and a quick study of American political history would inform you that this is hardly the first period of time where public discourse has been "so vile and divisive".

very different....

I mean, how it "feels" is a pretty subjective thing, and you have no real way of knowing how it "felt" in prior eras.

There something not right. It seems to have an air of hate that I can't remember feeling before.

It is a very cold feeling of not agreeing to disagree.

I am no stranger to taking a beating, if you will, for my political belief. I had rocks thrown at me for protesting the Iraq war. And I have been a vocal person when it comes to my point of view, but lately I have felt a very threating... something when I make a point in public. Something is just not right.

I don't think that it will get to a down right civil war, I hope.

You only believe that if you listen to the rw media and limpaugh.

Grrrrrr...

I just live around some really nutty people....maybe that is the issue

I can tell you from experience, it does take some time to make the adjustment.

This is just childish whining by NRA types. They're all basement dwelling cowards.

..homogeneous for that to happen.

You may see an increase in domestic terrorism, especially given the pure vitriol being spewed by right-wing hate radio. RWers are being programmed to believe that Obama (and Democrats in general) represent an existential threat to this country, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a few acts of violence here and there.

But as far as full-blown civil war, states seceding, etc - absolutely not.

...of all of those out-of-shape, cheetos-munching keyboard warriors reading about a Second Civil War on Drudge and going "Aw man, does this mean I have to leave the house?!"

+1

Then the day comes-

"Ohhhh... Uh... (Insert excuse here)... Someone else go ahead"

as long as they didn't have to fight themselves.

...we know they're a little out of shape

This is particularly true about politics, I know far more about what's going on than I did pre internet and I was a regular newspaper reader, library goer, listen to NPR, watch the Sabbath gasbag shows type person.

On the other hand crazy ideas also get spread really fast and effectively too so the low information voter turns into the the negative information voter, everything he thinks he knows is wrong.

No civil war but some seriously deranged terrorism for at least the next decade.

Hillary murdered Vince Foster.

Purple Heart Bandaids for Kerry and Swiftboat became a verb.

The GOP is far more over the top now than it was then.

If the next POTUS isn't a Republican there will be absolute hell to pay.

I just think the extra irrational shit right now has everything to do with race, and they'll be a collective sigh of relief from these assholes when the black presidency is over. It'll be interesting to see these people choke on it as the GOP increasingly tries to woo Latino and younger voters. I hope they feel betrayed, and increasingly irrelevant.

I feel things are being orchestrated by the plutocracy with that end as their goal. A civil war would not suit their agenda but the perceived dream of one would serve their goals in their silent coup.

But they'll never get anywhere close to an actual civil war.

It will be an embarrassing failure. Hopefully, no one innocent will be killed. Hopefully it doesn't happen at all but if it does, I think that will be the worst of it.

Thanks for the concern though.

I see nothing of substance in the here and now that would lead us down that road.

the threats that conservatives are making about killing people are real. I believe there will be a lot of violence and killing and that the country will completely collapse and turn into a fascist third world hellhole. Conservatives cannot be reasoned with. They are irrational and violent and I hate how so many liberals refuse to take these people seriously. I live in a red state too and it is frightening. These people are unhinged I'm afraid to admit I'm a registered democrat. I was watching a documentary about Hitler and Nazi Germany and it was frightening the similarities between the Nazis and the Christian right. Conservative Christians speak of America in the same way Nazis spoke of Deutschland. The speak of being the strong majority and yet also victims in the same way Hitler did. There is so much suffering in this country people are broken and beaten. They are desperate and will gladly fall into the hands of a demagogue.

look at the last crop of Republicans in the last primary. There was only one real moderate and he got almost no votes. A boatload of the country voted for a climate change denier empty suit Romney. I look at some of the govt reports talking of mass migration of people from the coasts down the road and of drought and food shortages. I think the next generation will see some major disruptions of society.

He rode the economic strife of the Great Depression, his party and the other conservative parties went full Teabagger in the Reichstag and blocked unemployment benefits, poverty relief, and forced the German government into full austerity. The people went apeshit, elected a bunch of Nazis (but not enough for a majority.) After that, Hitler played musical chairs with other conservative douchebags like Papen and Schleicher, backstabbing and conniving for power until he was the only one left standing and was made Chancellor. The rest is history.

