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.

Gee I never knew that.:rolleyes:

You continue to cite all these examples like I was born yesterday, and you have yet to post one lick of evidence there is a rising military (formal and/or weekenders) plotting to start a civil war.

Gawd we were a hell of a lot closer to a civil war during the Vietnam protest era and even then the Weather Underground and the "Symbionese Liberation Army" were about as far as it went.

The weekend warriors tried it on Jan 6; it turned out to be a very bad joke but a joke nonetheless.

Yes, and you sure act and post like you don't!

Because you continue to act and post, at least on this subject, like you were born yesterday

Slight historical point of education for you...

The commencement of Civil Wars are hardly ever plotted or planned in advance. They almost always start due to political and cultural differences between groups, when divisions become so partisan that neither side of the divide is prepared to back down or take a backwards step, each side doing things that provoke the other side, upping the ante and doing things even more unacceptable to the other side ... sound familiar? Your own Civil War started exactly this way, due to uncompromising differences between the free states and the slave states over the power of the Federal government to prohibit slavery in the territories. It was a serious dick-wagging contest between leaders of the South Carolina Militia (The Confederate Army didn't even exist yet) and the US Army at Fort Sumter that kicked it all off. Your Civil War was unusual in that it had defined territories associated with the protagonists - the Confederacy occupied eleven states south of the Mason-Dixon line, the Union occupied the rest. This kind of regionalisation doesn't happen very often in civil wars.

And you think that was just a one-off, an isolated incident, never to be repeated? Right? Well, I have news for you

39% of Americans believe there was a Deep State working to undermine Trump. Almost two in every five!!!

33% of Americans believe the Biden only won the election due to voter fraud... one in three!!!!

19% of Americans support the protesters who broke into the Capitol to disrupt the election certification... 19%!!! That is almost one in every five Americans support an insurrection against the Government to overturn a Presidential Election!!!!. This is Banana Republic stuff!!

When, say, 1 or 2% of a population has these kinds of beliefs, you can probably write that off as insignificant, but when large minorities of 20 - 40% believe this stuff, it ought to set alarm bells ringing loudly for every American. If you don't want believe me, at least listen to what your own experts! are trying to warn you about!

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/22...pitol-assault/

The U.S. intelligence community warned that domestic extremists, emboldened by the siege on the U.S. Capitol and by conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic and alleged fraud in the 2020 election, will almost certainly attempt violent attacks this year. The assessment cites a contentious political environment as one of the main factors motivating white supremacists and militias, followed a warning by FBI Director Christopher Wray earlier this month that the threat of domestic terrorism in the United States is “metastasizing.”

These dire warnings sound eerily like the threat the United States faced after the 9/11 attacks. Then, Americans easily united against what was framed as a foreign—and Muslim—enemy that was trying to kill U.S. citizens. But today’s enemy defies such tidy characterizations. There is no bearded Osama bin Laden hiding in a cave, just hundreds of Timothy McVeighs huddling at home.

You do know when people don't buy what you say it doesn't mean they are stupid or just don't get it, right smartcooky? Big bolded font doesn't help in cases where people simply disagree with you.

You don't even live here. I do. You are getting your facts filtered through the news media that sells controversy and scandal as a business model; and/or whatever social media sites you are inhaling.

Yes, the FBI can now admit that domestic terrorism is a bigger issue than caravans of rapists and murderers crossing the southern border. That doesn't mean any kind of civil war is brewing.

Saying one agrees with the idiots on Jan 6 on a survey is a **** of a lot different from picking up arms.

I have never seen you engaged in a falsehood up to your eyeballs like this. Look me up in 6 months and we can revisit the issue.

Sometimes, that's exactly what it means

PS- I live here.

I don't believe we were closer to a civil war back in the Viet Nam era, or with the Symbionese Liberation Army, etc. Simply put, there was never enough national division. In the case of war protestors, they did not want to change the structure of society and government. They wanted a change in policy. Influential as they (or I should say perhaps we) became they were a minority, and radical minority groups like the SLA or Move On more so. It doesn't matter how bellicose the protestors are if there are so few. They may well be able to cause great damage and chaos, or in the case of war protestors, begin a shift in policy, but to have a civil war you need both the desire for what is, essentially, an internal revolution, and the numbers.

