Fair points, Pit, but I think you're missing the forest for the trees in some regards. All of the empires that I mentioned failed in their conquest and occupation. The Romans, for example, only got so far as they did because they held a significant advantage in arms over those they conquered. That is not the case today when we are talking about an invasion and occupation of the United States. Here we are better armed as civilians than anything the Chinese, for example, have ever faced and we have a wider sharing of tactical, logistical, and intelligence information among that civilian population than at any point in history. Let's take the conquest of Gaul by the Romans as an example. Gaul was roughly the same size as Texas. Within it were 82 distinct tribes that only loosely confederated against the invading Romans. They did not share information, tactics, nor even have the same degree of organizational understanding as the Romans did. If the Gauls had even 50% of the information available to them as we do today, the Roman occupation of Gaul would have ended before Gaius Julius ever became Caesar. Some tribes would have allied themselves with Rome, as they did historically, but the Roman grip on Gaul would have been tenuous at best and far, far less expansive than it was.

The key here is information, which is the most valuable weapon in all of human history and warfare, and the ability to disseminate that information. Something which we can do very quickly and easily now. Look in to Meshtastic and LoRa, for example, to see how cheap, easy, and secure resistance communications can be.

I specifically limited my response to the United States because those are the conditions with which I am most familiar and from which I can draw reliable data. The fact is that we are getting poorer and more of us are going hungry. The average person doesn't give a shit about why a dictator comes to power when they are hungry. If that guy can make them not be hungry, they'll fall right in to line to feed themselves and most especially their kids. If they have to look the other way when atrocities are committed, well, it's not happening to them and they're no longer hungry. It's a pattern of events that have repeated themselves over and over throughout history.

If you want people to care about preventing the rise of authoritarianism, you can't let them starve, you can't have them fearing for their livelihood, and you have to give them a tangible reason to hope for the future. With the United States going whole hog on corporate dick sucking and blatantly showing the average person that the political and justice systems aren't there to serve them, the desire for those people to learn shrinks by the day. They are focused far more on survival than political theory. Hell, we haven't even talked about the healthcare system in this country and the amount of stress it puts on the average person. Being forced to make choices between food or meds for themselves or their children, their parents, or any another loved one. Being bankrupted by medical care that is trivially inexpensive elsewhere. Being denied coverage because some pencil-necked loser bean counter made an Excel spreadsheet somewhere a thousand miles from where you live.

That's a ton of stress that has no safety valve. That stress is leading to anger that just explodes in incidents we see daily across the country. That only continues this downward spiral.

Here's me ticking along with my 30mbps download speed...

Well, BoP, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks were successfully occupying other countries/cultures for centuries, so they did get thrown out some day but often stayed for a looong time. The British Empire did not last as long as the e.g. the Roman Empire but was also occupying big parts of the world for a long time (as did e.g. France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, and others, too).

In the end, even a decade would be enough to end the world order as we know it. I would rather not have that but IMO there are more and more signs that it is going to happen in the not too far future. And I have yet to find a way to migrate to Mars.

And about the people getting manipulated: it is not just the poor people, it is especially in the western world the uneducated people who don't starve but are easily manipulated because they know nothing about history and politics. The bigger problem than starving people especially in North America and Europe are the uneducated people, BoP. Because they just don't know better than fall for the same tricks that have been used by dictators so often before. People need to know HOW Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and others became the beacon of hope for so many people that they supported those dictators because then they could easily see through the only marginally changed slogans being reused by the new dictators (or wannabes).

Americans have it too good. There won't be a civil war, that's crazy talk.

El Pit wrote on Mar 17, 2024, 03:35:
Which would lead to the US (both fractions) being taken over by China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Brazil who will then fight for supremacy. And it will be the end of the western civilization and its values and ideas. I am not sure I want to live in a world with a dictator watching every single step I take and a Chinese social credit system. Then again, the heavy regulations on media and communication are already hitting everywhere in the western world, too, because of the fake news that certain "interested parties" are spreading and the interest a lot of parties have in control over the "public opinion." Censorship is always a double-edged sword which cuts both way, unfortunately.

I am not sure that is a probable outcome. You ever get in to a fight with a sibling or a cousin? Y'all will be fighting like cats and dogs and that's OK. But then some third party starts a fight with you or said sibling or cousin and suddenly that third party is fighting the both of you at the same time because now you both have a common enemy.

Also, historically, it has proven impossible to rule and hold control over a native population that does not want to be governed and controlled by a foreign power. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, French, British, Spanish, Russians, Mughals, Ottomans, Almohads, Germans, and the Japanese all tried and failed. That's barely scratching the surface of the empires that tried.

