I wonder why pundits like to predict a second Civil War and not a second Reconstruction? The period after the Civil War in the South has some similarities to what’s predicted in this article....
I wonder why pundits like to predict a second Civil War and not a second Reconstruction? The period after the Civil War in the South has some similarities to what’s predicted in this article. There weren’t major battles, but plenty of terrorism, leading to the federal government eventually giving up on preventing white supremacy in the South. It didn’t split the country again, though.
I’m not sure what the takeaway message here is supposed to be. Be very afraid? It seems like this is basically riding the coattails of extremists and amplifying their threats by broadcasting them to a wider audience. It’s fairly explicit:
We know this because far-right groups such as the Proud Boys have told us how they plan to execute a civil war.
It seems worth remembering that what people threaten to do and what they actually do are often different. The Capitol riot didn’t much resemble what anyone thought would happen, including the participants. Predicting the future is not easy.
Media in general like to fear-monger. It drives clicks which drives ad-revenue. “Localized threats of terrorist attacks” isn’t as explosive as “second Civil War.”
Media in general like to fear-monger. It drives clicks which drives ad-revenue.
“Localized threats of terrorist attacks” isn’t as explosive as “second Civil War.”
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." I detest question mark headlines and feel that they should be banned because they're...
I think you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. I feel the part of these warnings about civil war can be ignored, or at least taken with a big grain of salt. But reporting on increased...
I think you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. I feel the part of these warnings about civil war can be ignored, or at least taken with a big grain of salt. But reporting on increased organization of and willingness to use political violence in the U.S. is worth paying attention to. The two big qualifiers that aren’t clear to me are (1) what is the number of people holding those views and (2) how much the government is doing to counter those movements. Obviously there has been a big legal response to the Jan 6 rioters, so there is at least some firm response though.
So while I agree with you that the media repeating the “civil war” phrase is bad reporting, there needs to be more focus on the problem of white supremacists and Christian nationalists, and (IMO) even more emphasis on the societally healthy alternatives to these that also do exist.
Aside from that, the big criticism I have with this article is the statement that a “potentially easy fix” to the problem is to regulate social media. While I full heartedly agree that the currently dominant forms of social media provide an encouraging environment for inflammatory content (it’s their business model, after all), I’m not sure what an appropriate way of regulating them would look like; and given that any attempt to regulate them will be interpreted as one side getting cut off at the knees, I doubt it would happen easily.
Though I certainly don't want to do it, I do think it's very worthwhile for people to be monitoring extremist groups, and what they're doing can be newsworthy. I think responsible investigators...
Though I certainly don't want to do it, I do think it's very worthwhile for people to be monitoring extremist groups, and what they're doing can be newsworthy. I think responsible investigators would better distinguish between reporting what has happened and speculation, though? This means giving speculation less weight.
Ideally it would be more like reporting about what Russia has done and might do.
I don’t think it’s fair to call this author’s work mere speculation. She is “professor of political science and Rohr Chair in Pacific International Relations at the [UC San Diego School of Global...
I don’t think it’s fair to call this author’s work mere speculation. She is “professor of political science and Rohr Chair in Pacific International Relations at the [UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy] and an adjunct professor in the UC San Diego Department of Political Science. She is an expert on international security, with an emphasis on civil wars. Her current research is on the behavior of rebel groups in civil wars, including inter-rebel group fighting, alliances and the strategic use of propaganda and extremism.” If this is easily dismissed speculating, is all social science to be dismissed?
That said, what I found useful in the article was her analysis of the current state of polarization in the U.S. and the social and political factors that could lead to lasting and potentially irreparable damage to the operation of democracy in the country.
The organization of white nationalist groups promoting (and acting out) political violence is not speculation. It has already started happening. The reorganization of the Republican Party behind the sentiments of these groups is also not speculation. Its willingness to win at all costs is already on display. The author’s description of how determined actors can take advantage of the U.S.’s decaying and obsolescent political institutions is also receiving well deserved attention (by political scientists, for one). The author is laying out in this article how these and other factors can very likely lead to an historically bad event if not taken seriously and addressed soon. Again, I’ll pinch my nose about the phrase “civil war”, but she goes far beyond that phrase to describe very clearly some of the potential outcomes.
