That's what I'd expect

But it looks like the Confederate South has risen.

vote first. In record numbers, the world will be watching that's for sure.

and manipulated and thus of no use to us.

is this what you are doing?? Do not give up, we have those who gave their lives to keep us free.

We are no longer a constitutional representative republic. We are a fascist dictatorship.

Until or unless the rule of law is returned, we don't have anything worth defending.

results, or the GOP Senate? Let's not be naive about this.

I, for one, am not confident in our Presidential elections. I already had good reason before today.

to give in to their evil ways??? Don't you think is this exactly what they what, they want us to back off and not vote? No not me, I will vote.

but if we won I do not think we should change the constitution but word it better to avoid this type of thing ever again despite what party it is governing.

but things change.

What parts do you think need to be worded better?

I mean have it worded to be the way it was meant to be but no way to twist the words around or have one thing it says go against another thing it says.

Make it clear and solid enough that a third grader can clearly understand and have no argument as to what it says.

Kind of like "The Constitution For Dummis."

Funny thing you mentioned the bible because that was one of the things I was thinking of as I typed my response in.

That is why they are so mad and resort to cheating. The cultural revolution is over. The dirty hippies were right and white people are soon to be the minority

We’ve been locked in a Cold War since 1865.

Before you go too far down that road, sit an watch a few hours of news coverage from Bosnia during the civil war there.

25% of your neighbors are MAGATS, another 15% sympathize with them. Do you fight door to door in your neighborhood. What happens to the Starbucks or donut shops?

It is better to just break the country in two peacefully and have a mutual defense pact until both countries have effective militaries.

I believe that the socalled "Vinexit" is a blessing in disquise for Blue Virginia, let the red parts that want to join a poor neighbor leave, immediately stop taxing them and more importantly stop sending more lots more money to them than they pay in.

I think that these rallies are attended by a minority of fans and those that have been hired to attend. I'm guessing, without a shred of evidence, that the numbers are changing daily against Trump.

In the beginning, you'd see interview bytes of people in the East explaining their choice to vote for Trump, and most of it was an economic choice of people in those states where jobs are scarce. A lot voted selfishly, because they didn't want to have to change their jobs and just wanted to keep their tradition.

I think it would be a stretch to say that every one of those people now have paying jobs and are better off. We have factories closing, family farm losses, etc. Only the already rich are doing well; most people on fixed incomes or poor wages are not better off, due to rising prices of everything.

People voted for Trump because they didn't do their homework. This time, everyone should know that he is in it for himself.

As for fighting in the streets...well, let's start with nonviolent massive turnouts for marches, shutting services off, and public shunning of all Repubs.

Hell, I'd vote Dem just to get rid of all the drama. It is fatiguing, distracting, and accomplishes nothing. Let's kick his infantile ass to the curb and start over.

First, how would you divide the country? As it stands now, we have this "Red Line of Stupidity" as I call it, running right down the middle of our country from North Dakota to Texas. We also have extremely blue states on each coast. Do we keep the Northeast, Midwest and give up Cali?

Second, unlike CWI, we dont have a North vs South as you alluded to and what I covered in my first point. If this did happen, its going to be random bands of MAGAt radicals roaming the countryside performing inquisitions based on witch trial-like testimony, seized government records showing who was a registered Dem, etc, etc, etc...all kinds of stuff from our worst nightmares. People will have to choose what they are going to do...team up with the crazies, take your chances of being a pacifist, or join with a resistance group.

Thirdly, lets say we DID find a way to divide the nation...one side being the new USA and the other being the Kingdom of Trumptardia....How long before the Trumptards decide they want the whole country and launch an attack. We would be in constant war..god help those living near the border. Another scenario would be that the Trumptards would ally themselves with Russia or China or both and launch a full scale invasion...I could see them just saying the hell with it and taking Canada and Mexico too while they were at it. Then would come the forced labor, the death camps, etc, etc, etc.

Anyway you put it, none of it will end nicely.

the end of Trumplandia.

Spilt the country down the middle with the dividing line running north to south. Have adults decide which they want to live in, if they want to move, buy up their property and pay for their move to the "other" country. So in the end, only progressives that want to live there live in the real USA.

It doesn't matter which side we take, that will be by far the best side in a decade after the split. If we give up Washington State (actually Seattle region), Oregon (actually Portland region), California, and others, we get many southern states, New York, New Jersey, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina FREE of conservatives, I can live with that.

Soon after the split, I would expect the progressive country to leave the other in the dust, even militarily even as it spends far less on defense. So if Trumplandia attacks, it would get repulsed.

