The red states are net takers compared to federal. Taxes paid. In this hypothetical civil conflict all sides are materially worse off but the south would be worst by a margin. Material deprivation by the general populace can end a war, but it doesn’t always.

See Russia in Ukraine for an example.

Where the lines are matters, whether Ohio and Michigan are in the NEUS or the south makes a big difference in population and industry.

Texas would last long enough to be dangerous to it’s neighbors. I would not want to be in New Mexico if federal power breaks down.

In the American Civil War the North had the advantage in Navy, population, wealth, and industrial power.

Now those advantages in population and industrial capacity are flipped. In the scenario you project the south could devolve into infighting and hollow out, but a single charismatic figure could unite them, and that would pose a terrible threat to the NEUSA and the Cali Republic. Have you read Rurtledove’s American Front?

Well I also don’t believe in Carceral punishment so take that as you will.

Kim Jong Un’s brother was killed by squirt guns filled with poison.

The shooters thought they were pranking him. Some guy gave them plastic squirt guns and said “squirt that man we are gonna film it for the internet.”

The real assassin was never caught.

Lots of women have been scarred for life by a splash of strong acid, primarily in the Muslim world.

Squirting someone with a liquid is a terror attack.

Technically this was an acid attack.

Glad she is OK.

That makes it more dangerous for the us cops but doesn’t excuse shooting people without guns.

Northern Europe is much more likely to experience a surge of poverty because of global financial meltdown than a hot war with Russia.

If you are living and working in a liberal area you might be better off looking for work in northern Europe than claiming refugee status. Refugees from the US are extremely likely to be returned here. I read Ireland is going to start accepting trans Americans but even that doesn’t guarantee good treatment.

Do get your passport. There are low cost options for stringing tourist visas together in South America and South East Asia. 25 grand could keep you comfortable for years. That’s a long time to find steady remote work.

Then we don’t really disagree here.

I said “primary all the DINOS and corporate shills.” I gave 3 examples, but by the end of the line that could end up being everyone. AOC, Bernie, and Now Mamdani don’t have their hands clean, just cleaner than their colleagues.

The US system has two rounds of voting. The primary and the general. When you say “vote them out” it sounds like you are calling on voters to put Republicans into power to punish the Democrats.

That never works and it results in harms like we are seeing now.

Maybe you mean “vote green or some other third party” but even then, the American Green party is funded and supported by Moscow as a means to destabilize politics over here. Trying to grow a third party is even more magical thinking than my plan,which is already puenin the sky but it’s the only thing that has worked since 1860.

Voters in my country are dumb. Even politically engaged voters who read Lemmy threads. You need to be specific because there is always a right and a wrong choice even when they both suck.

Vote them out is a call to support their opponents in the general election. Vote third party is a call to support the policies opposite to what you want.

“Primary them” is a call to move the party to what you want.

If you want a general strike until they meet our demands, well, the third party idea is more likely to work than that.

I gave a path to success. What is your suggestion?

Did I say anything good about Chuck schumer or Jeffries?

I think I said Schumer was a corporate shill that needs to be primaried. They are both genocide enablers and should be run out of Congress.

And then impeach him. And if trump pisses them off badly enough, they can impeach him too.

Andrew Johnson was a lame duck after impeachment, because even though he kept his office, he was on notice from Congress.

Yeah this is not an explosion, it’s a simmer.

This is in fact true. If people voted for Democrats overwhelmingly and then primaried the DINOS like fetterman and the corporate shills like Newsom and Shumer we would see the change we want eventually. FDR did it. He did it with supermajorities in both houses of Congress and he also needed 4 terms to remake the supreme court.

It’s a generational project, and supremely unlikely to happen because a significant part of the electorate does not want it. But it could happen. If voters shifted 30 points to the left and stayed there for a generation it would happen.

“if Democrats didn’t want ICE and domestic chaos it wouldn’t have happened”

This is absolute bullshit. When democrats controlled the white house and Senate this didn’t happen. The parties are not the same and the constant refrain that they are is a malicious lie. The only beneficiaries of this kind of both sides FUD are the nazis.

Private businesses oppose state funding to make their product available to citizens

In other shocking news, the sky appears to be blue. Tune in at nine for our analysis on how to make your life wet with a single substance that falls from the sky.

Capitulation by weak figures like Newsom is far and away the most likely.

There is a scenario where people demand action, and escalations keep coming to the point of widespread resistance and replacement of leadership for people who will disrupt the federal government. Work stoppages, tax strikes, and outright sabotage escalate into assassination and ambushes, while a debt crisis cripples the central government’s ability to respond.

There is no capacity for the states to resist the federal government in the current dynamic, but a debt crisis could degrade the capacity of the feds to the point that the balance of power shifts and the costs benefit ratio shifts with it. Nobody can predict when such a shift can happen.

Again, I don’t think it’s likely, even in the darkest timeline, but it’s possible.

I was struggling in college. Substitute teaching part time, and playing a whole lot of dungeons and dragons.

I was also realizing that I was not a man.

“democracy” rule by the people

“Demos” the people.

If you want democracy, then the people around you get a say. Yes, things will not change until we change them. That’s how democracy works.

If things are shit, we have no one to blame but ourselves for allowing things to be shit.