I think dudalb has some very valid points here ....

• questioning by the political Right of the validity of elections that brought a left-wing government to power

• the country on the edge of a major confrontation between the Left and the Right.

• anger and distrust between different regions of the country.

• the Right openly calling for martial law to oust the left-wing government.

• major socioeconomic problems, such as poverty and inequality.

• endemic political violence and demonstrations

• plans and attempts to assassinate political figures

• refusal of political parties and groups to compromise and respect democratic norms

• many of the privileged elite fearing the country on the brink of lapsing into to "socialism" (which they falsely equate to communism)


This is not the USA I'm talking about here, this is Spain between 1931 and 1936... these are the conditions that existed during the 5-6 years before their civil war.

Any of it look familiar?

People like Taylor-Greene, Hawley, Boebert, Cruz, Flynn et al stoke the fires of the stuff in the above list. They would like nothing more than a bloody civil war to achieve their ends of bringing Trump back into power as an authoritarian leader. The Right in various US States with their voter suppression legislation, and their direct legislative challenges to American citizens' First Amendment Right to free speech and political protest, are helping them to get it done.

I think you have a serious problem of scale here.

How so?

Big things very often come from small beginnings. At the risk if invoking Godwin, WW2 and the Holocaust had its beginning with a lowly nobody being sent by the Army to spy on a barely known political group.

NSDAP were a political joke and a laughing stock in 1925... by 1945, over 75 million people had been killed.

Problem of scale... I don't think so

Yes, although I thought the right-wing insurrectionists were so inept, and cried so much afterward, that it actually gave me a small amount of hope for the future. It's hard to be scared of bumbling idiots.

I think Skeptic Ginger is right - for now.

One, the U.S. military has not given any indication of taking sides.

Two, the church played a big role in the Spanish civil war. Churches are dying in the U.S. and frankly don't have that much political influence anymore.

Three, the U.S. does not currently have large-scale anarchist groups (or left-wing worker unions) marching in the streets.

I fear they won't remain bumbling idiots for long.

It will not have gone unnoticed that the main reasons for so many of them getting caught was because they failed to hide their faces, they videoed themselves breaking the law, and then afterwards, openly bragged about what they did.

If there is another January 6 type event in the future, they won't make these particular mistakes again!

Agreed, and I'm not saying its all about to kick off... but the US is currently walking on, or at least beside, the path to civil war... if they don't start pulling back soon, I think it is inevitable

But how can they get smarter if they're openly against learning? It's a Catch-22 for them. :)

When did Wisconsin leave the planet? Virtually the entirety of politics in the US, the "culture wars", is a proxy for fundamentalist/literalist vs everyone else.

Do not confuse intelligence with animal cunning.

These people might not be book smart, but they are street smart. They will learn by their mistakes, in the same way that a dog learns that the ends of a cat's legs have sharp things in them that inflict pain.

Just on my earlier point - an anti democracy, failed businessman becomes President of the United States, and he turns out to be a corrupt authoritarian who uses the presidency to line his own pockets and those of his family, and tells tens of thousand of political lies, and breaks the law with impunity, and stokes racial divisions throughout the country, and blackmails a foreign leader to get dirt on political opponents, and incites an insurrection at the Capitol after losing the election.

Think back to 10 to 15 years; did any of these things happening seem likely to you -

Actually, yes. In fact, I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

For me, the rise of the evangelical religious right has been the key factor. It has kept its self-interested insurrection bubbling and seething away underneath the USA for decades now, feeding the ignorance and influencing where it could. Sometimes a few pustules broke the surface, until finally some of the nasty turdy scum it has brewed from the depths floats to the top.

Oh, somewhere around 2010.

Disagree. The religious right is a small portion of the larger right-wing group. They've got traditional values people, old-school social conservatives, pro-big-business/low taxes people, authoritarians, fascists, libertarians, Trumpers, 2nd Amendment nuts, anti-abortionists, etc. and those only occasionally overlap with religion these days.

Citations then.

And the coalition is falling apart.....
And I disagree with you equation of more classic GOP stands with the idiocy and madness we see nowdays. I ,for one, have some sympathy with the limited government wing of the party.

Hope you don't really. Do you mean you actually agree with that wing of the party or do you mean you're in favor of real limited government?

Because this:

It's a joke that there is any kind of force involved here. The people who broke into the Capitol, and failed BTW, were a rag-tag group of weekend warriors who have a much too high opinion of their 'pretend to be revolutionaries' games. They were accompanied by an army a cluster **** of complete idiots. And they were led by Dump who had a delusional vision that some army of the people was going to keep him in power.

What's left as Dump fades from view are crazy people that think Q is a real thing the same way crazies believe the illuminati and One World Order is a real thing.

They got nothing except media attention (not hard to get) and a few really crazy loners who are probably making pipe bombs in their parents' garages as we speak. That is one of the sad truths of the remnants of Dump, that along with more than a few people who are going to do some serious time in federal prison for their foolishness.


The big problem we are left with is clearing out these cheating GOP legislators and that might be a serious problem that will take some time to rout. And the whole last decade of GOP propaganda has set critical thinking back much too far. I think (IMO here) that people had their orgy of crazy and are starting to trickle back into the real world. I hope anyway.

I doubt all those 74 million who voted for Dump still think it was a great idea.

:dl:

I'm sorry. I don't mean to be mean but that might apply to 10% or less of those bumbling idiots.

