I wouldn’t call the last ~150 years a civil war at all. Civil wars are much worse than that.

But your observation that the split was never fully healed is fully correct.

I live in Chicago now and I’m proud of our city for resisting so hard.

With the ICE raids, Trump’s immigration thugs complained that Chicago is near impossible to work with because they are met with such fierce resistance. We’ve been prepped for how to deal with ICE, and Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Johnson have been helpful with that.

The main complaint is that we all know our rights and ICE can’t just bulldoze through our city. Guess we’re the town of law and order 🤷

Sorry NYC, your mayor is a chicken shit who would tattle on Anne Frank before the Nazis got to the door.

Should he allow for elections again he will be given the same reverence as Regan. I only found out about how much of a monster he was in Junior/ Senior year of highschool and I grew up in Lefty Godless Seattle.

Are you my neighbor? She always looks for any excuse to say “shoved it up my ass”

Oh 100%.

Fuck I’m so addicted to social media though. Damn I feel so check mate’d.

Federal abortion ban

Gay marriage ban

Derecognizing trans people, oh wait that happened

Reviving the war on drugs by forcing states to criminalize weed

Ending the ACA

Ending any and every environmental protection entity

Ending the two term limit for the president

Banning protests and strikes

Criminalize being homeless, oh wait that happened

From this (my sad, sad, crystal ball)

Protests erupt, at first peaceful until live ammunition is used as a suppressant. From this radical groups will likely work with established gangs to create an insurgency. Governors will be forced to either comply with the federal government, or may choose to unite with other governors to defy the federal forces as they see the writing on the wall. It will be a legal battle at first, but then there will likely be an inciting event that will create an interstate crisis. This crisis will either divide state governments, force them under trump, or they will collapse altogether. The battle lines won’t be drawn on state lines, but rather between rural and urban territories. It will be more ethereal much like what happened in Syria.

From an international perspective, the new Bloc of resistance (Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea) will use this chance to advance their agendas. Russia will absolutely support the Trump government, while China will invade Taiwan easily, and then try to keep America slightly stable but still as weak as possible. North Korea and Iran will likely send aid to the other members but not engage directly.

Canada and the EU will have likely close their borders long before this as our alliance deteriorated due to Trump’s intense isolationism.

If you thought Brexit was a shot in the foot, we just straight up pulled a pin on a grenade and put it in our pocket.

Very fair take.

That said he’s not a full on idiot. MAGAts are useful tools for him, so he is more likely to try and make them happy, in some way. Currently the way to make them happy is to punish the left. In our post 9/11 USA, rage is what flips seats.

W Bush won his second term because we were blind with rage after the attacks, and John Kerry didn’t run a counter rage campaign.

Obama won because the financial crash enraged the left.

Obama won his second term because Romney wasn’t able to stir up the needed rage.

Trump won because he was the embodiment of rage.

Biden won by the rage we had for Trump in the summer of 2020.

Trump won again by running a campaign of rage vs Kamala who ran a “campaign of joy”.

We are a country of 50 mini countries. All you need to do to win is generate enough rage to pit purple states against the states who won’t vote for you. So long as this country stands as it is, this is just how it’s going to be. Sadly any diplomatic fixes for this are pipe dreams now.

The only way this will end is when the fire of rage consumes the whole system and burns it down. After that… I don’t know.

I hate to say it, but yes. Everything we’ve predicted from trump has come true thus far.

The insurrection was predicted

The migrant camps were predicted

The ice raids were predicted

Roe v Wade was predicted

Selling Giving Ukraine to Russia was predicted

Banning DEI was predicted

The list goes on but more importantly these were all seen as hypothetical worst case scenarios. We should stop treating the next steps like they are hypothetical. America has fallen, and civil war is next.

Former presidents at least recognized they had the responsibility to take care of both the people who voted for them and the people who didn’t. Trump only sees the people who voted for him and the people he needs to make an example of.

I hate to say it, but the DNC is weak and won’t help us anymore. I supported Kamala like hell and believed that they could figure it out but they just don’t and won’t.

I’m not a violent person. I hate the thought that I’d ever be forced into a situation where I need to either learn how to fight or die (because right now I’m SOL). I never wanted to find myself rooting for assassins and feeling like the world would be better off of certain people were dead. I’d rather believe the world would be better off if certain people were alive.

But all I see in the future is a federal coup backed by sycophants in the Senate and supreme Court that then collides with the governors of blue states who won’t bend the knee.

TL;Dr if we don’t go full dictator, we are going to civil war, and we deserve it.

Ya know, this is a good argument for all cars to be cartoonishly oversized. That way they can only be used when absolutely needed.

Or of course the car lobby will just push to make all the infrastructure fit around the giant gas guzzlers.

I remember space camp! I was in 5th grade and they had a 2020 mission to Mars simulator. We all died.

I like to think there was a two way mirror with researchers on one side taking notes. “Don’t send a team on 5th graders to Mars”

I live in Chicago.

I’m not gonna say there’s no reason to have a car, but I see no reason for the average Chicagoan to own a car.

The CTA is actually pretty reliable overall The streets are comparatively bikeable The Divvy System (bike share) is well layer out.

Make America Multimodal Again. This. Shit. Works.

Hell, even nuclear war wouldn’t necessarily be an extinction level event- like something like 97% of people would die, but for that remaining 3% of people, life will suck while they restart the 1000 year process of bringing humanity back out of dark ages II.

Yep. WWI poetry is just so heartbreaking.

Especially since it was WW1. I wouldn’t feel so bad if it was WW2 and Nazis were being unalived, but nobody deserved to die in WW1.

Are you ready to have kids?

I was born in Kirkland. My mom drank only the finest Vodka during pregnancy. Kirkland Vodka made my IQ 180, gave me a chiseled chin, and I give earth shattering orgasms when I shake hands.

I’ve lost all trust in employers. From large corporations to non-profits to mom and pop to tech startups- I’ve been in it all and I learned businesses do 2 things to their employees:

1. They lie to you
2. They underpay you

I’m now freelance musician and teacher and I’m on track to make more than any employer paid me. I’m still in debt after having the rug pulled from under me from my last job, but I’m digging my way out on my own. I will never let one person be in control of my income ever again.

I think what has helped me is watching John Green/ Hank Green’s YouTube channels. The fact is bad news happens fast, but good news happens slow.

A maternity ward was built in Sierra Leone thanks to the coordinated effort of thousands of people across the world. Patents for Tuberculosis tests and treatments have been released in the countries that need it the most. This is a disease that takes millions of lives every year, not because we don’t have the technology, but because people don’t have access to the treatments. Of course this was something that should have been taken care of decades ago, but the fact we can pressure pharmaceutical companies to release their patents for the good of humanity must mean something.

Despair is seductive, it asks nothing but to feel sad, and you can always find reasons to despair. But the correct answer to consciousness is hope.

I work in Chicago with non profits that are dedicated to building safe communities, to saving local and global ecosystems, to public health access, to helping house the homeless.

I fully believe that there isn’t anything wrong with the world that can’t be solved with what is right with the world. And when I feel despair, which I am oft to do, I look at my friends, my community, those that roll up their sleeves, shake hands, and do what they can with what they have.