But thats just me

.... will there be MAGA hats and LIB beanies issued? That would help if I'm going to be able to tell who needs killin'.

People on both sides that are dreaming of that need to take a psyche evaluation. Families will be riven, neighborhoods would be riven, the whole thing would be a bloodbath. So the keyboard warriors that are thinking war need to calm down and rethink. It is better to peaceably partition the country into halves, or quarters, so that conservatives and liberals get rid of eachother without a drop of bloodshed, because once blood is shed to facilitate a war there is no going back to a saner time.

All of us will be wearing signs or hats that say "LIB" on them (like bullseye targets) that they can just pick off as they please. And of course they'll whine "WAAAAA NO FAIR!!!" when some of us fire back.

gallery for them. It's going to be a total freaking bloodbath that will kill lots of them.

It would be interesting for someone who thinks a civil war could happen to explain exactly how it would start, and how it would play out to the end. No matter how you cut it, it's a ridiculous concept.

-how does this war begin?
to-do we start it or do they?
-along with we and they is there also a them? Others?
-how will it be fought?
-who leads each side?
-how is the war "won"?


-what if we don't win?

I think it will be a peaceful dissolution of the union... into 2 or perhaps 3 smaller republics. It may even be that Hawaii becomes a separate nation and that part of the west coast joins Canada. I could see that happening. Won't be in MY lifetime (I have so few years actually remaining) but it could happen. Possibly. Maybe.

Things will get much worse before they get better. And if they get worse enough, then something like this seems possible.

that is what they talk about this goofy "civil war ii" as a possibility.

...it will be "your single-wide and the truck on blocks out front."

First our corporate overlords would not allow a revolution. The news, radio, commercials, facebook and Twitter would see to that.

There is also no winning such a split. Isn’t there more of a urban rural split than a regional split. In other words control of money and ports versus control of food and raw material.

Then there are nukes.

The survivors would write the constitution on the walls of caves.

The most important amendment would address the severity of the undemocratic nature of the senate and also address the electoral college.

Then an amendment dealing with money in politics.

We need to get back to having a functional government. It’s been too many decades since we’ve had one.

Some Russian psychic/prophet was predicting that the United States would break up into regions after it's civil war.

How long has Putin been working on his plan and when did Donald J. Trump become an asset?

Amendments 13, 14, and 15 only passed because most of the Southern States had not been re-admitted to the Union.

Those amendments were the birth of civil rights for blacks, though it took 100 years to get to the Civil Rights Act, and we're still fighting those racist, slave loving bigots today.

War really, really sucks at solving societal ills.

But what is? We can't reason with them, we can't play nice with them. They won't play nice with us. What do we do?

...when the time comes. Which, like many, I anticipate is coming.

But why shed blood if both factions are so fed up with each other they're both ready to call it quits? Let's do an amicable divorce. It'll be difficult to achieve, but it'll be the way to proceed when most of the country is finally ready.

A nation's lands don't have to be contiguous... Alaska isn't continguous with the rest of the U.S. The Northeast, Upper Midwest, and entire West Coast could comprise the remaining United States. The West Coast wouldn't have to be contiguous with the eastern and midwestern U.S.

Most of the rest could be the... Southern Christian States of America, or whatever fucked up thing they choose to be. Theocracy, autocracy, oligarchy, kleptocracy, hereditary monarchy, apartheid state (like Israel's becoming), whatever. It's becoming time to let 'em have their own place and be whatever it is they think they want to be.

Because about 40% of Americans would rather sabotage all of our institutions of democracy -- as they presently are -- rather than accept that their political opponents be allowed to win elections, or to govern when they do. What other rational response is there when one's fellow countrymen abandon every principle they've ever had in favor of simply holding onto power by any means necessary and at any cost?

I don't foresee them returning to reason. Not when they've tasted what suppressing opposition voters, gerrymandering, the big advantage the electoral college gives them in our now increasingly geopgraphically aligned politics, trafficking in disinformation, and foreign intervention smearing Democrats over social media can do for them. Now that they've figured out they have (or can take) unfair advantages for hanging onto power in all 3 branches of government even as the minority party, what motivation do they have to return to sanity and any semblance of fairness?

Nothing is forever... especially invisible lines on maps.

Just letting the South go, btw, remained a not-impossible option in 1861 right up until South Carolinians started firing on Fort Sumter.

Putting in the hard work required to do a peaceful partitioning this time is the way to do it.

