Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Republicans run on Civil War

There are a couple of military concepts that help explain what is really going on around us. First is "Battlespace" and second is "shaping" that battlespace.

The battlespace is the entire field of where a battle is occurring. "Battlespace or battle-space is a term used to signify a unified military strategy to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including air, information, land, sea, cyber and outer space to achieve military goals. It includes the environment, factors, and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission. This includes enemy and friendly armed forces, infrastructure, weather, terrain, and the electromagnetic spectrum within the operational areas and areas of interest." We used to refer to the "battlefield", but this term recognizes that there are other "spaces" that affect the conduct of battle, and not all of them are right in front of us.

In the political sphere, there are geographic considerations, too, but many more issues that affect results. Instead of "air, information, land, sea, cyber" it becomes "airwaves, information (and misinformation), land, sea, cyber and other media". And in that battlespace, "shaping" is occurring - "Battle-space shaping is a concept involved in the practice of maneuver warfare that are used for shaping a situation on the battlefield, gaining the military advantage for the commander. It forecasts the elimination of the enemy's capability by fighting in a coherent manner before deploying determine-sized forces."

An example in battlespace shaping is "gaining air superiority", or "a strategic withdrawal" that might lure an aggressive foe to overcommit and fall into a trap. Similarly, there are efforts -often crude, but still effective - to "shape" the political battlespace. Strategic leaks, propaganda, electioneering, PAC funding, think tanks, and "riling up the base" are all examples of how the politispace is shaped, and we can recognize the maneuvers currently in operation. And, putting willing surrogates in place through elections or appointments feed into that.

Trump is no master planner, but he is a useful tool for the GOP, which has been engaged in this endeavor for decades. The Civil War rhetoric is mostly a diversionary tactic, although fear of it does affect the polity. But, make no mistake, there are those that consider what is going on a Civil War by other means.

I've got ten years to live, maybe less, maybe more, but that's about the best I can hope for.

Which political football in the game today would you compare to slavery?

Yes, one of them "stormed" an FBI office with a nail gun. Is that a direct comparison to Ft. Sumter?

How'd it work out for him.

Partisan idiots being partisan idiots. With predictable results.

If there had been ten of them or a hundred do you imagine the results would have been much different?

You can call the war at the ballot box a civil war if you want. I just call it democracy.

@pondering_it_all @Greger...you're both overthinking because the rooftop pic was not necessarily a literal reference.
But I caution anyone that it MIGHT be that the only reason we did not see rooftop snipers is because the bunch who had all that firepower stashed across the river never got the call to activate.

You DO remember that a large cache of firearms were stored at a safe house in prep for J6, yes?

And anyway, whether or not all this insanity works isn't the point either because there appears to be an inexhaustible supply of morons who will TRY nonetheless, and there's the rub. There's WHY America may very well look and feel like Northern Ireland for the next decade or so...because morons gonna moron.
And innocent people are still going to die, lots of them.

And all because: Butt hurt over a lost election.

Fine, and it's likely that I have about the same.
But there's a reason I don't use that as an excuse to say "IDGAF" --- three reasons to be exact, and their names are Bri, Daryl and Karen.

Yes I do!

30 days of supplies and some rifles.

They're gonna take on the United States Armed Forces with 30 days of supplies and some rifles.

DC police would have their candy asses rounded up in a matter of hours.


Yep, crazy ain't it...but there is a little bit more to it than that. It's hard to imagine, but they loved Trump. They thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. To them, his lies were just 'bullshitting the bullshitters"...his policies were working the economy was booming blah blah etc ad infinitum

I wasn't just anybody telling them the election was stolen...

It was The President Of The United States

The one they voted for, the one they admired (yes, very hard to imagine) the one they watched on teevee and at the beauty pageants! The successful playboy millionaire who owned skyscrapers and got all the most beautiful women!

Their fecking hero. Told them he was cheated. The leader of the free world stood humbly before them and entreated them to march to the capital and fight...

And so they did.

It's not that I don't give a f*ck, I was actually thinking of making a bet that there would be NO blossoming of civil war in my lifetime. I'm pretty sure of it, sure enough to make the bet.

All indications are that very little is going to change over the next decade.

Not much more in the way of change than occurred in the last few decades. They've been a bit bumpy but here we sit with full bellies and roofs over our heads. I expect to find myself in exactly the same situation a decade from now.

I don't live in fear of my neighbors taking up arms against me. Apparently, you do. And you're probably teaching your children that their neighbors could take up arms and kill them at any time so they need to be armed so they can fight back when the war comes. Cool! Have at it.

My girls are doing okay and can take care of themselves without any input from me, no matter who wins which election. The best I can hope for at this point is to not be a burden to them while they build their own lives over the next decade.

Meh..

I’m with Gregor on this one. Sure, both right wing parties hate each other and some would even be willing to kill the other co-party. I just don’t think there’s all that many that are willing to die for their cause yet.

If the treats stop flowing that’s a whole different matter.

Didn’t the mother goddess throw shade on the 2016 election? Coulda sworn there was some talk about the Ivan’s having stolen it from her for Trump. Never mind the craptacular campaign her team ran. How’s what Trump did that much different?

Really says something about our election system. Seems like more people no longer trust it. Wonder why?

I’d say most of those who distrust our election system today are the highly partisans, party loyalist who can’t fathom how their candidate lost without fraud and cheating being committed. They love their candidate and can’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t. We see this in Trump supporters today. For them the only way Trump could have lost is due to massive fraud and cheating against him. It boils down to the only there is a legitimate election without fraud and cheating is if their candidate won.

According to a CNN poll taken in July 2022, 57% of Democrats express confidence in our election system even though they won the last election. 29% of Republicans do with 38% of independents. Which comes out to 42% of all Americans having confidence in our election system.

From the article: And about half of Americans, 48%, say they think it is at least somewhat likely that in the next few years, some elected officials will successfully overturn the results of a US election because their party did not win.

The above 48% includes 49% of Democrats, 53% of Republicans and 42% of independents.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/politics/cnn-poll-elections/index.html

What this shows is half of Democrats and half of Republicans think at some time in the near future the other party’s election officials will overthrow legitimate election results to make their party win.

I trust it because I know how it works. It's broken into so many tiny elections that it's impossible to hijack. It's overseen by locals under strict sets of rules.

No matter which party is in charge they will most likely do their best to run clean elections.

They would never cheat! But they always think their opponents are doing it. Records over the years have shown that election malfeasance mostly exists in the minds of partisans.

Both propaganda arms have cast doubt on the integrity of our election system. Dems believe that Reeps are systematically reducing Democratic(Black) voters access to the polls...that they are purging voters from the rolls and cheating every chance they get...

Reeps believe there was massive voter fraud in the last election and probably massive voter fraud in any election they ever lost in the past or will ever lose in the future blah blah blah...

So yeah, both sides cast doubt on the security of the electoral system and it shows up in Pero's numbers just as you might imagine it would.

I'm just not the paranoid type and believe our election system is generally in good hands.

I trust it also. I will until it's proven my trust lies in the wrong place. When and if my trust is broken, then I cease to be a voter.