I don't know if the powers that be have noticed, but I think Uri Berliner's editorial has already provoked more comments than any piece the TFP has ever run. At least in the last half-year or so.
Yet another movie with a primary image of some adulteration of the Statue of Liberty isn't important in the slightest. That trope should have ended with the innovative Planet of the Apes decades ago. We are not headed in any way toward a Civil War. People have too much to lose and the vast majority of us actually see good in others - even others we sometimes disagree with politically.
Uri's piece, though... he nails what's important. He may be too close to the fire to fully understand why, because he thinks NPR is fixable. But he gets it.
I think that sentiment is more characteristic of the FP readership.
As a (center-right) blue city native transplanted to a bright red county, I think the divisions are too big to ignore. I'm in NE PA, about a mile away from the NY state line. Watching the discontent across the river in upstate NY has been a real eye opener as to the fracture between urban and rural areas. I can't see how forcing far left policies and taxes on rural areas is sustainable. Sullivan and Delaware Counties dodged a bullet with their bans on illegal immigrant housing being upheld- further infrastructure stress at the behest of downstaters could have been the flashpoint.
Perhaps we re-draw the state boundaries and allow federalism to save our great nation?
Aqua America has set itself up in my county seat, eventually they’ll try expanding. 250 years of well water here, I don’t want monthly bills or added fluoride!
Jim right on point. The irony is Charleton Heston pointed it out in film on The Planet of the Apes in 1968. The innovation in film or trope occurred 56 years ago. The arrested development of Hollywood writing and the SAG Union is stuck like an unplugged turd in a broken intellectual toilet right there. The political rhetoric and those who created it are largely using colostomy bags today... yet every kid at Reed College, Oberlin and the Ivy League think they are cutting edge on art and political commentary.
Also, from this perspective I am wondering where Suzy W. is coming from writing this piece.
That’s so meta! How does one know one’s story has gone viral? When people comment on it in the comments on other stories. Jim’s absolutely right. Calling out instances where writers, directors, producers, etc fail to acknowledge the obvious fissures in our society are sadly missing important opportunities. Way to go FP!
...a country which, depending on who you ask, is going to hell in a handbasket because of drag queen story hour or bans on drag queen story hour. ...
Yep. You nailed it. That's what all the strife is about. It has nothing to do with billions spent on foreign wars or millions of lives being ruined with toxic substances on American streets or a former American president being hounded for spurious reasons by a spurious legal system... the worries of these "rubes" are trivial things like drag queen story hour...
Yes, Obama was (and still is) a fool, but to claim that drug abuse or the industrial war complex or corrupt legal system are America’s worst problems is to pick on flashy feel-good(/bad) news bites and misunderstand the bigger issues of financial debt, technology (social media, AI, monopolies etc.) and world politics (the west vs. autocrats, plutocrats and religious zealots), which are IMHO way way bigger issues the US needs to confront
Another huge issue is self-entitled billionaires using these news bites and supposedly big issues to their own benefit while destroying anything previously built, even the good parts
I don't agree. The United States should confront its own "flashy" issues and let the rest of the world take care of itself. The issues you call "flashy feel-good" are existential.
It would be nice for the US to retreat into its own cocoon with it’s huge army, oceanic moat & abundant supply of natural resources while starting to manufacture everything in house..
Unfortunately that ideal utopia is no longer possible and even if it was you’d still have external / internal forces trying to penetrate / burst this wondrous autarky bubble.
It’s a little naive to think you can hide in a cave and not address what’s going on around you.
If you think the problems you mentioned are not, at least in part, due to external intervention (e.g., opioids manufactured in China or Russia / China / Iran trying to seed misinformation and destroy the US from within with help from the ultra progressive left and ultra national right) and internal conflict which has been exacerbated by social media and tech. benefiting from extremism you might need a reality check
Maybe. I live in China. I have been here since 1997. And I have seen the United States surrender its own power due to its own stupidity, cupidity and avarice for decades. Those nations you mention can only weaken the United States because Americans allow them to... from within. The rot is in the Democratic Party, which has completely abandoned any pretense at being able to see reality. Sure, there are other problems. But the cancer of the Democratic left is real and it is terminal. The "ultra-national-right" has no power. Institutions are controlled in ONE direction. They are the enemy. The Chinese are merely capitalizing on our weakness... what is wrong with that?
Nothing.
The Chinese are trying to build themselves at our expense. They are succeeding. We are failing. We have only ourselves to blame. The Democratic Party must be completely destroyed.
Wow, I guess that is what it literally said, but…. maybe that’s meant as an example of the division in the country… so we don’t have to read an essay first on why the country is a mess>
It won’t start as a civil war. It will start with nullification. And then a mistake will mandate hard choices. We came closer than people think in Texas a few months ago when Abbott took over a section of the border from ICE or Homeland Security and instituted the state’s immigration prevention strategy. The Feds had a choice. They initially threatened to physically take back control. In fact there were loud leftist voices supporting sending in the military. But they eventually backed down. At least for now until after the November election. If they win all gloves will come off.
In a different timeline, imagine a standoff between the US Army and Texas militia and police over building or dismantling protective border barriers, a shot goes off and some combatants die. Things escalate. Other states need to take sides. Boom!
The big question is- which side do the actual US military COMBAT troops choose? I emphasize combat because 90% of them are white country boys with loyalty to each other and not to some imaginary leader in DC.