At least 1/3 of EVERY state is either GOP or Dem.

Hell... you have splits within individual households.


There's no way to split.

We just need to form two haves of equal size and approximate natural resources (water sources, ports, minerals, ect) and then move people. What would happen is a half would only be blue, rural and urban people would have similar political/personal ideologies, the same dynamic would be for the red half.

A split is something that we really should think about, because I am afraid that a split or a war is headed our way. The Red America seems ok with having a dictator while the Blue America prefers to change it's Presidents and move to a new one every four or eight years. There are other deep divisions like a pluralistic society versus a society that demands that one religion dictates to the whole of society.

The dividing line would run north to south from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, some states will be cut to give both countries equal landmass, each can reform it's own states within it's new borders. To me it doesn't matter whether we lose California and the Pacific Northwest or New York State and liberal eastern states, as long as the half that we get no longer has conservatives in it. We should be able to build an excellent country whether we take the eastern or western half.

People 18 and older decide which half they want to live in. People under 18 who follow their parents get one chance starting at 18 and ending at 23 to choose the country opposite the one their parents chose, they get automatic citizenship in the country of their choice.

People that own property in the country that they choose to leave who can't move that property (homes, business buildings, land, ect) would have that property purchased at a fair market value.

For the first two decades, the two countries would share a mutual defense pact to help protect the other with it's military that was partitioned off. The pact would end at two decades after the split, at that point, each country would be responsible for protecting itself and for forming it's own foreign policy that involves a military.

I believe the above would be the best course and the way the country is going, one day soon, it will either be that or a civil war. A modern civil war would be bloody and full of autrocities. We literally have people living next door to each other that can't stand each other politically and socially. We have that in families. Something has to give and we are barreling headfirst toward that breaking point.

It has to be made clear that this kind of behavior is intolerable and future politicians must avoid it.

If we just shrug saying the past is the past it will happen again and probably soon.

Maybe I need another cup of coffee to understand your comment?

How do you imagine he would have greeted the secession of the Southern states? If Union troops had to be deployed -- would they have been deployed to defend the USA and its Constitution? Or something else?

When 20th century gun-humpers screamed about another Civil War, they never imagined that in the 21st century the gubmint they hated would already be taken over by assholes sympathetic to them.

I've always maintained that "civil war" and "race war" fantasies would run smack against the fact that the US government has all the firepower...

So back to the Commander in Chief. This one. We're already worried that he has his hands on the nukes. What if he decides to turn the Armed Forces on us?

I'm not in a good frame of mind just now, so I will stop.

DU has generally ridiculed RW groups that talk about armed resistance to the government. It is pointed out that a personal firearm is of little use against M1 tanks or drones dropping Hellfire missiles.

Why would any other group following that course of action fare better if the government is in the hands of the right?

Both sides will end up with grotesquely lethal weapons and there will be a bloodbath. Other countries would try to jump in to back one side, countries like Israel, Russia and China.

He is virulently opposed to Trump and republican sycophants. That man went to West Point and commanded divisions within the Army. Remember the large number of former military officers that hammered Trump at our convention on 2016? My guess is that the active officer corps is split, some can't stand Trump, even while he is their CIC, others would gladly order any soldiers that would do it to turn their guns on us and kill us. So the military is no cut and dried affair where Trump gets what he wants once it is obvious that he has totally shat on the Constitution.

Trump will be dead and gone soon enough, many of the 63 million who enabled him and continue to enable him will be a boil on the ass that we are stuck with.

There is a fantastic podcast called "It Could Happen Here". It is incredibly well researched and produced.

It covers the issue of what happens to states, cities, neighborhoods, and how individuals react.

A little scary, but certainly worth listening to.

1st decide who will be left alive and figure out how to deal with the +/-10-20 million dead.

You are talking about battles all over this land, fought between factions of the greatest militaries in the world, armed with the most lethal weapons ever devised. Besides 400 million guns in private hands choosing sides.

But more likely...

"I stand here to declare that "WE" will secede from the Union, our secretly assembled Troops will meet any who oppose us at <BOOM>

“Next...”

We leave or they do
Time to write off the south
I'm prepared to move to a northern state

Mutually agreed upon by both sides, both of which want out of the bad marriage we're in.

Borders undeniably will be the most difficult issue. It will help if we can allow different parts of some states to go different ways. Southside and Southwestern Virginia, for example, no longer co-exist compatibly with Urban-Crescent Virgina.

Followed closely in difficulty by sorting out who gets what parts of our military.