Jesus was not armed. I do not understand how a christian can love guns so much. By the way this is a liberal site.

Now, they can do it on the internet.

It used to be that a town of a couple thousand people would have, say, one weirdo in it that liked to walk around with anchovies in his socks.

So, with a couple of thousand towns, each having a weirdo that walks around with anchovies in his socks, nobody ever really was concerned about that one weirdo.

Through the magic of the internet, each of these weirdos can go to AnchovySocks.com, join the thousands of other weirdos from each of their towns in the "Anchovy Sock Community", share information on favorite varieties of anchovies and socks, and get group discounts on bulk purchases.

Regardless of how much noise the combined, formerly isolated, weirdos can make on their website, the bottom line is that practically nobody walks around with anchovies in their socks. However, sites like AnchovySocks.com give them an environment in which they can believe it is all the rage.

in the doctor's office (where I am now), in the grocery store, at the bank at the beauty parlor (really crazy stuff there). I normally don't read as much online except on this site. I never go to Fox news or any of those nutty places.

I think the internet and talk radio 24/7 tv news (if you want to call it news) does fan the flames and validate those folks though.

and i thought it was bad in the clinton years with wannabe cowpokes loudly calling for assassination in the town cafe, etc.

but civil war? i think it there is a heuristic effect going on like anchovysocks.com. the famed rightwing echo chamber of doom drums up armchair outrage from cowardly dittoheads

Just so they can say "I told ya!"

But in spite all the vitriol by those who worship the gun and hold the 2nd amendment as sacred text, I don't think so.

If anything, I see something akin to the intifada, where low scale conflict increases with militia's resorting to terrorism..

I'm not gonna worry until the VP kills the Sec't of the Treasury.

they just want some one else (like Timothy McVeigh) to go there.

Walking around in real life there is none of this conflict or divide.

A civil war would have to be covertly organized by a huge faction that would have to be smart enough to evade detection and destruction. There may be terrorist acts by small groups of deluded people but no war. And the screamers know it. Like rage full adolescents denied their way by a reasonable, non abusive parent, they feel safe enough to spit in the face of this administration all the while not having to fear being squashed. Lots of people are trying to make money and political bones by yelling "Why I ought a!" all the while never intending to do squat.

Remember the rise of the militia prior to OK City?

Something like that might happen again. But a full-out shooting war is not imminent.

So I have lived through times of turmoil before. This Great Recession will end. Our nation will struggle through once again.

I fought in Vietnam, and returned to that political turbulence.

I served in the Air Force but was stationed stateside during my entire time.

I wish to personally thank you for your service.

I volunteered for the draft and wound up getting shot up pretty good in Vietnam.

But I respect our era vets and value your service during that difficult time.

I served for about a year and a half as an electronic instructor and then worked as on a highly classified Air Force program that flew recon missions over the Ho Chi Minh trail. We had three aircraft stateside that we used as test beds for new equipment for the operation that flew out of Thailand. I was told that if reenlisted I would be sent to Thailand but my wife at the time told me that she would divorce me if I did.

I served my time but I was never in any danger. If I had received orders to go to Vietnam I would have willingly done so. Some of my fellow airmen did.

On the other hand you actually fought for your nation and suffered. Therefore I give you my total respect.

From a child born during that war.

that the US appeared close to civil war in the '60s and early '70s (Kent State, Weather Underground, etc.)

that more people agree with the NRA/GOP position than actually do.

If you immerse yourself in media infotainment you might begin to believe that its really scary out there.

I agree with you about needing a two party system; however, when one of the parities disporportionately controls the airwaves, disinformation and ignorance abounds.

....just in case you haven't noticed it, quite a few of the so-called "Red States" are located in regions outside of the South:





Just a word of advice, but you shouldn't be talking about politics or religion in the work place...that's just an invitation to get on somebody's "bad list", and that "somebody" could be your manager.

If you don't like the South, move back to wherever you came from and let those of us who are Southern Progressives and Democrats do what we can to turn things around.