Maybe that explains the DEI push that we’ve seen in the military the last few years. Replacement theory writ small. I think the powers that be will find them crackers harder to effectively replace than they think.
I don’t think we have the luxury of facing a civil
War: Biden is hell-bent on starting a third world war before the election . Iran, Russia, . . . He doesn’t care who it’s with; he wants to keep that sweet, sweet, power he’s been fetishizing his whole life!
I don’t think Biden makes any decisions. But I do think that the people who are making decisions think that a war would distract people from their domestic agenda.
Thanks. The combat thing is something that no one talks about. Combat training is hard and combat teams will brook no incompetence for obvious reasons. Candidly and maybe for cultural and not capability reasons, almost all combat personnel are white and rural. That is hidden within the general demographics of the Army. If our fearless leaders are depending on combat troops in a federal vs state battle, they can not possibly know on which side of the fence the combat arm of the military will fall. That unknown will temper their actions until they are more sure their orders will be obeyed below the Captain level.
Roger that, 100%. But overall, I agree the completely over the top DoD goal to candyass the military, rename bases / remove statues of CSA heroes (to specifically demoralize the Southern element), etc has the goal of making a military more "regime loyal."
'The big question is- which side do the actual US military COMBAT troops choose? I emphasize combat because 90% of them are white country boys with loyalty to each other and not to some imaginary leader in DC.'
It's estimated that while 2/3 of enlisted personnel voted for Trump in 2016, 2/3 of officers voted Clinton, and then in 2020 there is reason to believe that the military vote swung even more to Biden (the Economist based this on both absentee ballots and votes in military towns). It's, of course, impossible to get precise numbers and I'm sure some people here will say that the election was rigged, but the fact remains that while the military may not have the exact same demographics and leanings as the country at large, it's not nearly as monolithic as many civilians believe.
Then there's the fact that every single soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine swears their oath to the Constitution, not to "some imaginary leader in DC", and are trained to follow the chain of command no matter what. Any talk of insubordination or insurrection against the government is taken supremely seriously as officers up and down the line believe that it is fundamentally crucial that the military not be involved in partisan politics and that it be under civilian command (which is why there was outcry within the Pentagon and military at large against Biden choosing yet another general to be SecDef, because officers felt it was undermining the principle of having a civilian in charge who is assisted and counseled by the service chiefs).
All of this is to say that in any sort of even remotely realistic scenario in which groups of unofficial militias or rogue National Guard type units start moving against the government in any organized way, the United States military will undoubtedly act on behalf of and at the order of the authority of the United States Constitution.
I think you need to differentiate between general military personnel and combat troops. There is a huge difference between the two, culturally and possibly politically. Many combat troops see the officer class outside their unit as a political class now. I think anecdotally that the divide between officers and combat enlisted troops is as big now as it was during Vietnam. There is a reason that I highlighted combat in my post and I don't think that you understand that.
Plus, there is a big difference between combat troops deciding not to fire on civilian state police or state troops and "moving against the government" as you call it. I cannot see a combat trained unit from Georgia and Mississippi taking a position and firing their weapons on state police in Texas over who decides whether a fence should be put up or pulled own.
On a larger note, just because a functionary of the US Federal Government says to do something, that does not mean it is constitutional.
The civil war in this country started during the Obama administration, and continues through today.
Our federal government, and all of it's agencies (CIA/FBI/IRS) have become advocates of the Leftist agenda. Free Speech is under attack, and the Democrat party is no longer persuading voters to vote for them, but seizing power by taking over the judiciary system, as well as our electoral process.
The civil war won't be about actual warfare, but an insidious takeover of the government by rewriting the constitution. Not nearly as fun to watch for our generations of basement dwelling 'gamers', but a reality nonetheless.
The last thing any American needs is to find themselves in a firefight. That said, the number of people I encounter (without trying) who are convinced that the Republic is facing an imminent communist takeover or civil war astounds me. The most frightening are those who actually escaped communism (actually for our purposes here totalitarianism) and sought refuge in America.
Wray of the FBI recently asked congress for millions of dollars to help the FBI protect American and Americans. Sounds like a good idea to me, cough, cough.
I don't think I'll see this movie and I don't think the US is headed for a civil war. BUT. Is the progressive left willing to wield the apparatus of the State to suppress individual liberties? Unambiguously, yes. Is that the kind of thing that could lead to some kind of uprising? Yes. Hopefully a peaceful one that is litigated with ballots not bullets. But, we're already well past the point where our federal government is more tyrannical than was the king that the colonists rebelled against 250 years ago.
Jury = SCOTUS more and more often these days. Which is tenuous at best. I bet a DC or Manhattan jury would convict me of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping once they knew I voted for Trump twice (soon to be three times).
Actually, the jury box as a defense of liberty refers to jury nullification. Prosecutors and other elites hate the fact that it has always been the case in the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition that a jury can return a not-guilty verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts in the case if they think a guilty verdict would be unjust.
As drag queens are a male sexual fetish as defined by your NIH, why is there even a chance of using it as a rhetorical device?
I still have not found a single person to stand on their hind legs and defend the idea of exposing small children to men with an obvious, visual sexual fetish.
What it the point? What are you/they attempting to accomplish?
Obviously I think anyone in favor of drag queen story hour should be under medical or other forms of observation.
Because they should be.