On top of that, the situation with the United States is a bit unique. The best numbers I can find state that at least half of the population of the United States admits to either owning a gun, multiple guns, or have access to firearms. Those are just the people who will disclose to a third party that information. Yet there are close to ~400 million firearms in the US. The three most popular calibers are 5.56/.223, 7.62/.308, and 9mm. There are billions of rounds of those calibers in private hands.

So you have a well armed population that has a ready supply of ammo, a hobby freely available to make that ammo (reloading is a thing. Bigger than most people realize), and a population that is inherently fractious and largely xenophobic because of our cultural history. There is also the history of the the United States' population immediately burying the hatchet when a third party aggressor shows up on our doorstep. The Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 are all recent examples in the last 100 years. That doesn't even include all the currently living veterans who would, in turn, be teaching the average civilian how to use military tactics to their benefit on their home soil. Those veterans are from at least three wars; Vietnam and both wars in the Middle East. Three wars where local insurgents were fought and to which we unarguably lost. Hard, bloody, valuable lessons were learned.

But, on top of that, there are plenty of examples of native populations kicking out foreign aggressors. The Afghani people did it to the Russians in the 70s and to the US in the last decade. The Indians did it to the British. The Vietnamese did it to the US. Those are just examples from the last 100 years.

I would not want to be the person in charge of invading the United States and keeping control of this country. It's just not going to work out for them.

I am not a fan of censorship, at all, but I do have to recognize the need to tamp down on disinformation and misinformation. Both are absolutely deadly in several facets. That both censorship and misinformation/disinformation are being used as both sides of the same coin is highly concerning. The best a person can do is thoroughly vet sources and aggregate information to find the locus where factual data is present and go from there. Unfortunately, we have a population in the West who want to hew toward confirmation bias rather than actual data. That's a massive problem because it means that media manipulation is easier than ever. I know how I would tackle that but it would be draconian and unpleasant.

El Pit wrote on Mar 17, 2024, 03:35:
It is a sad world we live in. It gets powdered between the grinding stones of too extremely different ideas on politics and society and without communication but instead with the refusal of any compromise this won't end well. Don't they teach kids in the kindergarten anymore to reach out to the guy you just fought with after the fight? The world is dividing into two very loud parties that try to push through their agendas without any compromise and a vast majority between them waiting for the hyperactivists of both sides to come back to their senses.

There is that and the economic reality of it too. I keep bringing up economics because it is important. Starving, frightened people with no hope for the future are the easiest to manipulate in to violence. Historically, change rarely comes through order and stability. It comes through violence and chaos more often than not. We're currently in a chaos cycle.

We no longer teach conflict resolution in school. If anything, we teach conflict avoidance with "zero tolerance" policies that punish both the aggressor and the defender. As a culture, we teach that being "right" (whatever value is set for "right") is a moral imperative above and over all else.

El Pit wrote on Mar 17, 2024, 03:35:
Say, BoP, do you have some room in your Vault 1? I can get a Vault suit with the correct number on it. Blue and gold/yellow it is, right?

Ha! Funnily enough, I get asked that question a lot.

fakespyder wrote on Mar 16, 2024, 22:03:
Must be nice having home internet.
We're using mobile data for everything, like savages.

we have used 5g home broadband for some time. Flexible and reliable. It is part of a bigger bundle that works out well with our phones. Our current phones arent fast enough to use the max bandwidth.

Grant Page died? Damn, no. Great guy who helped to make the Mad Max movies as epic as they are. Thanks, man. Rest in peace.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Mar 17, 2024, 00:31:
That's why I say, the question of balkanization within the United States is a matter of when not if with the current political and justice climate and the growing exclusionary divisiveness within its civilian population.

Which would lead to the US (both fractions) being taken over by China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Brazil who will then fight for supremacy. And it will be the end of the western civilization and its values and ideas. I am not sure I want to live in a world with a dictator watching every single step I take and a Chinese social credit system. Then again, the heavy regulations on media and communication are already hitting everywhere in the western world, too, because of the fake news that certain "interested parties" are spreading and the interest a lot of parties have in control over the "public opinion." Censorship is always a double-edged sword which cuts both way, unfortunately.

It is a sad world we live in. It gets powdered between the grinding stones of too extremely different ideas on politics and society and without communication but instead with the refusal of any compromise this won't end well. Don't they teach kids in the kindergarten anymore to reach out to the guy you just fought with after the fight? The world is dividing into two very loud parties that try to push through their agendas without any compromise and a vast majority between them waiting for the hyperactivists of both sides to come back to their senses.

Say, BoP, do you have some room in your Vault 1? I can get a Vault suit with the correct number on it. Blue and gold/yellow it is, right?

