But that is not true.

I posted what the cited source said. Feel free to cite something supporting your assertions.

This is a more rational assertion and the data I posted supports it.

I just explained how the article you cited supports that more than 44% of Christians are Evangelical/Fundamentalist.

No you didn't. Gawd knows what you were looking at on that web page.

I divided the percentage of Evangelicals by the percentage of Christians.

With the numbers straight from the source: Total Protestants: 25.1% of people in the US identify as.

Of that total 16.2% identify as Evangelical.


There is no aditional math or division needed.

That may be so, but the underlying stuff that brought him to power; the racism, the far right philosophy, the white supremacism - that is all still there simmering below the surface.

In 2016 you got an unqualified, bumbling, failed businessman for a President, one who didn't really know how to be a leader beyond barking orders. He thought being President would give him the ability to do anything he wanted, get anything he wanted, and make others do what he wanted. It took him four years to take down the guard rails that prevented him from getting his way, and by then, his term was up, and it was too late.

Next time, you might not be so lucky, you might end up with a Ted Cruz or a Josh Hawley. Don't underestimate these two, they are smart, and politically savvy - they will have observed what Dump did that failed, and they won't repeat those mistakes... the guard rails will all be gone by the end of January.

I don't care that you cited the correct value for the wrong numbers. BTW I'm assuming these are correct, since they don't matter, I don't care, and I didn't double check them.

Go to your room until you can learn how to behave in polite company!

Yes Mummy! https://www.dropbox.com/s/q39o64dld4...iley.gif?raw=1

I'm not saying the situation is not problematic, but incompetence is not the only reason T**** did not get his way. In a well-consolidated democracy (and after all, that is what the USA remains), you can't just remove the guard rails. As he discovered, courts, even the ones he stacked himself, didn't just rule the way he wanted. Elections couldn't just be worked around. Civil servants knew the rules and played by them.

Hans

Yea because they thought it was a movie and once the people rise up and storm the government it just falls. Roll credits. Being totally out of touch with reality was a major part of the whole thing.

And yet they were not lacking in military veterans or police officers.

So was Hitler, he was not some brilliant mind, but a corrupt con man with certain notable delusions .

Well, presumably neither will the defenders, who also didn't seem to be well prepared for the situation. Notice that on the day of the inauguration, the precautions were of an entirely different class. It would have taken a regular military unit to breach them, and I suspect even that would have failed.

On Jan 6th there was a double surprise effect:

1) The defenders (for some strange reason) didn't see it coming.

2) The attackers basically didn't know what they were doing.

Neither of these is likely to happen again.

Hans

I think we are likely to find that #1 was simply untrue. I think they were hobbled. Not necessarily by some central mastermind--possibly by various people in positions of opportunity that were sympathetic to the attackers.

They may well have been. But I still don't think it will happen again.

Hans

To your last question: White privilege. To your main point: White privilege. And well justified to a point. Imagine the bloodbath had the insurrectionists been BLM.

Now that these disgruntled whites fearful of demographic change know that their privilege will get them only so far, any future action will entail less stupidity.

To blithely dismiss initial bumbling efforts is to be blind to the terrible harm that can be wreaked by a passionate few.

I'm not saying the world is magically safe and back in order. I'm saying at the moment the trend is not toward civil war.:rolleyes:

I'm done with this stupid off-topic hill you insist on dying on. Go for it. :cool:

:D

So what? It was a piddly few compared to what one would need for an actual civil war.

Their effort to stop Congress and keep Dump in power was a joke. If you think those weekend warriors consist of an actually effective secret rebel army you need to look again.

Or better yet, start a thread on it in the CT forum where it belongs. It really is on that level.

And/or said defenders were willfully blind to it for any number of reasons.

I agree with your post.

That too.

It only took 2 people to blow up the OK federal building. I am in no way dismissing "the terrible harm that can be wreaked by a passionate few."

I am however dismissing the nonsense that they represent any kind of threat to the federal government or any kind of threat of civil war. And that includes with the people still in Congress like MTG.

So your view is that the partisan divide is shrinking then?

No, not the divide. But the numbers on the right are shrinking, albeit slowly.