I do work down here to try and elect democrats, I've been doing it since we moved here. Sorry it bothers you that some northerners live down here but we do. Do I try to fit in, yes. Yes there are red northern states and northern counties that are redder than down here. But the stereotypes are there for a reason. All I can go by is what I have lived with.

The entire country is broken right now.

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....Mid-Atlantic (outside Washington, DC), in addition to traveling extensively throughout the US with the exception of two states, Alaska and Hawaii. I've met and talked with the people all over the country and I've found large pockets of "stereotypes" in the West, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest, and the Northeast. Their prejudices are out there for the world to see and you don't even have to look very closely. Some of the worst white supremacist groups are located in the Northwest and Midwest, not the South as you apparently believe.

What bothers me the most about your post is your attempt to paint ALL Southerners with a broad blue brush. That is irritating beyond belief and it happens all the time on this board. Based on the 2012 Presidential Election results there are about 17 million people in the South who voted for the President (26% of all who voted for the President)....so much for your "stereotypes" remark.

If one look at the percentage of White voters voting for President Obama and Romney state by state, it become clear what the problem is. White outside of the South either split their vote roughly evenly, or favored the President by a substantial margin in states like Iowa, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Whites in the South, except for Florida, voted lopsided for Romney.

I don't question your goodwill or question how much you love the South. But the South has now and has historically had a problem with race. Yes, there are pockets of extreme racism outside the South, but those pockets are small as a percentage of the total population. A conservative person from the Northwest may be a true conservative, who although his or her views are screwed up, doesn't have racial animus as the basis for conservatism.

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on most issues facing the county. The new silent majority is the moderate to leftists in the United States. Repubs are getting older as a whole.

wasn't.

As any electoral map will show you, when it comes to the left-right division, all states are purple: either bluish-purple or reddish-purple.

Where would you make the division?

If we were to have a civil war, it would be more like the English Civil War in the 17th century, where loyalties were by city.

Income disparity is as bad as in the gilded age, that's bad. We're a declining empire. That's bad. But nobody is really hungry yet. Heck, most people can't even imagine what it's like to be really desperate and hungry. It'll be the same as it always was, then the middle class gets hungry the shit will hit the fan.

that's how contentious our politics are now, throw in secessionist and violent rhetoric I'd say we're at least equal to any of those.

No, Republicans and NRA members just like to bitch about bullshit

for a decade already...

I was not a chickenhawk, I served in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam, was wounded by AK fire, and after a long hospitalization was retired from the Army for partial disability.

I get the play on words, but I'm still taken aback when I see that.

How about the Basement Brigades? Keyboard Kommandos? Cheeto-puff Cavalry?

and hopelly they will be slapped down hard and fast.

It would make great TV.

These are merely fantasies of the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and ultraconservative fanatics.

At a very minimum, 30% of our nation would have to support an uprising in order to have any chance of success.

If a small number of armed individuals decided to launch an insurrection I feel they would be squashed fairly quickly but the damage they were able to inflict might well lead to the gun control they fear.

It is possible that somewhere in the far future a true dictator may try to gain control of our nation and impose a tyranny. Our citizens amy still be armed but their efforts to resist may fail as by that time our government will much better surveillance data on every citizen and will be able to track everybody everywhere at all times.

will probably do something extreme that will have dire consequences.I hope it doesn't come to that. But with all the misguided anger,misguided fear and propaganda something is brewing.

My coworker talks often that he thinks it's going to happen someday. I tell him he's nuts too.

Today he brought up (again) the Texas secession petition because apparently the White House denied it. He called it tyranny.

People who think this is the first time we've seen this kind of discontent just haven't read their history books. There was almost a military coup against FDR. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

Then there was all that McCarthy bullshit that just about tore the country apart politically. But in neither instance did we get close to civil war, and we're not close now.

At some deep psychological level they are so unhappy with their own lives that the only way out they can see is for all of it to go smash at once, either by the Hand of God or by a gun-owners' uprising against their fantasy of intolerable tyranny.

I see the problems of our country differently -- for one thing I can see the low-level violence going on indefinitely until we are ever-more-anesthetized to it, but I don't see an out and out war.