Maybe ankle bracelets so we know if they are near day cares, or kindergartens?
Unless you push the movie far enough into the future that both are effectively run by illegal immigrants (in which case the CA/TX alliance should have been called Aztlan).
I watched it and it is worth wasting a few hours for grins. I agree with Bari’s synopsis - the story is hollow. As a combat veteran (Afghanistan and Iraq) and professional historian I pretty much dismiss “civil war” talk because our modern American geography (to include our political geography) makes it basically impossible. It won’t be north vs south…it certainly won’t be east vs west (too much maneuver room in between). So, our only option is a break along political lines. Amazingly enough, however, humans actually have the capability to vote one way (say…”red”) when the state they live in is “blue.” Dig deeper and this goes down to county, city, and even town level. I can’t think of anywhere that is 100% focused on a single political side. That means no civil war, but a more kinetic type of what we already have…internecine war.
The issue with a violent internecine situation is that your enemy can be a non-combatant on Monday and rig your car to explode the next. The nice old lady who votes “blue” but supports Israel could easily be shot by either side. Having a bad day? Head over to that enclave of rich, white folk and pop a few rounds at the kids in the pool. No uniforms, no borders, just anger and violence. Taken as a whole it is far more frightening and damaging than a mere civil war.
It's not a finite topic where one can be "right" or "wrong" But we should note that something like 80% or more of US territory (based on county level election results) voted for Trump. So, in a "who holds the ground?" situation, there is a conservative majorities in most of the US geographically The left are vastly concentrated in a small segment of the nation, in terms of land. These are mostly not food producing areas, nor are they areas where rifle handling is common.
I don't want civil war. However, also as a historian, I know that control of land is a major factor. The largest movement of people in modern history was the Indian partition of 1947-1948 as minority groups moved to "their areas" from wherever they started. It was super messy.
Secession movements that gain steam seem unlikely, until they aren't. 1860-1861 wasn't the first secession crisis in the US, it was the one that actually happened though.
Well, in my opinion there is no such thing as “big government.” There is only government and we all need that to some degree. As for China, they won’t interfere. They have their own problems and adopting a warring nation as a power move would snap what little control they have. If my scenario were to happen, and I don’t really think it is likely because most of the anger we perceive is just blabbering posts from people who are incapable of embracing genuine violence, there would be no winners.
I find it difficult to believe that the US would actually devolve into a real shooting war with a front and named combatants, but we are in a cold Civil War now and there are plenty of issues that could drive the many sides further apart. Texas has at least one issue, the border, that pits the state law against the lawless federal government. Other states will follow. California is going to ban the sale of gas powered cars, but what if a future federal government seeks to seal in the right to buy gas powered cars and be able to buy gas for them? Slowly but surely the states are building the legal regime the majority of their citizens want to live under and there will be conflicts over who has the power to set and maintain authority. A healthy dose of federalism will keep us out of a shooting war, and keep the conflicts in the legal domain. Regarding the movie, I have little doubt that the bad guys will look and sound just like me, and while I'd love to go see a great movie, I get pretty tired of the condescension of most of them.
This civil war propoganda isnt going to lead anywhere good.
And if there *is* a civil war soon, as a result of major economic collapse, I see it as being between the indoctrinated kids who want to implement gay race communism and the globalist postmodern neoliberals who run the show. Conservatives or even centrists won't really have a "side" -- it'll be the leftists who ran the economy into the ground but want to keep their power versus the leftists who want extreme wealth redistribution and think everything is the fault of straight white men, traditional family structures, the patriarchy, etc.
These people you describe appear to be on the same “side”, actually. The globalist neoliberal elite clearly stand to gain much from the indoctrinated gay communists, which is why the elite has adopted their destabilizing language and worldview. The elite are opportunists as much as anyone else and will use the “movement” to Trojan horse their own control schemes. Look at how they’ve demonized the rural folk. Look at how they’ve ensured the mental brokenness of the coming generations. Without an informed and educated (and I don’t mean via the rotten university system) populace, it’s smooth sailing to total global control.
Kind of. The neoliberals throw a lot of concessions to the progressives. But they're essentially capitalists with an extremely stratified view of class. To your average college kid, Larry Fink - despite his shoving ESG and quotas into every company he invests in - is still a rich old white male. The Israel-Palestine rift is showing how divided the left is between the progressive/antifa foot soldiers and the wealthy neoliberal regime.
There are millions of young people who want genuine communism. And they're being radicalized younger and younger based on what's being taught in schools nowadays; remember that today's college students were in elementary school in the 2000s, but today's elementary school students are learning the progressive stack at age 6.
What they lack is elites to lead them (aside from the likes of Hasan Piker, who are *generally* easy for the neoliberals to bribe). No serious political candidates (the Squad are getting there, but not full communist yet). No organization. So they flail around (just as most people on the dissident right tend to do). But if economic conditions sour more rapidly than the neoliberals are predicting, a Lenin/Mao/Napoleon figure could definitely rise up.
Yes, I agree. I’m just saying the neoliberal class are opportunistic and will allow whatever social movement to appear to flourish if it makes them money and gets them more control. But I agree that there are true believers who genuinely want the things they say they want (not that they fully understand what they’re asking for, but that’s another story).
I do worry the neolibs will overplay their hand. They’re terrible but preferable to whatever unhinged version of communism awaits if the wrong person came to power.