Did you see the young woman who was shocked she had been pepper sprayed and pushed back out of the building because "it was a revolution, man" (or words to that effect)? She was truly dumbfounded by the events.

If you think about it, how would these idiots not have known they should hide their faces? Left leaning protestors and anarchists who were partaking in serious civil disobedience have known that since at least as far back as the J Edgar Hoover days, probably long before that.

They were stupid enough to believe they would succeed and become the new US government as if no one in the military would stop them.

And how stupid was the young woman who climbed through the Chamber door window and was immediately shot and killed? What did she think would happen? Guess we'll never know.

I assure you, no we are not.

But I can see how it might look that way when viewed through the news or social media filters from outside the country.

OK, so a minimum standard to stand for office?

GOP has been dead to me for long time. around 20 years .
I am just skeptical that the answer to every problem is a huge government program, and think that private enterprise should remain the main engine of the US economy. No fan of "command econocmy" or that government regulation..a certain amount of which is necessary (this is where I break with the Libertarians) ..should be so extensive as to amount to a de facto government takeover..which I am afriad some progressives..though they won't say so honestly..in their hearts believe.
But the current GOP is beyond redemption; if you read Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot in the WAPO that is pretty much where I stand.

They happened but no one noticed, there wasn't any confrontation.

Yeah...no. Not the least bit street smart.


So here's the thing with that.

History:

GOP fear-mongering and courting fanatical single issue voters since Reagan.

GOP gets the voters they wished for starting with the TEA Party.

It leads up to someone like Dump getting elected.

And that's where the whole thing fell apart.

Dump is an incompetent delusional person whose one redeeming skill is he's a very good conman.

It's that first part that is the problem for Dump. There is no there there behind the curtain.

If he had been a true Hitler-esque person we might have been in big trouble. If the GOP had succeeded in actually stealing the election we'd be in big trouble because 4 more years of Dump would have made a very big mess. Corruption which is already a serious problem would have been horrendous with a Dump second term.

Dump is delusional. He's not some fantastically skilled leader.


This is not to say we didn't dodge the bullet here. We did and we aren't out of the woods.

But close to civil war? Nope, not even close.

As far as I'm concerned, the southern strategy is what did them in.

How close are we to an authorarian government and a phony, show democracy is the real question. i think a civil war, as tragic as that might be, is preferable to that.

Evangelicals missed their calling. They are not the biggest factor in our messed up government at the moment. Yes they have their Federalist Society and they have screwed up the SCOTUS for the foreseeable future. They certainly played a role in 2016. But they had to back a whore to get what they wanted and I believe the hypocrisy has damaged them.

The people I fear at the moment and have for a long time are the Kochs, the Mercers, and their ilk. These guys are fanatical faux* libertarians, with their John Birch Society roots.

*I say faux because they don't want actual Libertarianism, they want the kind where their money buys the government.

Billionaire Family Bankrolled Election Lies, Far Right and the Capitol Siege They have the financial power, the Evangelicals have a big chunk of the votes and no qualms about dealing with the devil. And the GOP has the rest of the brainwashed voters.

And who is in that wing these days?

As long as the GOP keeps choosing losers like MTG we aren't all that close.

It looked very concerning during the 2020 election. But I think the wave passed and we are still OK.

Ok just don't let it spill up here.

Boycotts?

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics...an-coalitions/
Religion is only 10th in terms of the size of the opinion gap between left and right.

Might want to reread what I said. Your cite doesn't address it all and what it does address indirectly suggests I was correct.

Only about half of religious people in the US are fundamentalist/evangelical.

You might want to recheck those numbers. It's much smaller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religi..._United_States

I meant it to apply to the worst offenders, the ex-military, the ex-LEOs who knew exactly what they were doing, and used military tactics.

You can laugh it off as big joke if you like, I don't care, its your country after all

You'll be laughing on the other side of your face if your country continues to go in the direction it is going.

You said:
Yet guns, race, and climate change are where the "war" is being mostly fought. Or are you claiming that is due to religion?

Your link doesn't support it being much smaller. Based on numbers in that article the proportion is at least 44% (34/76) and that's before accounting for fundamentalists that don't identify as evangelical.

ETA: There is also 4% of the population that is religious but non Christians. Some of them are still "fundamentalist" bible believers though. I've ignored them for the moment but they are so small it doesn't make meaningful difference.

In 2010, Evangelicals were 16.2% of the US population and total Protestants were 25.1%. I am quoting those numbers.

And no way are all Christians Evangelicals so I'm not sure your line blurring is evidence based. They are very different groups.

I agree with the bolded but they were a relatively small group.

As for the direction we are going, I posted a citation above where a current survey showed Dump losing adherents. He is no longer in power. His means of communication on social media is close to nil. He is no long the star in the room.

Those numbers don't seem relevant. In the first place, you're are citing a subset of evangelicals. Not sure why you think "protestant" is relevant. That neither strictly evangelical nor all of Christians. So I don't see the point.

I didn't say all Christians were Evangelical. I said that half of US religious people are Evangelical/Fundamentalist.

About half of religious people in the US are Protestants. About half of US Protestants are Evangelical/Fundamentalist. So Evangelicals/Fundamentalists are about 25% of religious people in the US. There is a bit of rounding there and different studies half slightly different numbers, so it is probably more like 30%. Could maybe be as high as 35%. Still quite a bit less than half.

Can you provide a cite for these numbers? I just cited numbers from the link that SG provided.


Not sure it's necessary though, given the original point. Even you apparently low numbers don't change the point.