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None of that happened before the massacres in Rwanda. Maybe "civil war" isn't the right phrase, but how then would one describe a Rwanda-like situation where one group seeks to kill off another group?
Well we don't really have to guess at that:
Quote:
Genocide
New Perspectives on its Causes, Courses,
and Consequences
Edited by
Uğur Ümit Üngör
Dave Grossman describes four kinds of emotional distance which, as far as killing a fellow human being are concerned, are just as efficient as physical distance.60 These four are cultural distance, moral distance, social distance, and mechanical distance. These four kinds deal mainly with the emotional involvement and identification with the victim. Emotional withdrawal seems to be the core in each of these cases. According to Erich Fromm, there is a clear link between this withdrawal and the prevention of destructive aggression: “There is good clinical evidence for the assumption that destructive aggression occurs, at least to a large degree, in conjunction with a momentary or chronic emotional withdrawal.”61
This process of labeling and evaluation is decisive in the first kind of emotional distance, namely cultural distance.62 Creating cultural distance is an often-used tactic when conditioning and systematically desensitizing future genocidal perpetrators, usually by means of incendiary media like radio and/or film. The enemy is presented as an inferior form of life, who is a threat to the group that needs protecting. Examples of this tactic are the incendiary radio programs of the Rwandan radio station Radio Milles Collines which, during the genocide, incited the population to exterminate the Tutsi cockroaches as well as the ‘documentary’ entitled Der ewige Jude construed by the Nazis. All genocides know descriptions where, after a process of otherization, the victim group is dehumanized. This feeds one of our motivations, namely creating and maintaining a positive image of ourselves. If the other party is disease-spreading vermin, then I am not.
I still don’t understand all this generational talk. You can’t draw some arbitrary line in the sand and declare everyone inside those lines are the same. I’m technically a millennial, something I didn’t even know until I was in my 20s and don’t particularly share much of what millennials purportedly are.
Well two things I'd like to add about generational demographics + something else:
1. The majority of the population in the United States is older not younger.
Boomers = 1944-1964
Generation X = 1964-1984
Millenials = 1984-2004
Gen Z = 2004-2024
look at the distribution of population within those classes. We got more people over 35 than under 35 (actually, 38 is the median) So the situation of "too many old people" has actually BEEN the situation for the last ~40 years. Gen Z is making up for the low birth rate of Gen X, and too many Baby Boomers.
- compare to a really old country like Japan (median age 48)
- compare to a really young country like India (median age 28)
Generally, the Revolution or Civil War or Insurrection or coup d'etat does not come from the middle class or the old people. It comes from the Young. I might LIKE to get up at 5am to run a 5K, but I aint getting up at 5am to hike over a mountain with a 55lb rucksack and shoot anybody with a .408 CheyTac sniper rifle - it weighs 31lbs by itself!
The other major instability factor is the monetary system and Hyperinflation. You might sit around and think you're all set with your cushy 401(k) retirement plan, and you intimately know what "$100" can buy in food or whatever. But what if the currency is worthless, and now it costs $1000 dollars for a weeks groceries? The rich will hoard, the poor will starve and riot, everybody else will steal, the govt will shoot + ration, and Rousseau's whole social contract collapses.
The 'dialogue' between the 40 yr old (female/gay) Democrats and the 60 yr old (male/heterosexual) Republicans, is alot of verbal squabbling mostly confined to the online world - it might make you 'uncomfortable' - but it doesnt have the Necessary Conditions for all-out Civil War, like Volobjectitarian's BreakAway Republic of Idaho example above.
So put me in the 'extremely unlikely to happen' camp.
Thankfully we know where the approximate floor is with regards to globalization and inflation. If the growth model is being replaced by the circular economy model then it's is somewhere around $17,500 per capita or approximately 1/5th of your current purchasing power. Of course that means if you have $1,000,000 in retirement savings think about it being $200,000. Or if you planned on living on $50,000/year in retirement see if you could do it on $10,000.
Now would be as good of a time as any to mention that the UN has estimated the need to transfer up to $150 trillion from developed countries to developing countries to meet its long term goals of global economic equity.