It's the ostrich syndrome. If you don't see it, it doesn't exist and if you see it, you have to decide if and what you are going to do about it and how you are going to prepare for it. That's a lot of responsibility for many who shirk responsibility and think that the govt. will take care of them.
I'm kinda glad the movie didn't try to dig into politics. Hollywood's current track record doesn't portent such a movie as being good. They would have botched it and made the "far right' side the obviously cartoony bad guy and the good guys being themselves. Thus not actually portraying most of America or their actual gripes and issues.
Suzy's joking comment about the sides being for or against drag queen story hour is the kind of thing such a movie would have focused on. There are people on the 'progressive' side of things that truly think that is what things are about. They simplify it down to something they can understand and so they don't actually have to think in a nuanced way. Far easier to say "They hate trans people" than to think "Hey, why DO we feel the need to put men in drag in front of children whose parents don't want them there?".
“But Civil War is only about what it would look like—and sound like—if contemporary America had a civil war.”
I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. If such a thing were to actually occur, at the end of the day it probably wouldn’t matter much to the people in the thick of things on the ground what the politics and causes of the war were. There is, in any case, certainly room for a movie focusing more on their visceral experiences and simulating what such a war might look and sound like regardless of what the sides stood for.
This is not to say a movie that dives deeper into the politics could not be an interesting film, but it would almost certainly be very controversial and unlikely to get blockbuster funding or hold much mass appeal. I find it a little strange to criticize the film for not being something it doesn’t even try to be. That was what was so great about Roger Ebert, he met films where they were at and judged them based on whether they were successful at being the kind of movies they were aiming to be, not based on whether they were as good as some different hypothetical movie he would have preferred. Point is, if the movie is well-made for what it is, I’m not going to fault it for not being something it isn’t.
But she didn’t really criticize the acting, the writing, the direction, the production design, the editing, etc. So nothing in this review indicates to me it was a poorly or incompetently made film. It may have been, but this review doesn’t really indicate one way or the other because it spends all its time complaining it wasn’t an entirely different movie.
Also I’m not even sure what a “well-made turd” would look like. Maybe certain movies aren’t for you but that doesn’t mean they are universally bad. The idea that anything that’s not for you is a “turd” smacks of pretension.
It seems to be the norm now, if the gangs are Asians then China won’t allow the movie. If they’re black or Hispanic, that’s racist, so Russians are the default villains. And if a movie has terrorists, they’re certainly not going to be middle eastern!
I've not seen the movie, but watched the trailers. I assumed the TX-CA alliance was a "if the devil was fighting Hitler, I would ally with the devil" (paraphrasing Churchill) sort of thing. Keeping it "2024 neutral" in terms of the plot is probably just smart business.
As others have said, the first steps towards any civil war would be "nullification" crises where states won't enforce or otherwise oppose federal efforts. Then groups of states align into blocks. There is, obviously, historical precedent to all this. One element that is different from 1860 is that pretty much every state now is a "border state" in the sense that parts of it align strongly with the right or left.
Geographically, based on county level election results from 2020, over 80% of US territory is majority "red" (the colors are wrong, obviously, since the leftists are the actual reds). The leftist majorities are compressing into smaller and smaller parts of US territory. Biden was credited with winning the fewest counties in modern US history.
So, unlike 1860-1861, there are not clear borders. If civil conflict actually broke out, rural NY and PA would be aligned with SC and TX and similar - Eastern Oregon would not be taking orders from Salem. Detroit and Austin would be besieged islands, and similar. Highly populated cities don't produce the food they eat. Their citizens are not generally skilled in the US of rifles.
It would all be really messy and I hope we don't see this. In the worst case scenario, nations have peacefully separated in the modern era (ex Czech Republic and Slovakia, even the USSR mostly).
Thanks - I knew it would suck, but you just saved me any further wondering about it. You're a hero, Suzy Weiss (and not only for coining "Tampongate").
I don't know if the powers that be have noticed, but I think Uri Berliner's editorial has already provoked more comments than any piece the TFP has ever run. At least in the last half-year or so.
Yet another movie with a primary image of some adulteration of the Statue of Liberty isn't important in the slightest. That trope should have ended with the innovative Planet of the Apes decades ago. We are not headed in any way toward a Civil War. People have too much to lose and the vast majority of us actually see good in others - even others we sometimes disagree with politically.
Uri's piece, though... he nails what's important. He may be too close to the fire to fully understand why, because he thinks NPR is fixable. But he gets it.
I just saw NPR's response, which can be summed up as "We're pleased with ourselves and are changing nothing."
I think that sentiment is more characteristic of the FP readership.
As a (center-right) blue city native transplanted to a bright red county, I think the divisions are too big to ignore. I'm in NE PA, about a mile away from the NY state line. Watching the discontent across the river in upstate NY has been a real eye opener as to the fracture between urban and rural areas. I can't see how forcing far left policies and taxes on rural areas is sustainable. Sullivan and Delaware Counties dodged a bullet with their bans on illegal immigrant housing being upheld- further infrastructure stress at the behest of downstaters could have been the flashpoint.
Perhaps we re-draw the state boundaries and allow federalism to save our great nation?
I hear you!
Aqua America has set itself up in my county seat, eventually they’ll try expanding. 250 years of well water here, I don’t want monthly bills or added fluoride!
In some states it’s apparently illegal to collect rainwater. 🤦♂️Rainwater!