Pretty much. AOC wouldn't give oxygen to MTGs stupid debate blather, so she's probably scrabbling around for the next faux outrage to glom onto.
Probably Tucker's "call child services" anti-mask screed, IMO.

If the preeminent white nationalist on Fox News actually believed his own ********, we'd have headlines about his own police/children's services calls. In fact, he'd be bragging about them on the White Nationalist Power Hour.

Whatever:rolleyes:

Aha, I wondered how long it would be before you trotted out the old "you couldn't possibly know anything about what happens in a country you don't live in" chesnut.:rolleyes:

What's coming next 'Murica is Speshul!!?

So you say, but only partially so. I also get a lot of my information from family who live in various parts "your" country, which remarkably, just happens to be their country too!!!!

For your idea of what constitutes civil war

The thing is, (and the thing you don't seem to get) is that its a matter of numbers and percentages... the more people that are angry about a thing they think is unfair, the more likely there is to be some among them who are prepared to do something about it, and the more likely it is that a small number of those will be prepared to do something really violent and/or extreme and/or murderous about it.

Your FBI and intelligence community have made the same assessment that I have. The risk is very high, if you read the link I posted earlier, you will have seen that for yourself.

And you still haven't, because its not a falsehood. If it was, you would be able to prove its falsity, and you can't... I know for a fact that you can't. If you think I'm wrong about this, post your proof that I'm wrong.

No, like me, all you can do is express your opinion that the current political situation cannot or will not lead to a civil war or domestic terrorism.

My opinion is that it can, because vary many of the precursors observed in other civil wars, are present in the US Today. It doesn't mean its 100% going to happen, and I never said it would. It means there is a risk, and if you accept (as I do) that widespread acts of domestic terrorism are tantmount to a civil war (one group of a country's citizens levying war against another group of the country's citizens) then I believe, as do the FBI and your intelligence community, that the risk is high.

Nope, not during Vietnam and for the other end of the spectrum, not during Aryan Nations skinheads circle jerk and not during Bundy's little family matter, you name it. We've seen this movie before and not once was it ever close to an actual viable insurrection.

Read my lips: "you don't even live here" is not synonymous for "you couldn't possibly know anything about what happens in a country you don't live in", italicized or not.

I'm pretty sure being special has nothing to do with it.

So you have friends/relatives here in the US that are worried civil war is about to breakout here? Do they know Jan 6 was a failure and the remnants are being rounded up and charged? Who do they think is left that are still getting ready for battle? Tell me, do they believe Dump is leading this battle?

Well let's see, if you define it as a couple of idiots who read The Turner Diaries and blew up a big building, then I can safely say that's not how I define a civil war. My idea of a civil war is more like Castro's insurrection, or what happened in Bosnia.

Now who is lecturing whom about what one can't understand? My point and I'm sticking to it, is there is not one whiff of a civil war here in this country. Maybe some weekend warriors tell each other wet dreams about the second coming of Dump. Don't you think if the Maoris were about ready to rise up you'd at least know about it?

No they ******* have not. Terrorist acts, not a civil war. Come on, get real.

Told ya, get back to me in 6 months and we can compare notes.

I should also like to point out, civil wars do not start out of the blue. There is most often years of unrest preceding something as big as a civil war. And in this case this is a very large country with very diverse populations (plural). TX can't even get a good secession going, let alone sponsor a civil war.

I think we're closer now than we were then. I don't fear that it will happen any day, but I am not pleased by the direction things are going.

You and I just obviously have different opinions about this, I don't think this is going to change anytime soon, however, I did notice that you snipped this out...

Care to address this now?

We are way off topic and it seems this issue is already dead, but I would like to understand what you are saying. Are you saying that there are Evangelicals who are not Protestant?

https://www.gotquestions.org/evangel...tholicism.html


OK - I guess we're going to get into an argument bout Evangelical used as a noun or adjective but it seems to me that, in the USA at least, "Evangelical" has, wrongly, become synonymous with "Fundamentalist Protestant".

As to the dangers of something like a looming civil war...