At this point i looks like most of that will come from transnational corporations (TNCs). Right now the "stakeholder" pledge at the Business Roundtable has 240+ signatories accounting for $9 trillion in annual revenue and growing. Not sure exactly how that plays out at this point but Biden has said as much in at least one of his speeches. It would probably go something like we pay something like 5 times what we do now for those products. If shampoo is $10 now it would be $50 in that future scenario. People will have to learn to do more with a lot less, to quote Mircea.
I still don’t understand all this generational talk. You can’t draw some arbitrary line in the sand and declare everyone inside those lines are the same. I’m technically a millennial, something I didn’t even know until I was in my 20s and don’t particularly share much of what millennials purportedly are.
The youth are being radicalized. That is the purpose of Critical Theories, CRT in particular in this case and thought reform programs.
Quote:
COMPASSION AND CRITIQUE
Angela P. Harris
In this Essay, I am interested in the relationship among ideology, ideological critique, and emotion. I argue that the ideological critique produced by Marx in the nineteenth century and by critical legal theorists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries undertakes not only to persuade our minds but also to rally our
emotions. To accomplish this, critical theorists show us that ideology is already a technique of emotion management. Ideology makes suffering invisible and compassion inappropriate by assuring us that the status quo is natural, normal, and necessary. Ideological critique, in turn, reveals the suffering beneath the bland façade of ideological concepts like “capital” and “property.” It tries to persuade us, moreover, that this suffering is unjust and unnecessary: that politics and not nature is its source, and that we should act to relieve it.
Like Marx, critical race theorists therefore want us to care about the subordinated.8 Yet several pitfalls await. First, caring must be connected to moral outrage to produce a commitment to action. Caring without outrage is only merely pity, an emotion that requires no action, only the feeling of sympathy. Critical theorists must strive to cultivate indignation as well as caring in their readers’ hearts. A second pitfall is related to the first. Observing the suffering of others may provoke compassion, but it may also reinforce a sense of their inferiority, their need for our charity. Conversely, a politics rooted in displays of suffering threatens to become “therapeutic,” a politics in which the subordinated seek only public recognition of their wounds and a sense of moral superiority rather than the transformation of social relations.9 Third, critical theory must simultaneously convince us that injustice is everywhere, and that change is possible.
Angela Harris wrote the foreword in CRT: An Introduction by Delgado and Stefancic. Pretty much required reading in race studies at this point. That should tell you that CRT is more than just a high level legal theory if they wrote an introductory book for students with classroom exercises worked into it.
If a BLM mob terrorizes the wrong town, I think it could definitely put the ball in motion for something that escalates into some kind of widespread conflict/war
Granted it was written in a Canadian news outlet so one may assume it was written for a Canadian audience but given how long and detailed the sections describing the chaos that unfolded in Washington D.C. last year, it seems all the more certain the author intended the op-ed for an American audience.
Personally I hope we're not close, especially with 2026 looming in the horizon. Despite rhetoric from both sides, I cannot believe anything happening in this country is so unbearable as to cause one citizen to draw swords on another. What do others think?
We're not. And I wish people would quit asserting that we are. We're not nearly as divided as the cable news networks, some politicians, and others would lead us to believe. We're just not. The problem is that so many people are focused on our differences to the point that they can't see what we do agree on. And if enough of us got together, and I mean a few million of us, the whole people, vajay hats and MAGA hats together, and we went to DC to demand they knock of all the divisive horse sh--, the politicians would sh-- themselves. We have it in us to do this. We're not as divided as we think. And people stoking divisiveness irritate me to no end.
Wouldn't that be great? The alphabet people (CNN MSNBC FOX etc) wouldn't know what to do. They would have no idea how to report on that, they just wouldn't. And they or the politicians couldn't spin it as 'us vs them' the way they like to do, because it would be all of us.
Also, there are no "sides." No "your side" or "their side". There's only one side, and that's America.
If a BLM mob terrorizes the wrong town, I think it could definitely put the ball in motion for something that escalates into some kind of widespread conflict/war
I agree. Where I live is middle class America and I am sure it voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
People around here have hunting rifles, and pistols which the government will never be allowed to take.
BLM and Antifa would be wise to keep their Marxist crap to leftist areas.
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