Colorado
So batshit. Makes me want to become an illegal rainwater distributor🥸
Jim right on point. The irony is Charleton Heston pointed it out in film on The Planet of the Apes in 1968. The innovation in film or trope occurred 56 years ago. The arrested development of Hollywood writing and the SAG Union is stuck like an unplugged turd in a broken intellectual toilet right there. The political rhetoric and those who created it are largely using colostomy bags today... yet every kid at Reed College, Oberlin and the Ivy League think they are cutting edge on art and political commentary.
Also, from this perspective I am wondering where Suzy W. is coming from writing this piece.
That’s so meta! How does one know one’s story has gone viral? When people comment on it in the comments on other stories. Jim’s absolutely right. Calling out instances where writers, directors, producers, etc fail to acknowledge the obvious fissures in our society are sadly missing important opportunities. Way to go FP!
...a country which, depending on who you ask, is going to hell in a handbasket because of drag queen story hour or bans on drag queen story hour. ...
Yep. You nailed it. That's what all the strife is about. It has nothing to do with billions spent on foreign wars or millions of lives being ruined with toxic substances on American streets or a former American president being hounded for spurious reasons by a spurious legal system... the worries of these "rubes" are trivial things like drag queen story hour...
This is just NPR in print...
I found the irony delicious given her confusion over which team for which she was supposed to root.
Yes, Obama was (and still is) a fool, but to claim that drug abuse or the industrial war complex or corrupt legal system are America’s worst problems is to pick on flashy feel-good(/bad) news bites and misunderstand the bigger issues of financial debt, technology (social media, AI, monopolies etc.) and world politics (the west vs. autocrats, plutocrats and religious zealots), which are IMHO way way bigger issues the US needs to confront
Another huge issue is self-entitled billionaires using these news bites and supposedly big issues to their own benefit while destroying anything previously built, even the good parts
Yes, Bill Gates really needs to go away.
On that topic the Bitcoin crowd has a firebrand named Whitney Webb who will make your hair stand on end.
You mean like Mark Boogersucker?
I don't agree. The United States should confront its own "flashy" issues and let the rest of the world take care of itself. The issues you call "flashy feel-good" are existential.
It would be nice for the US to retreat into its own cocoon with it’s huge army, oceanic moat & abundant supply of natural resources while starting to manufacture everything in house..
Unfortunately that ideal utopia is no longer possible and even if it was you’d still have external / internal forces trying to penetrate / burst this wondrous autarky bubble.
It’s a little naive to think you can hide in a cave and not address what’s going on around you.
If you think the problems you mentioned are not, at least in part, due to external intervention (e.g., opioids manufactured in China or Russia / China / Iran trying to seed misinformation and destroy the US from within with help from the ultra progressive left and ultra national right) and internal conflict which has been exacerbated by social media and tech. benefiting from extremism you might need a reality check
Maybe. I live in China. I have been here since 1997. And I have seen the United States surrender its own power due to its own stupidity, cupidity and avarice for decades. Those nations you mention can only weaken the United States because Americans allow them to... from within. The rot is in the Democratic Party, which has completely abandoned any pretense at being able to see reality. Sure, there are other problems. But the cancer of the Democratic left is real and it is terminal. The "ultra-national-right" has no power. Institutions are controlled in ONE direction. They are the enemy. The Chinese are merely capitalizing on our weakness... what is wrong with that?
Nothing.
The Chinese are trying to build themselves at our expense. They are succeeding. We are failing. We have only ourselves to blame. The Democratic Party must be completely destroyed.
Outside influences: The current James Lindsay/NEW DISCOURSES three hours on George Soros should b of interest.
Technocracy vs populism. Authoritarianism vs Anti-Authoritarianism. In the West anyway…
You know this isn’t print right?
😂. Yep, and nothing has been “caught on tape” for like 20 years…
Then why didn't the movie make any of these points?
Wow, I guess that is what it literally said, but…. maybe that’s meant as an example of the division in the country… so we don’t have to read an essay first on why the country is a mess>
It won’t start as a civil war. It will start with nullification. And then a mistake will mandate hard choices. We came closer than people think in Texas a few months ago when Abbott took over a section of the border from ICE or Homeland Security and instituted the state’s immigration prevention strategy. The Feds had a choice. They initially threatened to physically take back control. In fact there were loud leftist voices supporting sending in the military. But they eventually backed down. At least for now until after the November election. If they win all gloves will come off.
In a different timeline, imagine a standoff between the US Army and Texas militia and police over building or dismantling protective border barriers, a shot goes off and some combatants die. Things escalate. Other states need to take sides. Boom!
The big question is- which side do the actual US military COMBAT troops choose? I emphasize combat because 90% of them are white country boys with loyalty to each other and not to some imaginary leader in DC.
Maybe that explains the DEI push that we’ve seen in the military the last few years. Replacement theory writ small. I think the powers that be will find them crackers harder to effectively replace than they think.
I don’t think we have the luxury of facing a civil
War: Biden is hell-bent on starting a third world war before the election . Iran, Russia, . . . He doesn’t care who it’s with; he wants to keep that sweet, sweet, power he’s been fetishizing his whole life!
I don’t think Biden makes any decisions. But I do think that the people who are making decisions think that a war would distract people from their domestic agenda.
Sure Deb.
