Happy Belated Halloween (Compliments of Cracked)
Thanks to Trump’s rhetoric and fanatical supporters, people are afraid of violence during and after the election. But things can get alot worse than that. Remember that Trump weaponized these fanatics, but he didn’t create them. The roots of the problem are much deeper, and aren’t limited to the alt-right.
6 Reasons Why A New Civil War Is Possible And Terrifying
Over the last few weeks a growing number of people have started wondering, “Is it possible the United States is heading for a new civil war?” Granted, most of those people are writers for sites like Russia Today or the Huffington Post, and thus slightly less credible than a handful of Bazooka Joe gum wrapper comics. But Donald Trump has made a few tinpot dictator-ish statements recently.
And we did just see an anti-government militia get off scot-free for occupying a federal building and pooping just, everywhere. And we are seeing shit like this in our pre-election headlines:
Every time I wanted to dismiss those headlines I thought about my visit to Ukraine last year, to cover their ongoing civil war. The most common sentence I heard was, “It’s like a bad dream.” Up to the minute the shooting started, almost no one thought civil war was a serious possibility.So instead of waking up one day and screaming, “Holy shit, I can’t believe I didn’t take this possibility seriously,” I decided to take the possibility seriously. I talked to David Kilcullen, former Chief Strategist in the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator of Counterterrorism. He helped plan the successful “surge” in Iraq, and he’s seen a lot of civil wars in his time. He didn’t consider a new U.S. civil war likely … but he was also pretty damn far from ruling it out: “I think what we’re seeing now is, what I would describe as a proto-insurgency situation … the ingredients are out there, if somebody knew what they were doing, [they could] pull together an effective movement.”
Read the whole thing. It’s a terrifying look at how things can get out of hand, and sooner than we want to believe it can. We’re not at the edge, but we’re in denial of how close we are to it. We prefer to think of ourselves as an advanced society, but we’re really more of a powder keg. Scary, huh?
Happy Belated Halloween