One in particular seems very likely to me and would have cataclysmic consequences for American democracy:
Any failure to recognise electoral outcomes, even in a few states, could result in a contested election in which nobody reaches the threshold of 270 electoral college votes. In that case, the constitution stipulates a “contingent election” – acclimatise yourself to this phrase now – in which each state gets a single vote. That’s right: if no candidate in an American presidential election reaches the threshold of 270 electoral college votes, the House delegations from individual states, overwhelmingly dominated by Republicans, pick the president, with each state having one vote.
It is far beyond speculation that the Republican Party has been preparing for just such an event. Just look at state elections and corresponding frenzy of Republican voters. I think the article is well worth reading, but I also understand that the apparently sensationalist title will turn off some readers. I still stand by posting it though because it packs in a lot of good analysis about one of the biggest crises the U.S. has faced in generations.
I don't think the article is all bad, and I don't really want to get into an "is this article even worth posting" argument. In general, I think factual reporting about what actually happened is...
I don't think the article is all bad, and I don't really want to get into an "is this article even worth posting" argument. In general, I think factual reporting about what actually happened is more important than expert predictions about what might happen, so I don't think it's more important than articles we normally post in the weekly politics topic. But it's reasonable to disagree. I post speculative stuff at top-level too. (I do try to warn that it's speculative.)
This article bugs me because it doesn't clearly distinguish between understanding what already happened and making predictions, and it also lacks a sense of humility about making predictions. It's about what "we know" (who is we?) without being clear about what expert consensus is, what experts disagree on, and what nobody knows. (Contrast with more careful writer like Bret Devereaux (of acoup.blog), who does tell you what he believes but also tells you about consensus and controversies among historians.)
So, I did try to take it down a notch, but perhaps a more gentle reminder that the predictions about the future are speculative would have been better.
I'm going to emphasize again that prediction is very hard. Economists didn't predict the pandemic or the war in Ukraine so their forecasts were not only wrong, it wasn't possible to get them right, even in principle. Saying that predictions are speculation isn't that much of a knock - we all speculate at times.
Political scientists aren't in the business of predicting elections and even people who are (like 538) hedge a lot. Today, 538 is giving a 59% chance of the Republicans winning the Senate, which means that Democrats could still win. (The uncertainty is something Nate Silver emphasizes a lot, since making a prediction that there was a 29% chance that Trump would win and people rounding that to "Trump won't win.")
Can we really predict what's going to happen to the US, politically, if we can't predict elections? I think the answer is no.
There is still plenty for experts to do, even if they can't predict the future very well. Understanding the past is difficult enough, and understanding the range of possibilities is helpful. In particular, bringing up possibilities that people might not have in mind. Disasters don't need to be certain to be worth preparing against.
This expert is making fairly specific predictions like "judges will be assassinated" and "pedestrians picked off by snipers in city streets." It's already happened in Wisconsin and Las Vegas and it's a fair bet that such incidents will happen again. There's an implication that they will become common. Maybe, but even if it does, it doesn't imply a civil war. Did you know that in the early 1970's, bombings and hijackings were common?
I think if you're going to play the prediction game then it's best to play it properly by making specific predictions with probabilities attached and grading yourself on whether they happened. It's usually pretty humbling. (Example.)
We’ll have to disagree on the general premise that an article should avoid discussion of future events, particularly when it is written by someone who has a scholarly career in the subject. And it...
We’ll have to disagree on the general premise that an article should avoid discussion of future events, particularly when it is written by someone who has a scholarly career in the subject. And it seems fairly uncharitable to our fellow tildes readers to assume they need a warning when something is not pure factual reporting of past events. Yes I’m aware of those events you linked, but the big difference is that recent events are harmonized with the Republican Party assault on our democratic institutions.