It’s not Russia or Iran which are hungry, for war, it’s Biden 😂
Oh, Iran is hungry for war alright, but not with the USA.
This is one of the more clever and realistic posts here. And your point re: combat arms as opposed to cyber security or admin types is very relevant.
PS I’m still going to watch this movie.
Thanks. The combat thing is something that no one talks about. Combat training is hard and combat teams will brook no incompetence for obvious reasons. Candidly and maybe for cultural and not capability reasons, almost all combat personnel are white and rural. That is hidden within the general demographics of the Army. If our fearless leaders are depending on combat troops in a federal vs state battle, they can not possibly know on which side of the fence the combat arm of the military will fall. That unknown will temper their actions until they are more sure their orders will be obeyed below the Captain level.
Roger that, 100%. But overall, I agree the completely over the top DoD goal to candyass the military, rename bases / remove statues of CSA heroes (to specifically demoralize the Southern element), etc has the goal of making a military more "regime loyal."
'The big question is- which side do the actual US military COMBAT troops choose? I emphasize combat because 90% of them are white country boys with loyalty to each other and not to some imaginary leader in DC.'
It's estimated that while 2/3 of enlisted personnel voted for Trump in 2016, 2/3 of officers voted Clinton, and then in 2020 there is reason to believe that the military vote swung even more to Biden (the Economist based this on both absentee ballots and votes in military towns). It's, of course, impossible to get precise numbers and I'm sure some people here will say that the election was rigged, but the fact remains that while the military may not have the exact same demographics and leanings as the country at large, it's not nearly as monolithic as many civilians believe.
Then there's the fact that every single soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine swears their oath to the Constitution, not to "some imaginary leader in DC", and are trained to follow the chain of command no matter what. Any talk of insubordination or insurrection against the government is taken supremely seriously as officers up and down the line believe that it is fundamentally crucial that the military not be involved in partisan politics and that it be under civilian command (which is why there was outcry within the Pentagon and military at large against Biden choosing yet another general to be SecDef, because officers felt it was undermining the principle of having a civilian in charge who is assisted and counseled by the service chiefs).
All of this is to say that in any sort of even remotely realistic scenario in which groups of unofficial militias or rogue National Guard type units start moving against the government in any organized way, the United States military will undoubtedly act on behalf of and at the order of the authority of the United States Constitution.
I think you need to differentiate between general military personnel and combat troops. There is a huge difference between the two, culturally and possibly politically. Many combat troops see the officer class outside their unit as a political class now. I think anecdotally that the divide between officers and combat enlisted troops is as big now as it was during Vietnam. There is a reason that I highlighted combat in my post and I don't think that you understand that.
Plus, there is a big difference between combat troops deciding not to fire on civilian state police or state troops and "moving against the government" as you call it. I cannot see a combat trained unit from Georgia and Mississippi taking a position and firing their weapons on state police in Texas over who decides whether a fence should be put up or pulled own.
On a larger note, just because a functionary of the US Federal Government says to do something, that does not mean it is constitutional.
You're onto something..
The civil war in this country started during the Obama administration, and continues through today.
Our federal government, and all of it's agencies (CIA/FBI/IRS) have become advocates of the Leftist agenda. Free Speech is under attack, and the Democrat party is no longer persuading voters to vote for them, but seizing power by taking over the judiciary system, as well as our electoral process.
The civil war won't be about actual warfare, but an insidious takeover of the government by rewriting the constitution. Not nearly as fun to watch for our generations of basement dwelling 'gamers', but a reality nonetheless.
The last thing any American needs is to find themselves in a firefight. That said, the number of people I encounter (without trying) who are convinced that the Republic is facing an imminent communist takeover or civil war astounds me. The most frightening are those who actually escaped communism (actually for our purposes here totalitarianism) and sought refuge in America.
Those are the people who most need to speak up!
Wray of the FBI recently asked congress for millions of dollars to help the FBI protect American and Americans. Sounds like a good idea to me, cough, cough.
Because Wray has proven himself to be a trustworthy defender of our rights?
I don't think I'll see this movie and I don't think the US is headed for a civil war. BUT. Is the progressive left willing to wield the apparatus of the State to suppress individual liberties? Unambiguously, yes. Is that the kind of thing that could lead to some kind of uprising? Yes. Hopefully a peaceful one that is litigated with ballots not bullets. But, we're already well past the point where our federal government is more tyrannical than was the king that the colonists rebelled against 250 years ago.
There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. Please use in that order.
Jury = SCOTUS more and more often these days. Which is tenuous at best. I bet a DC or Manhattan jury would convict me of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping once they knew I voted for Trump twice (soon to be three times).
Actually, the jury box as a defense of liberty refers to jury nullification. Prosecutors and other elites hate the fact that it has always been the case in the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition that a jury can return a not-guilty verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts in the case if they think a guilty verdict would be unjust.
Suzie
Sigh
“Drag Queen story hour”.
As drag queens are a male sexual fetish as defined by your NIH, why is there even a chance of using it as a rhetorical device?
I still have not found a single person to stand on their hind legs and defend the idea of exposing small children to men with an obvious, visual sexual fetish.
What it the point? What are you/they attempting to accomplish?
Obviously I think anyone in favor of drag queen story hour should be under medical or other forms of observation.
Because they should be.
Maybe ankle bracelets so we know if they are near day cares, or kindergartens?
A California and Texas alliance shows it has no grounding in our reality.