Looking to past discontent in prior decades and saying, "We've seen this movie before and nothing came of it" is to miss much. These days we have several factors not previously present, or not to near the degree we see today:

- A shrinking demographic of fearful whites dreading the browning of the nation.
- A frightfully large portion of the populace in a cult of personality, rejecting reason, silo'd in their bubbles and believing bat-crap crazy stuff.
- Politicians and law-makers given to outright anti-democratic scumbaggery, and susceptible to malign manipulation by foreign meddlers.
- A media wing of potent reach promulgating conspiracy theories, lies and the propaganda of the nation's enemies.

I posit that nothing like this mix, on this scale, has existed in the US before. The novelty merits caution and watchfulness, not blithe dismissal.

THIS!

As I keep trying to explain to Ginger (to no avail) a civil war/domestic terrorism campaign is by no means certain, but the risk is a lot higher now that it has been for a very long time.

For those who take exception to my equating of a civil war with a terrorist campaign, I suggest they find a copy of a 2013 article in the Journal of Politics by Jessica Stanton, associate professor of political science at Temple University and a human rights research fellow with the University of Minnesota's Human Rights Program. The article is called "Terrorism in the context of Civil War". I read it some years ago, but I can only find paid links to it on line. It is a very interesting article and it represents the current thinking about civil wars and their relationship to domestic terrorism.

It should also be noted that it's not just gullible, deluded dummies on the right we have to worry about. The left, especially in southern states, is being given good reason to resort to violence as Republicans actively try to disenfranchise those most likely to vote against them. When their only other recourse is through a court system that is stacked against them, it becomes more and more likely that violence will truly be their only option to preserve democracy.

No, and I don't really care about that. It's apparently true though*. I am simply accepting peoples self identification as an Evangelical. The specific number I used for most of this thread (34% of the US) comes from the link Skeptic Ginger provided. That number can be supported by other sources (such as the simple search I described a couple days ago). Self identification as Evangelical seems to track very well with political views so I'm using it.

Intersect Evangelical with "white" and you get a snapshot of people that are heavily on the Republican side. The relevance for this thread is that these idea which are completely foreign to most people on this board are accepted at extremely high rates amongst Republicans and their close associates. MTG looks pretty normal to a whole lot more people than we would care to think (not that she necessarily appeals to all of them). And it also means that churches as a political power aren't dead. One branch of "the church" is pretty much synonomous with one of the two major political parties.

Summary: Wacky religious beliefs are by no means a fringe and one party is dominated by them.

* I suspect based on dictionary definitions most Evangelicals are protestants. Whether they say that or not appear to be a part of the confusion. Remember that there are quite few ideas that fly in the face of reality amongst these people. Ideas like "Catholics aren't Christians" and "I'm not religious, I have a personal relationship with God" are relevant here. Who knows what these people think of the label "Protestant".

Isn't one problem for her that many evangelicals tend to believe that women should be subservient to men?

One thing I've noticed about evangelicals is that they'll absolutely and fervently believe in whatever is convenient.

Not that I've noticed. Why do you think this is a problem for her?

Advocating that didn't seem to hurt Phyllis Schlafly much. She of course had an exemption from her husband to break those biblical rules she was advocating in general.

As I've said before the Right puts on a goddamn master class at how to walk into a room with 100 Left Handed People, openly insult Left Handed People as a concept, and someone get most of the Left Handed People in the room to clearly hear a "But not you, you're one of the 'good ones'" subtext in your message. It's legit weird at times.

Women on the Right "know" that anti-women rhetoric from the Right doesn't mean them, it means those other women, those floozy out there abandoning God and getting abortions.

Doesn't subservient simply mean a married woman can't refuse her husband sex as this guy (ETA: Sorry, similar thread. I'm referring to Mark Samsel) was implying?

Isn't that true for most humans?

Yes but for most humans reality is pretty convenient.

Yes humans are never 100% intellectually and morally consistent and will always, to some degree, operate in their own best interest.

That doesn't excuse doing so every degree.

I think you'd be surprised how inconvenient it is to most of us, to the point that it's ignored or downright denied.

One of the things that continues to surprise me is that many of the people in question do not actually operate in their own best interest. They may believe that this is what they are doing, but only because demagogues ply them with lies that conform to their biases, which they go along with even if they are, by any other measure, mind bogglingly stupid, if not insane. Go on about Jewish space lasers, hamburger confiscation, dandelion pandemics, and you can, it seems convince a certain portion of the population to complain of being robbed while handing you their wallets.