Any worry there?

Maybe 30% of the population ... at the most.

Living in Virginia I completely understand the context as the repugs here are mostly proud to be ignorant aholes and refuse to even attempt basic learning skills and simple logic. But I don't see civil war as the outcome, I see a much larger social awakening as to exactly what defines the backwards and socially inept "conservatives". "Conservatives" are down to just two groups, the corrupt and the gullible. With the internet and massively increasing social media and learning abilities contained therein, people with access to a computer can easily see what a "conservative" really is.

So, there is a clear social split now between "conservatives" and the rest of the population that is actually capable of comprehending science, change and progress. "Conservatives" are being outcast by society and as they are their numbers will slowly dwindle away into a relic of the past like the Whig party of the 1800s with no need for a civil war.

their support. That's a good sign.

I agree that we need a 2-Party System, but we need them both to be BELIEVABLE.

If the Republican Party goes down, then the Democratic Party will split.

Sure, the freepers and the tea party nuts use harsh and violent rhetoric. And they've even threatened several notable politicians. But at the end of the day, these people are all talk, no action. They themselves recognize that if they were to actually go to war against the US government, they'd be crushed. So, yeah, I'm not worried.

if they think they could "win" anything against the federal government.

They're a bunch of dickless fucking maroons.

it's moving in that direction. Assuming that doesn't happen I still think you'll see another Oklahoma City in the next decade, but no full blow civil war.

I just saw Ken Burns at the Fotomat and he was buying film like it was going out of style.

In the 1990's we had this Texas secessionist movement. It was kinda bad, or maybe it was kinda good because at least Dubya went after them. They ended up kidnapping and extorting and got thrown in jail.

Perry OTOH seems to encourage them. He seems to think its cute.

You just get two easily compromised and borderline nonsensical coalitions of people who hate and/or fear the opposition party enough to hang, a few random flippers, and a shit ton of folks that don't give a fuck other than to flip off the whole thing.

There are so many great responses and I've learned a little bit of history from them

I too, live in a red area in the South and I've wondered that same question, especially after I've visited my neighborhood message board, uugggg. It's discouraging and the level of hate has risen so high that it is disturbing.

By reading many of the responses here, I feel a little better. I hope you do too.

I did not expect so much negativity and put downs here. in some ways we are not much different than the folks we feel are so different from us.

They're preparing for that Inauguration Day invasion they told me about.

Poor people -- read "black people" -- are gonna leave the wealth in the cities and invade the country.

These poor people have no gas money and no cars, but they're gonna somehow steal all the wealth in these tiny towns that can barely support any businesses at all.

They know this because Rush or somebody or other told them. And they believe it.

I was so sick of them. The other one posted some nasty stuff after the election and I defriend her as well. My take is fuck'em they had their 8 years to fuck up the country now they can go fuck themselves.

Yes, there is a huge divide in the country and since some of these self-serving turds like the NRA and rich continue to shit on us it won't get any better.

I know that's not civil, but it's genuinely how I feel about it.

I'll just sit off to the side until both sides have equally and completely decimated each other. Thn I'll pop out at the last minute and clean up the one or two leftovers. The day shall be mine and to celebrate victory all remaining Americans (pretty much just me at that point) will get free healthcare and I'll legalize marijuana.

Even though the far-right and far-left are the loudest, the majority of Americans are moderates.

I cant tell you how many times I have honked at a bad driver and had them pull a gun out and wave it, or fire it, at me!!!

You're throwing away your chance to get in the first shot!

I knew I must be doing something wrong!!

the guy is now in jail for what he did. He was not happy with how fast sh was driving, came up next to us waving a firearm, I dialed 911, the guy behind us followed him and got his tag number, end of story.

That stuff only happens in the south, right?

end of story!

only in some media and the crazy RW loonies minds.

i was looking for a progressive group of people online to interact with, clearly you all think I'm a RW troll, not so much. But I don't have to come on here to be insulted. Not every new person here is a right wing troll and I don't think anyone comes on here to be insulted constantly.

It is very much like being bullied in a small town high school, feels the same. Wish I could stay but I doubt you will miss someone as insignificant as I am.