Posting in ‘news’ rather than the ‘U.S. Politics’ thread because this is a big issue that transcends typical politics. And, I tried summarizing with quotes, but there is just too much to fit. The...
Posting in ‘news’ rather than the ‘U.S. Politics’ thread because this is a big issue that transcends typical politics. And, I tried summarizing with quotes, but there is just too much to fit. The whole article is worth reading.
Ever since Trump came to power in 2016, I observed a great polarization happening in US. It's as if more and more people started becoming aware of their politics or something? Similar thing...
Ever since Trump came to power in 2016, I observed a great polarization happening in US. It's as if more and more people started becoming aware of their politics or something? Similar thing happened here when Modi became PM in 2014, so this could well be a global pattern and not just confined to US.
When Biden became POTUS last year, I thought the polarization would stop, he would somehow bring everyone on the same page. I was hopeful of that because based on noises on social and mainstream media, it seemed as though most Americans weren't happy with Trump - and now that he is gone, a calm will prevail and there will be less talk of politics and people will get back to work. But unfortunately, that didn't happen! The noise and polarization seems to have increased even more now like a crescendo. Why is that so? Is it the case that most people are unhappy with Biden too? Or the "most" is so divided in opinion that things may not change at all!
Because, in a way, Trump still runs the country. The four years he was in office left a mark that the country is still reckoning with. His court picks on all levels, for example, will change the...
Why is that so?
Because, in a way, Trump still runs the country. The four years he was in office left a mark that the country is still reckoning with. His court picks on all levels, for example, will change the judicial landscape for decades.
In a more general sense, changing the president doesn't solve the problem as they are, by design, in charge of 1/3 of the government, but can affect the other branches significantly.
If you want data you could look at approval ratings which show a big gap by party affiliation. Judging by the memes, Trumpists seem to have turned Biden into the next hate-target (similar to...
If you want data you could look at approval ratings which show a big gap by party affiliation.
Judging by the memes, Trumpists seem to have turned Biden into the next hate-target (similar to Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi). It's not clear if there's much enthusiasm or animosity outside of that.
I agree that America is especially polarized at the moment, but I think we collectively just need time to sit down and process things, and I feel it would be unwise to go around pointing too many...
I agree that America is especially polarized at the moment, but I think we collectively just need time to sit down and process things, and I feel it would be unwise to go around pointing too many fingers. In 2016, we elected Trump, a man who we can endlessly debate where on the spectrum of corruption he laid; but more importantly, we elected a man who was a bad individual in a way that was clearly visible, but who was too good at deconstructing political norms to be held accountable for any objective moral wrongdoing, to be criticized for any action considered wrong by most people, or for constructive, internally consistent debate to be had on any action that was morally grey (i.e. all of politics). This was the state of things for 3 years, then we had a global pandemic that killed 1 million Americans. I really, truly think we just need time to process things before we start worrying about the US going to war with itself.
On the whole, I think there are things to be optimistic about. By my perception at least, it seems that polarization is dropping among people who don't spend too much time on the internet. It also seems that the intellectual foundation of American conservatism is starting to reform, though it may take a couple cycles for it to manifest in electoral politics.
I wonder why pundits like to predict a second Civil War and not a second Reconstruction? The period after the Civil War in the South has some similarities to what’s predicted in this article. There weren’t major battles, but plenty of terrorism, leading to the federal government eventually giving up on preventing white supremacy in the South. It didn’t split the country again, though.
I’m not sure what the takeaway message here is supposed to be. Be very afraid? It seems like this is basically riding the coattails of extremists and amplifying their threats by broadcasting them to a wider audience. It’s fairly explicit:
It seems worth remembering that what people threaten to do and what they actually do are often different. The Capitol riot didn’t much resemble what anyone thought would happen, including the participants. Predicting the future is not easy.
Media in general like to fear-monger. It drives clicks which drives ad-revenue.
“Localized threats of terrorist attacks” isn’t as explosive as “second Civil War.”
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
I detest question mark headlines and feel that they should be banned because they're so... weasely. They replace statements with insinuation.