How much of a civil war is driven by the relative sizes vs the breadth of the divide?

And then there is the question of what a modern civil war looks like is it just lots of political violence or does there need to be the holding of territory by standing armies?

I think there is middle ground between being Pollyana on the one hand, the the "The US is going fascist and there is nothing we can do to stop it" gloom and doom we see from a few people here.
I note a number of the latter seem not to like the US anyway.....

Get back to me when one of you has some evidence besides a couple dozen weekend warriors who think they are going to reinstall Dump to his former glory. :rolleyes:

I don't think most people realize just how difficult a civil war would be these days, in terms of infrastructure.

Hans

Even China slave labor factories would be hard pressed to produce millions of blue and gray wool uniforms on short notice.

WTF bro... that was damned near you for much of the past two years. Exhorting all Dems to get strapped ASAP because the Nazi hordes were gonna get their shooting war sometime in the near term.
But I wouldn't have ever stooped to saying you "seem not to like the US anyway". [emoji52]

:D

It is in the Wikipedia article. It has links to a number of studies. Here is one study:

https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

Of the US population, about 25% are Evangelicals. Of the US population, about 80% are religious. That means, the US religious population, about 30% are Evangelicals.

I don't remember what the point was. But it would be more accurate to says that about a third of US is Evangelical rather than a half. That is a significant difference, whether or not it is related to some point.

You're still citing a subset of evangelicals. Note that category you are citing is not named "Evangelicals". It's named something that indicates it is a subset of Evangelicals.

A better number for total Evangelicals has already been cited. If you missed it just type "what percentage of the us population is evangelical" in to google. Google will likely cite the relevant number that is already cited, 35% or so. It might be as low as 30% by some estimates, but those estimates will be factoring our Evangelicals that aren't even relevant to the original point.

Yeah. No kidding. Just for the record the original point is still true even with your low estimate. You two are wrong about something that doesn't even affect the point.

I think many people don't realise that a civil war doesn't have to be two armies fighting each other in big battles like the US Civil War of the 1860s

The definition of a civil war is "a war between citizens of the same country."

As SG pointed out, just two people planned and executed the destruction the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people, injuring over 680 others, destroying or damaging 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, destroying 86 cars, and causing an estimated $652 million in damage.... two men, a rented truck and a few barrels of ANFO!

There are many ways to fight a war, and not all of them involve armies. The US has between 150 and 200 mostly right leaning anti-government militias, with a total active membership somewhere in the region of 15,000 to 30,000. More than likely, these militiamen know that if they tried getting into a shooting war with well equipped, well trained professional soldiers, they will be handed their arses double quick, but if only 1% of those are serous enough to think about making and planting bombs, that is still 150 to 300 nutjobs out there.... and that is a lot more than two, they could wreak some real havoc, kill or maim a lot of people and do masses of damage.

The crucial word is "war". I know that when two biker groups start shooting at each other, the press calls it a "war", but sensibly the term requires something on a national scale.

What I meant was:

In the middle 19th century, countries were mainly rural and armies could live off the adjacent land, whether it was friendly or not. Now, what we eat and use is mostly produced far away. Same for fuel, ammunition, spare parts. Keeping an insurgent army running when half your suppliers are suddenly your enemies is no small challenge.

Hans

If Democracy dies in the US, it will cause Democracy world wide to go into a crisis.
I admit, I do have anissue with a lot of Kiwis...they think they live in Middle Earth, and what happens outside does not effect them.
And I am not ready to write the US off like so many here are.
If the US does implode, I hope you like a world dominated by Xi and Putin.

A second civil war in the US would resemble the Spanish Civil war much more then it's first Civil War.

I also think lumping all Evangelicals together is a mistake.
But then, though I am total skeptic when it comes to religion, I don't have the pure hatred fo rit that some here have. As long as they don't try to force theri beliefs dwon my throat, I don't have a quarrel with someone with religous beliefs.

Or the Iraq civil wars of 2004-20??

It's fine if you're just trying to figure out how many there are which is where the two people questioning me are at. I've run in to this multiple times on this board that people just can't wrap their heads around how many biblical literalists (of all names) there are.