MrCharm42 wrote on Mar 16, 2024, 20:35:
BoP - I appreciate your POV and expertise on these threads; I've certainly learned things - I do think there's a reasonable hope that we can pull out of it - we've done something like it before. Age of Acrimony is a decent read. Reconstruction was really tough and bitter, and we'd just finished killing 750k Americans.

This is going to be long so buckle in or skip it, your choice.

Thank you. I think the main difference is that prior to the Civil War, you didn't have decades of the three actors I mentioned previously pushing divisiveness. I'm not saying that it didn't exist, because it certainly did, but not to the level or the sheer ubiquity that we see today. Also, population size and economics play a huge role in today's environment versus the environment of 1865. For example, the population of the United States was ~15 million people in 1865. Today, it is ~336 million. Also, the wealth gap today is the worst it has ever been in US history...and getting worse by the quarter. Not to Godwin the thread but the early stages of Nazi Germany are a great example of what happens when the average person is spread too thin. When people are broke, hungry, and have no idea if they will even have a roof over their head next week because they could lose their job at the drop of a hat through no fault of their own, they'll happily and rapidly gravitate toward whomever promises them that they will have those conditions again. Charismatic strong men always rise to fill that role of a promise deliverer. The followers of those strong men will cling to whatever ideology is espoused because, realistically, that is all they have left and all that they feel that they can control in their personal lives.

The Civil War also had a different foundation for it. The Civil War was about preserving the Union at all costs and it was a fundamentally unbalanced conflict. Lincoln wrote extensively about the preservation of the Union above and before any other consideration. The Emancipation Proclamation, while extremely important in many ways, was essentially a beneficial PR piece to keep the momentum of the war going in the timeframe in which it was issued. But the Civil War was nearly pre-ordained from the outset from a logistical and materiel perspective. The North had the industrial and manufacturing base, the South did not. The North had the ability to arm, equip, and train field assets to a degree that the South couldn't even begin to hope to match. The North had a more robust and prosperous trade network to generate income with than the South did. The North had more manpower to throw in to the meat grinder than the South did and so on. It was touch and go for a while with the North, no doubt, but that was political more than it was actual planning and execution.

Now, in 2024, the conditions are radically different. There is no pervasive desire to preserve the Union in that being an American is not a tangible, fundamental part of the average citizen's psyche. We see flag waving and soldier worship for the political game that it is. Few of us have considerable faith or trust in our politicians or political systems, including the justice system. They're nebulous machinations that happen far above our heads that splatter us with shit from time to time.They are, in essence, not real to us since we do not have a direct hand in them. Moreover, most people see that politics and justice are games for the wealthy, not the common individual and there have been literally hundreds of examples where the wealthy and corporations suffer little to mild consequences for actions that would put you or the person next to you in prison for the rest of your life. So there are real, well documented examples of where both the political and justice systems are rigged against the average individual.

But we have tangible symptoms of a rot that has set deep in to the core of the United States. Prior to January 6th, 2021, the only invasion of the capital occurred during the War of 1812 (1814 to be specific) and that was by a hostile foreign power. In 2021, it was done by citizens of the United States itself while being egged on by a former President on widely available social media. That has never before happened in US history. In as much as some of us may laugh at the Sovereign Citizen movement, myself included, they're an indicator that trust within a certain demographic has eroded to the point that they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the system which should govern them doesn't. That's a dangerous ideology to spread because it indicates that there is now a belief that the the United States cannot effectively govern itself. Which, if we look at it from the perspective of the creators of our republic, is true. By that I mean, you cannot govern the people without the consent of the people. There are several movements that are growing that are withdrawing that consent because, again, they believe that the current system of government does not represent them.

Another example of a symptom is that people are willing to quickly cut off communication, even members of their own family, and never reinstating that communication over political and ideological differences. I'm not saying it's without merit, merely commenting on the speed in which it is occurring. I'll give you an example. My neighbor and my wife used to talk every day. They had a huge garden and so did we. Mrs. Burrito and the male neighbor would frequently exchange produce, talk about gardening related topics, he came over and asked for my advice on setting up a rainwater catchment system, and so on. When my wife put up a small Biden-Harris sign in 2020, the very next day that neighbor's yard was absolutely batshit insane stuffed with Trump signs and flags. They completely stopped talking to Mrs. Burrito all together. Even though they had a good bit in common and, in the case of an emergency, we would have been a valuable ally to have if only to keep food on the table. She tried a couple of times to engage him in conversation and he acted like she didn't even exist. All over political differences.

You can't heal a division if you are unwilling to communicate. It's also not a one way street. Conservatives and liberals alike engage in the same behavior. I'm no better and I freely admit that, but I also am cognizant enough to see it happening and know why it is happening.