I think you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. I feel the part of these warnings about civil war can be ignored, or at least taken with a big grain of salt. But reporting on increased organization of and willingness to use political violence in the U.S. is worth paying attention to. The two big qualifiers that aren’t clear to me are (1) what is the number of people holding those views and (2) how much the government is doing to counter those movements. Obviously there has been a big legal response to the Jan 6 rioters, so there is at least some firm response though.
So while I agree with you that the media repeating the “civil war” phrase is bad reporting, there needs to be more focus on the problem of white supremacists and Christian nationalists, and (IMO) even more emphasis on the societally healthy alternatives to these that also do exist.
Aside from that, the big criticism I have with this article is the statement that a “potentially easy fix” to the problem is to regulate social media. While I full heartedly agree that the currently dominant forms of social media provide an encouraging environment for inflammatory content (it’s their business model, after all), I’m not sure what an appropriate way of regulating them would look like; and given that any attempt to regulate them will be interpreted as one side getting cut off at the knees, I doubt it would happen easily.
Though I certainly don't want to do it, I do think it's very worthwhile for people to be monitoring extremist groups, and what they're doing can be newsworthy. I think responsible investigators would better distinguish between reporting what has happened and speculation, though? This means giving speculation less weight.
Ideally it would be more like reporting about what Russia has done and might do.
I don’t think it’s fair to call this author’s work mere speculation. She is “professor of political science and Rohr Chair in Pacific International Relations at the [UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy] and an adjunct professor in the UC San Diego Department of Political Science. She is an expert on international security, with an emphasis on civil wars. Her current research is on the behavior of rebel groups in civil wars, including inter-rebel group fighting, alliances and the strategic use of propaganda and extremism.” If this is easily dismissed speculating, is all social science to be dismissed?
That said, what I found useful in the article was her analysis of the current state of polarization in the U.S. and the social and political factors that could lead to lasting and potentially irreparable damage to the operation of democracy in the country.
The organization of white nationalist groups promoting (and acting out) political violence is not speculation. It has already started happening. The reorganization of the Republican Party behind the sentiments of these groups is also not speculation. Its willingness to win at all costs is already on display. The author’s description of how determined actors can take advantage of the U.S.’s decaying and obsolescent political institutions is also receiving well deserved attention (by political scientists, for one). The author is laying out in this article how these and other factors can very likely lead to an historically bad event if not taken seriously and addressed soon. Again, I’ll pinch my nose about the phrase “civil war”, but she goes far beyond that phrase to describe very clearly some of the potential outcomes.
One in particular seems very likely to me and would have cataclysmic consequences for American democracy:
It is far beyond speculation that the Republican Party has been preparing for just such an event. Just look at state elections and corresponding frenzy of Republican voters. I think the article is well worth reading, but I also understand that the apparently sensationalist title will turn off some readers. I still stand by posting it though because it packs in a lot of good analysis about one of the biggest crises the U.S. has faced in generations.
I don't think the article is all bad, and I don't really want to get into an "is this article even worth posting" argument. In general, I think factual reporting about what actually happened is more important than expert predictions about what might happen, so I don't think it's more important than articles we normally post in the weekly politics topic. But it's reasonable to disagree. I post speculative stuff at top-level too. (I do try to warn that it's speculative.)
This article bugs me because it doesn't clearly distinguish between understanding what already happened and making predictions, and it also lacks a sense of humility about making predictions. It's about what "we know" (who is we?) without being clear about what expert consensus is, what experts disagree on, and what nobody knows. (Contrast with more careful writer like Bret Devereaux (of acoup.blog), who does tell you what he believes but also tells you about consensus and controversies among historians.)
So, I did try to take it down a notch, but perhaps a more gentle reminder that the predictions about the future are speculative would have been better.
I'm going to emphasize again that prediction is very hard. Economists didn't predict the pandemic or the war in Ukraine so their forecasts were not only wrong, it wasn't possible to get them right, even in principle. Saying that predictions are speculation isn't that much of a knock - we all speculate at times.