Unless you push the movie far enough into the future that both are effectively run by illegal immigrants (in which case the CA/TX alliance should have been called Aztlan).
Or Texaphonia.
For some reason Calixas has a nicer ring to it. Maybe because it sounds like the name of a character ripped from ancient Greek mythology?
Texaphornia FIFY
The "h" is silent.
in my version too ;-)
They did that deliberately to say they could claim to play both sides and not be too "on-the-nose" with real-life politics.
I watched it and it is worth wasting a few hours for grins. I agree with Bari’s synopsis - the story is hollow. As a combat veteran (Afghanistan and Iraq) and professional historian I pretty much dismiss “civil war” talk because our modern American geography (to include our political geography) makes it basically impossible. It won’t be north vs south…it certainly won’t be east vs west (too much maneuver room in between). So, our only option is a break along political lines. Amazingly enough, however, humans actually have the capability to vote one way (say…”red”) when the state they live in is “blue.” Dig deeper and this goes down to county, city, and even town level. I can’t think of anywhere that is 100% focused on a single political side. That means no civil war, but a more kinetic type of what we already have…internecine war.
The issue with a violent internecine situation is that your enemy can be a non-combatant on Monday and rig your car to explode the next. The nice old lady who votes “blue” but supports Israel could easily be shot by either side. Having a bad day? Head over to that enclave of rich, white folk and pop a few rounds at the kids in the pool. No uniforms, no borders, just anger and violence. Taken as a whole it is far more frightening and damaging than a mere civil war.
It's not a finite topic where one can be "right" or "wrong" But we should note that something like 80% or more of US territory (based on county level election results) voted for Trump. So, in a "who holds the ground?" situation, there is a conservative majorities in most of the US geographically The left are vastly concentrated in a small segment of the nation, in terms of land. These are mostly not food producing areas, nor are they areas where rifle handling is common.
I don't want civil war. However, also as a historian, I know that control of land is a major factor. The largest movement of people in modern history was the Indian partition of 1947-1948 as minority groups moved to "their areas" from wherever they started. It was super messy.
Secession movements that gain steam seem unlikely, until they aren't. 1860-1861 wasn't the first secession crisis in the US, it was the one that actually happened though.
I wrote Bari above…it’s Suzy darn it! Suzy! My apologies to all.
Makes sense. So basically, big government and China win?
Well, in my opinion there is no such thing as “big government.” There is only government and we all need that to some degree. As for China, they won’t interfere. They have their own problems and adopting a warring nation as a power move would snap what little control they have. If my scenario were to happen, and I don’t really think it is likely because most of the anger we perceive is just blabbering posts from people who are incapable of embracing genuine violence, there would be no winners.
I find it difficult to believe that the US would actually devolve into a real shooting war with a front and named combatants, but we are in a cold Civil War now and there are plenty of issues that could drive the many sides further apart. Texas has at least one issue, the border, that pits the state law against the lawless federal government. Other states will follow. California is going to ban the sale of gas powered cars, but what if a future federal government seeks to seal in the right to buy gas powered cars and be able to buy gas for them? Slowly but surely the states are building the legal regime the majority of their citizens want to live under and there will be conflicts over who has the power to set and maintain authority. A healthy dose of federalism will keep us out of a shooting war, and keep the conflicts in the legal domain. Regarding the movie, I have little doubt that the bad guys will look and sound just like me, and while I'd love to go see a great movie, I get pretty tired of the condescension of most of them.
Well thought out post. States diverging away from federal efforts, and aligning more with themselves, is a real possibility.
This civil war propoganda isnt going to lead anywhere good.
And if there *is* a civil war soon, as a result of major economic collapse, I see it as being between the indoctrinated kids who want to implement gay race communism and the globalist postmodern neoliberals who run the show. Conservatives or even centrists won't really have a "side" -- it'll be the leftists who ran the economy into the ground but want to keep their power versus the leftists who want extreme wealth redistribution and think everything is the fault of straight white men, traditional family structures, the patriarchy, etc.
I doubt it. Neither group has guns, or even any idea how to use them…outside of a video game setting.
These people you describe appear to be on the same “side”, actually. The globalist neoliberal elite clearly stand to gain much from the indoctrinated gay communists, which is why the elite has adopted their destabilizing language and worldview. The elite are opportunists as much as anyone else and will use the “movement” to Trojan horse their own control schemes. Look at how they’ve demonized the rural folk. Look at how they’ve ensured the mental brokenness of the coming generations. Without an informed and educated (and I don’t mean via the rotten university system) populace, it’s smooth sailing to total global control.
Kind of. The neoliberals throw a lot of concessions to the progressives. But they're essentially capitalists with an extremely stratified view of class. To your average college kid, Larry Fink - despite his shoving ESG and quotas into every company he invests in - is still a rich old white male. The Israel-Palestine rift is showing how divided the left is between the progressive/antifa foot soldiers and the wealthy neoliberal regime.
There are millions of young people who want genuine communism. And they're being radicalized younger and younger based on what's being taught in schools nowadays; remember that today's college students were in elementary school in the 2000s, but today's elementary school students are learning the progressive stack at age 6.
What they lack is elites to lead them (aside from the likes of Hasan Piker, who are *generally* easy for the neoliberals to bribe). No serious political candidates (the Squad are getting there, but not full communist yet). No organization. So they flail around (just as most people on the dissident right tend to do). But if economic conditions sour more rapidly than the neoliberals are predicting, a Lenin/Mao/Napoleon figure could definitely rise up.