We also have an extreme case of othering that has been going on for as long as I have been alive. You can't build bridges if you do not recognize that the person sitting across the table from you has more in common with you than differences with you. Someone is undoubtedly going to pop in and say "But what about when they hate women and LGBTQ people and and and..." as if they are smugly making some profound point. Sure, those are important topics, but they are outside the scope of what I am addressing and that is the inability of the United States to fundamentally reconcile with itself and resume having a national identity that is shared by its citizens. More the point, it does not have the desire nor will to even begin that reconciliation, let alone the willingness to see it through to the end.

I mean, I could turn this in to a dissertation level explanation of why the United States is in the worse shape it has ever been from the standpoint of being a whole, unified country but it is late and I think you get the gist.

That's why I say, the question of balkanization within the United States is a matter of when not if with the current political and justice climate and the growing exclusionary divisiveness within its civilian population.

The why of the war is not the point, and as such Garland keeps politics out of it.

Great. I was worried about that. I know all too well that everyone is obsessed with politics, but when you include them it muddies the story for me. It's just distracting.

(Perhaps that also helps avoid polarizing could-be movie-goers?)

That's too much to hope for I think, but I tune the politically obsessed out anyway.

I saw '28 Days Later' and even though it has been copied a hundred times by now, I still think it remains one of the best zombie movies out there. Hopefully the director can bring the same new ideas to a different kind of "post apocalypse" movie.

Must be nice having home internet.
We're using mobile data for everything, like savages.

BoP wrote:

The balkanization of the United States is going to happen sooner rather than later. There is no longer a national identity. There is "my side" and "the other, wrong side". Politics, media, and business have capitalized on that and pushed it for decades at this point. In my opinion, we are past the PNR. The only thing left is guessing when and being prepared for it as much as possible.

BoP - I appreciate your POV and expertise on these threads; I've certainly learned things - I do think there's a reasonable hope that we can pull out of it - we've done something like it before. Age of Acrimony is a decent read. Reconstruction was really tough and bitter, and we'd just finished killing 750k Americans.

El Pit wrote on Mar 16, 2024, 12:54:
With the right extremists being the biggest fans of guns (only topped by MORE GUNS) and being triggerhappy to "brodect tuh sivill rites", I am afraid that another civil war would not end well for the people with having at least half a working brain...

I think you might be surprised at who owns a firearm and actually goes to a range to train with it. A lot of the Gravy Seals are couch potatoes that love to be warposers and cosplay in tacticool gear but have little in the way of actual training, operational knowledge, or even common damn sense. Those with "at least half a working brain" are taking their personal safety and security quite seriously. Yes, even us liberal folk. Especially in light of the fact that the USC has rubbed our faces in to the fact that cops have no duty to protect anyone and cops have shown time and time again that they are absolutely unwilling and incapable of doing so.

The balkanization of the United States is going to happen sooner rather than later. There is no longer a national identity. There is "my side" and "the other, wrong side". Politics, media, and business have capitalized on that and pushed it for decades at this point. In my opinion, we are past the PNR. The only thing left is guessing when and being prepared for it as much as possible.

Know what you mean on the bandwidth speed, Blue!...;) I got 400Mbps down *and* up (wired) not too long ago myself, and what a difference it makes...! I'll take 50-55MegaBytes ps anytime! I know you're enjoying it, and I can remember when I was exulting at 12MegaBytes ps...;) xFinity is fine--my EWAN has been switching IPs back and forth lately between xFinity and AT&T Enterprises, so that's sort of weird, but the bandwidth is constant. I keep running Speedtest to make sure it's still flowing through the pipes!

Boeing reminded airlines of a potential problem with a switch on the pilot seats of the 787 Dreamliner which can be used to move the seats forward and backward, possibly causing anyone in the seat to be pressed against the controls, after one of the planes went into a dive this week on a flight from Australia to New Zealand that injured 50 people.

Probably not what you think it is? Well what exactly should people presume a "civil war" is about? A war where people go around behaving civilly?

Could America split up without a civil war?

Mr. Tact wrote on Mar 16, 2024, 12:19:
Frankly, "Civil War" just looks completely depressing. I fear how close we are to that reality.

With the right extremists being the biggest fans of guns (only topped by MORE GUNS) and being triggerhappy to "brodect tuh sivill rites", I am afraid that another civil war would not end well for the people with having at least half a working brain... Also, it would mean the end of the western civilization not only in the US. China, Russia, India/Pakistan, would then duke out who would be the new big dawg on the planet.

Frankly, "Civil War" just looks completely depressing. I fear how close we are to that reality.

I am really looking forward to seeing Civil War even though Men was weak sauce.when compared to Ex Machina.

Did they bump your upload speed at all?