Political scientists aren't in the business of predicting elections and even people who are (like 538) hedge a lot. Today, 538 is giving a 59% chance of the Republicans winning the Senate, which means that Democrats could still win. (The uncertainty is something Nate Silver emphasizes a lot, since making a prediction that there was a 29% chance that Trump would win and people rounding that to "Trump won't win.")
Can we really predict what's going to happen to the US, politically, if we can't predict elections? I think the answer is no.
There is still plenty for experts to do, even if they can't predict the future very well. Understanding the past is difficult enough, and understanding the range of possibilities is helpful. In particular, bringing up possibilities that people might not have in mind. Disasters don't need to be certain to be worth preparing against.
This expert is making fairly specific predictions like "judges will be assassinated" and "pedestrians picked off by snipers in city streets." It's already happened in Wisconsin and Las Vegas and it's a fair bet that such incidents will happen again. There's an implication that they will become common. Maybe, but even if it does, it doesn't imply a civil war. Did you know that in the early 1970's, bombings and hijackings were common?
I think if you're going to play the prediction game then it's best to play it properly by making specific predictions with probabilities attached and grading yourself on whether they happened. It's usually pretty humbling. (Example.)
We’ll have to disagree on the general premise that an article should avoid discussion of future events, particularly when it is written by someone who has a scholarly career in the subject. And it seems fairly uncharitable to our fellow tildes readers to assume they need a warning when something is not pure factual reporting of past events. Yes I’m aware of those events you linked, but the big difference is that recent events are harmonized with the Republican Party assault on our democratic institutions.
Posting in ‘news’ rather than the ‘U.S. Politics’ thread because this is a big issue that transcends typical politics. And, I tried summarizing with quotes, but there is just too much to fit. The whole article is worth reading.
Ever since Trump came to power in 2016, I observed a great polarization happening in US. It's as if more and more people started becoming aware of their politics or something? Similar thing happened here when Modi became PM in 2014, so this could well be a global pattern and not just confined to US.
When Biden became POTUS last year, I thought the polarization would stop, he would somehow bring everyone on the same page. I was hopeful of that because based on noises on social and mainstream media, it seemed as though most Americans weren't happy with Trump - and now that he is gone, a calm will prevail and there will be less talk of politics and people will get back to work. But unfortunately, that didn't happen! The noise and polarization seems to have increased even more now like a crescendo. Why is that so? Is it the case that most people are unhappy with Biden too? Or the "most" is so divided in opinion that things may not change at all!
Because, in a way, Trump still runs the country. The four years he was in office left a mark that the country is still reckoning with. His court picks on all levels, for example, will change the judicial landscape for decades.
In a more general sense, changing the president doesn't solve the problem as they are, by design, in charge of 1/3 of the government, but can affect the other branches significantly.
If you want data you could look at approval ratings which show a big gap by party affiliation.
Judging by the memes, Trumpists seem to have turned Biden into the next hate-target (similar to Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi). It's not clear if there's much enthusiasm or animosity outside of that.
I agree that America is especially polarized at the moment, but I think we collectively just need time to sit down and process things, and I feel it would be unwise to go around pointing too many fingers. In 2016, we elected Trump, a man who we can endlessly debate where on the spectrum of corruption he laid; but more importantly, we elected a man who was a bad individual in a way that was clearly visible, but who was too good at deconstructing political norms to be held accountable for any objective moral wrongdoing, to be criticized for any action considered wrong by most people, or for constructive, internally consistent debate to be had on any action that was morally grey (i.e. all of politics). This was the state of things for 3 years, then we had a global pandemic that killed 1 million Americans. I really, truly think we just need time to process things before we start worrying about the US going to war with itself.
On the whole, I think there are things to be optimistic about. By my perception at least, it seems that polarization is dropping among people who don't spend too much time on the internet. It also seems that the intellectual foundation of American conservatism is starting to reform, though it may take a couple cycles for it to manifest in electoral politics.