Yes, I agree. I’m just saying the neoliberal class are opportunistic and will allow whatever social movement to appear to flourish if it makes them money and gets them more control. But I agree that there are true believers who genuinely want the things they say they want (not that they fully understand what they’re asking for, but that’s another story).
I do worry the neolibs will overplay their hand. They’re terrible but preferable to whatever unhinged version of communism awaits if the wrong person came to power.
The next civil war will be between the Muslims and the Chicoms for control of the US.
Yes! Coming to a city near you soon! How do people not see this?
It's the ostrich syndrome. If you don't see it, it doesn't exist and if you see it, you have to decide if and what you are going to do about it and how you are going to prepare for it. That's a lot of responsibility for many who shirk responsibility and think that the govt. will take care of them.
I'm kinda glad the movie didn't try to dig into politics. Hollywood's current track record doesn't portent such a movie as being good. They would have botched it and made the "far right' side the obviously cartoony bad guy and the good guys being themselves. Thus not actually portraying most of America or their actual gripes and issues.
Suzy's joking comment about the sides being for or against drag queen story hour is the kind of thing such a movie would have focused on. There are people on the 'progressive' side of things that truly think that is what things are about. They simplify it down to something they can understand and so they don't actually have to think in a nuanced way. Far easier to say "They hate trans people" than to think "Hey, why DO we feel the need to put men in drag in front of children whose parents don't want them there?".
“But Civil War is only about what it would look like—and sound like—if contemporary America had a civil war.”
I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. If such a thing were to actually occur, at the end of the day it probably wouldn’t matter much to the people in the thick of things on the ground what the politics and causes of the war were. There is, in any case, certainly room for a movie focusing more on their visceral experiences and simulating what such a war might look and sound like regardless of what the sides stood for.
This is not to say a movie that dives deeper into the politics could not be an interesting film, but it would almost certainly be very controversial and unlikely to get blockbuster funding or hold much mass appeal. I find it a little strange to criticize the film for not being something it doesn’t even try to be. That was what was so great about Roger Ebert, he met films where they were at and judged them based on whether they were successful at being the kind of movies they were aiming to be, not based on whether they were as good as some different hypothetical movie he would have preferred. Point is, if the movie is well-made for what it is, I’m not going to fault it for not being something it isn’t.
Whether or not it's "well-made" will be difficult to discern if one hasn't seen the movie and a well made turd is still a turd.
But she didn’t really criticize the acting, the writing, the direction, the production design, the editing, etc. So nothing in this review indicates to me it was a poorly or incompetently made film. It may have been, but this review doesn’t really indicate one way or the other because it spends all its time complaining it wasn’t an entirely different movie.
Also I’m not even sure what a “well-made turd” would look like. Maybe certain movies aren’t for you but that doesn’t mean they are universally bad. The idea that anything that’s not for you is a “turd” smacks of pretension.
Look in the toilet and all will be revealed.
My comment was for anything in general and not specifically that movie. I haven't and won't see the movie.
A well made turd, is evnely shaped, of uniform medium brown color.
Obviously, the white men who speak with Southern accents are the bad guys. Standard identifier in American movies for generations.
Also, if it's an international setting, white South Africans are 100% baddies. That way they've got the whole world covered.
Don’t forget Russians. All the inner city violence in America is from Russian gangs. And their white local gangs. See The Equalizer (movie).
Haha. I’ve not seen that. But very believable as a movie plot.
It seems to be the norm now, if the gangs are Asians then China won’t allow the movie. If they’re black or Hispanic, that’s racist, so Russians are the default villains. And if a movie has terrorists, they’re certainly not going to be middle eastern!
Spot on. Our entertainment defies reality we observe and dares us to question it.
I've not seen the movie, but watched the trailers. I assumed the TX-CA alliance was a "if the devil was fighting Hitler, I would ally with the devil" (paraphrasing Churchill) sort of thing. Keeping it "2024 neutral" in terms of the plot is probably just smart business.
As others have said, the first steps towards any civil war would be "nullification" crises where states won't enforce or otherwise oppose federal efforts. Then groups of states align into blocks. There is, obviously, historical precedent to all this. One element that is different from 1860 is that pretty much every state now is a "border state" in the sense that parts of it align strongly with the right or left.
Geographically, based on county level election results from 2020, over 80% of US territory is majority "red" (the colors are wrong, obviously, since the leftists are the actual reds). The leftist majorities are compressing into smaller and smaller parts of US territory. Biden was credited with winning the fewest counties in modern US history.
So, unlike 1860-1861, there are not clear borders. If civil conflict actually broke out, rural NY and PA would be aligned with SC and TX and similar - Eastern Oregon would not be taking orders from Salem. Detroit and Austin would be besieged islands, and similar. Highly populated cities don't produce the food they eat. Their citizens are not generally skilled in the US of rifles.
It would all be really messy and I hope we don't see this. In the worst case scenario, nations have peacefully separated in the modern era (ex Czech Republic and Slovakia, even the USSR mostly).
Thanks - I knew it would suck, but you just saved me any further wondering about it. You're a hero, Suzy Weiss (and not only for coining "Tampongate").
Maybe TFP should get a film critic on staff. This is a flimsy and incurious review.