But difficult things are not necessarily impossible, and what else can we do? Fox or equivalents are never going away. RW media sets the politics for over a third of Americans': huge numbers of people have willingly just handed over their thinking to be done for them by extremists on tv, radio, and the internet. Few of those people are ever coming back to reason.

I don't see good prospects for either side convincing the other, or for being able to re-build a reasonably functioning government on top of chasms that have now opened up so deeply. I'd love to be wrong about those things, but fear I'm not.


Picture us actually settling on borders, however imperfect, for two countries in which we'll infuriate each other less. One will be vastly less stymied from making progress, pursuing science, treating its citizens fairly and well. The other more free to preserve forever in amber its obsolete but precious "heritage"... such as, everyone gets a gun!... and, taxes only on the poor!... and zero government beyond military, prisons, and police!

Picture a 10 or 15-year grace period of everyone having dual citizenship in both countries while individuals sort out where they want to be.

During the grace period we could have innovative approaches to The Big Sort. Online matchmaking for trading homes, helping rightwingers living in what will be the New United States find someone in what will be the Neo-Confederacy to swap homes with.


Look at world maps from recent centuries: the configurations of nations are not permanent. We may yet see Scotland separate from the UK, Quebec from Canada, Catalonia from Spain, Kurdistan from Iraq, Hong Kong from China, etc. No lines men have created are inviolable. With time, the world changes. America has changed, our democracy is eroding fast, and the idea that some "exceptionalism" exempts us from re-arrangement is fiction.

When the government of the USSR finally ground to its halt, there was, surprisingly, relatively little physical fighting while its components walked away from Russia. After which, yes there were tanks rolling on the streets of Moscow once. But still relatively little violence.

The USSR was a very different world from ours, yes. And utterly corrupt kleptocracies did result, esp in Russia. But that was their culture to begin with. Here I'd expect at worse only the Neo-Confederacy to degenerate (further) into kleptocracy. Whereas the newly unburdened New United States should be able to turn itself into a greatly improved nation. All of its problems will not be solved, of course. But it will be a lot like a Canada... except warmer.

I believe something's going to have to give. War would be the worst possible result. I hope we can partition at some point without it. A few yahoo gun nuts will still think whatever happens will be license to shoot minorities and "libs," of course, but they'll just need to be shown that it isn't.

vs Democrat in America hasn't been remotely as bloody as the long one of Muslim vs Hindu (and Buddhist) on the subcontinent. Centuries of bitter religious hatreds there show no signs of ebbing... outbreaks of rampaging members of one group overrunning smaller numbers of another and hacking them with knives and machetes.

We're not there yet.

...and leave behind their house, neighbors, kids' schools, place of employment and all that just to satisfy someone else's fantasy of a quiet life for the greater good of the masses. This is America -- better we should all just learn to get along.

And yes, my undergraduate studies were Asian and Pacific history, which included the Indian subcontinent. Graduate studies were something else, but I haven't forgotten my beginning.

Among others, might dispute the notion that the breakup of the USSR led to little violence.

I fear any attempt to break the US into separate countries would look far more like the dissolution of Yugoslavia, but with far less clear cut geographic divisions.

...and it's been since the rise of the new Stalin in Moscow that their situations have deteriorated. He wants all the russophones back.

Chechnya, like the Balkans, has been mostly about historical religious hatreds and the violence flowing out of that.

To those saying partitioning the U.S. is impossible, what's your better solution? Talk sense into the other side until they agree with us? Because, that's going so well. Eventually simply outvote them and force our policies on them? All the government-despising "cold dead hands" guys?

Both sides would be in less danger if those folks had their own place to completely fuck up however they wanted to. And the rest of America could rapidly advance, like Lincoln's United States did during its brief 1861-1865 respite from southern congressmen.

I was just in deep red Virginia. Those people are really MAD about the gun issue and deep state. They truly believe dems are coming for their guns and their way of life. They are totally programmed and could be switch on at any minute. They are not going to go quietly, the situation is not good. Time for the Governors sit down and start talking. Our states are unfair now with congressional/ senatorial representation. There are great swaths of land that get more representation than millions of people. The system is gamed and must be undone or redone. There are not "great solutions" and splitting seems a good alternative.

for the next 3 decades.

I suspect that all those questions will be moot. But there would brand new questions that we haven't thought of.

Things like learning Russian will be of high priority, so that we can better communicate with our new Capital on the other side of the world.

That means the Constitution remains and we fix the stupid stuff that caused the war. That would include, but not be limited to eliminating the electoral college.