military and guard forces of the state.”
And it is not under the state’s military control because the law further provides that: “The division [i.e. State Guard] shall not be subject to control, supervision or direction of the Department of Military Affairs in any manner…”
DeSantis moved quickly after that. He set up a military training center for millions of dollars and hired a combat-training company to recruit and train members of the Guard. The contractor was awarded a non-competitive $1.2 million contract and the company’s manual provides for hand-to-hand combat, busting down walls and interdiction in the sea.
These developments show an ominous willingness to escalate political fights into military conflict on the part of the two southern GOP governors.
But militarily this is pipsqueak stuff at this point. Were a war to erupt between the Feds and Abbot and DeSantis it would be over in a few savage minutes, as long as it takes for a pit bull to maul a baby.
And the yokel governors are not the pit bull in this scenario.
But things get very interesting, in the ancient Chinese curse sense, if Trump wins the presidential election and actually manages to place loyalists in key positions at the federal level.
But that’s a big if.
Politically Trump seems way off his game from 2016. Steve Bannon’s in jail and Trump has his head up his own ass. The rousing populism and ‘did he really say that?’ demagoguery are missing.
That makes it less likely that he could motivate supporters to truly crazy extremes.
Does Trump really seem to care enough to organize a civil war?
Also there’s the matter of social cohesion — oddly, it’s a critical ingredient for a civil war. Each side has to at least some internal unity to present a sufficient problem to the other side necessary for the brouhaha to go from “civic disturbance” or “riot” to CIVIL WAR.
Aurelian argues we don’t have enough social cohesion to get a war on.
For all the fashionable talk of “civil war,” a civil war requires organised parties competing for control of the future of the political system. We don’t have that, we just have individuals, and small groups without much cohesion, united only in their detestation for the system.
It may be the case that we can bumble our way into something really nasty without leadership on either side capable of catalyzing discontent into a coherent force.
If there’s a major economic collapse or a military disaster on a foreign front all bets are off.
But even in those scenarios, I’d anticipate more of a gradual disintegration into warlordism than an 1860 type thing.
UPDATE: I can’t believe I forgot to include the piece de resistance. This is a classic real-world example of a conflict between MAGA chuds in power locally vs. a state law enforcement agency:
In a perplexing pair of podcast interviews, the Millersville chief of police says the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has begun limiting his department’s access to certain sensitive law enforcement data.
It follows a scandal first dug up by NewsChannel 5 Investigates into the troubled police department for the community of 6,000 just north of Nashville.
“Once we start getting this bad publicity, our access starts getting cut off to financial reports, FinCen,” Chief Bryan Morris said in an interview with far-right podcaster Tom Renz. The interview was posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“We can’t do investigations,” the chief continued. “We don’t have everything in this office that we need, you know.”
Renz chimed in, “You need the tools provided by federal law enforcement and other agencies, and state agencies.”
“And now we’re being denied that,” Morris insisted.
…
Morris — who also serves as interim city manager — claimed his department is now cut off from one of the most sensitive law enforcement data sources available.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — sometimes known as FinCen — is a program run by the U.S. Department of Treasury that can give police access to certain banking and other financial records of individuals when there is a legitimate law enforcement purpose.
Morris claimed that, because of NewsChannel 5’s investigations into his conspiracy-minded assistant police chief, Shawn Taylor, the TBI has now cut them off.
Renz asked, “Have they given you a good reason that they are denying you access?”
“No,” the chief answered. “I’ve actually called down there and talked to them, and what I’ve been told is we’re on hold because they are auditing us.”
As part of Taylor’s many bizarre conspiracy theories — including claims that some of the nation’s most powerful political figures are involved in child sex trafficking — Taylor has sometimes boasted about having access to sensitive data linked to some powerful people.
That includes the banking records for U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn’s campaign.
Not precisely a surprise, or anything. Barring an airplane accident, or some such, he’s the nominee.