And to your point, about lumping all together though, I agree. And the most important distinction relevant to this conversation is black vs white in regards to what the Republican party is these days. White Evangelicals are highly aligned with the Republican party and vice versa. They've practically become one and the same recently. The whole Republican party is basically a smokescreen at this point to obscure the fact that the division in society is primarily defined by "fundy" vs everyone else. And note that "everyone else" includes half of US Christians in IMO. It's not a religious vs not religious divide.

Agreed. And the Christians I have issues with are in the Biblical literalist side of Christianity. As I said, I don't see a religious vs not religious divide.

I'm there too--nearly all my hostility to Christianity goes away if someone doesn't try to adhere to a literalist interpretation. A good portion of the time they really aren't (because contradictions in the scripture render that logically impossible) but use the pretense of literalism to cherry pick justifications for what they preach, and shut down discussions such as "are we really supposed to think this" when it beggars common sense or decency. To literalists, the answer is automatically yes, and that extends dangerously to claims in the domain of scientific examination.

And I'm pretty sure one terrorist act is not a civil war.

All of those examples fail to address what I asked you folks who are worried about a civil war here to provide. Provide some evidence there is more than a couple dozen weekend warriors planning a civil war and none of you have.

And I doubt even that group of idiots who thought they actually were going to overthrow the Congress and keep Dump in power are still thinking the same.

Yes, it was incredibly serious Dump managed to work a mob up enough to swarm the Capitol. People died.

But at the same time as far as starting a civil war, IT WAS A JOKE. The army that came to the rescue was delayed by Dump and his dumpsters but when they finally got there they certainly didn't join in with the idiots. Yes they let the perps all go but now they are being rounded up and charged.

Yes there are a too many police who support Dump. And there are people in the military both active and retired who support Dump. But this is not the Banana Republic Mr Tinpot Dump wished it was any more than the COVID pandemic disappeared like Dump fantasized. There is no US military faction plotting a coup.

Think of the idiots in the Bundy clan who were encouraged but the show of force that stopped Bundy Sr from being arrested. They took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. It lasted until they ran out of beer. Is that who you think are going to start a civil war?

It makes me wonder if people here who shouldn't, do believe Dump's con.

I agree, mostly, with your first point. However the US military has significant right-wing elements and is very vulnerable to subversion.
Your second point is mostly wrong IMO; the issue with the RCC in Spain was their political and economic power, and ties to the conservative establishment. In the US this parallels much of the larger elements of the economy who are heavily tied to political interests.
Your third point is reasonably accurate; however as the recent protests have shown this are active anarchist elements in the US (though these are not really needed for a civil war to begin). But there are workers "marching in the streets" in the USA; the battle for unionisation of Amazon for example.

I came here looking for the latest MTG whackiness and her name is nowhere to be found. Damn.

With #1, I think (hope) our military is still diverse enough to make their taking sides a non-starter.

Regarding #2, I'm not sure I follow you. None of the current U.S. churches have the kind of power the RCC did back then. Did you mean perhaps that corporate entities have sort of taken the place of the church in our era? I think I could agree with that.

Newsflash Ginger! Terrorism is how civil war participants fight a civil war when raising open land armies is either not possible or not wise.

The Irish "time of troubles" was a sectarian ethno-nationalist civil war between Irish nationalists (the IRA) and Irish unionists. Despite being often incorrectly tagged as a religious war it was primarily political and nationalistic. How were the IRA fighting this war? By terrorism - blowing up school buses and buildings and police precincts and places of worship.

Sunni's and Shi'ites are right now fighting a religious civil war in the middle east, and how are they doing it.... with terrorist acts - blowing up school buses and buildings and police precincts and places of worship.

If you want to use your narrow definition of a civil war, that it has to be two groups of armed citizenry openly fighting in battles like Gettysburg, Bull Run and Shiloh or Guadalahara, Catalonia and Jarama, then yes, those kinds of things are unlikely to happen in the US... but civil war is not just about land armies - civil wars can be fought covertly, with subterfuge, with terrorism, and they don't stop being civil wars just because you attach the tag "terrorist" to the participants.

We's all jus' killin' time waitin' for the next act of stoopidity from Georgia's Jewish Space Laser queen.