I keep seeing, “Nobody wants a civil war,” in online forums. It’s just as naive to think that way as it is to be excited about the prospect of a civil war. Some people do want a civil war, and the benefits and dangers of a civil war vary a lot depending on who you are, and not everyone is capable of fully understanding how civil war would affect them, personally. Moreover, the liberals who are saying that nobody wants a civil war are clearly assuming that the alternative to a civil war is that nothing changes.
The typical conservative is full of bluster. They make a lot of aggressive or even violent statements, but with no real intent to follow through — except they do intend for someone else to follow through. That’s the key. Their words are meant to encourage other people to participate in this hypothetical civil war while they sit back, relax, and watch it unfold on TV.
Yeah, sure, many people would die in a civil war, and things would be very hard for a while, but have you thought about the benefits? I mean the benefits to conservatives, such as no longer having to respect non-conservatives, women becoming chattel, right-wing Christianity becoming the ruling ideology, legal murder for sexual and gender crimes as well as simple trespassing (as long as the offender is not a fellow conservative) and, of course, witchcraft. What about food and fuel shortages? Oh, they’re planning to just take yours since you don’t own any firearms.
On the other side of the argument, what are the consequences of not having a civil war? Anyone who is imagining that nothing changes or that slow progress is inevitable is simply wrong. Anything can happen; the future of politics is not set. If you are a woman, if you are in any way interesting in a gender or sexual sense, if you respect nature or reality or education, if you are not a Christian, if you are the “wrong” kind of Christian, if you are a person of color, the no-civil-war future that conservatives are succeeding at implementing right now is not a place where you would want to be alive. Civil war would certainly be horrific, but less horrific than letting these psychos do what they want, and at least civil war has a possibility of resulting in a better world. Moreover, the death toll of a not-civil-war future could easily be higher than the option with a civil war.
Another thing I’m seeing is self-satisfied liberals chuckling about how the “Gravy Seals” (per internet liberals, this refers to people who like to dress up in military style outfits and tote firearms around, pretending to be cutting edge operatives) will get slaughtered in a civil war. While I appreciate that the US military is the most horrifying destructive force on the planet and that it is nominally commanded by one Joe Biden, I also did not miss the part where most US soldiers are conservatives. Yes, yes, the officer class hates Trump. That’s fine. Are we really going to pretend that the people who actually do the fighting won’t be able to do the fighting without the officers? When they’re told to go slaughter the Gravy Seals, are we sure they’ll just go do that? They’re fully capable of refusing the order or even changing sides. It’s not like the Gravy Seals will need sophisticated tactical strategy from a highly-educated officer class to slaughter unarmed liberals.
“The US military has bombs,” is another popular smug response liberals enjoy. Do you really think the capitalist class is going to let the US government bomb their infrastructure if the “enemy” is Trumpers? Billionaires are not afraid of Trumpism. They’re only willing to destroy their own infrastructure if the target is something truly threatening to capitalist globalism; i.e., the left.
The liberal position is — per usual — that civil war should not happen because it is very inconvenient to them, personally, and therefore it won’t happen. When you have 80 million people jonesing for a civil war, the only reason it doesn’t happen is because something forcefully stopped them; similarly, if you have 80 million people trying to implement a genocidal fascist government, the only reason it doesn’t happen is because something forcefully stopped them. The liberal tactic of following the rules even harder hasn’t worked yet and it isn’t going to start working now. Rules do not stop action — someone must enforce those rules with violence.
The real reason that civil war is unlikely is something I’ve already mentioned: The threat a civil war would present to capital owned by billionaires. Not only could infrastructure be destroyed, but capital could become “stranded” — i.e., not destroyed, but not usable. Since all the power of the billionaire class comes from their ability to profit off capital, a civil war is completely unacceptable to the billionaire class. This is why the Democrats are pulling their punches and letting us steadily inch toward fascism — fascism is and has always been preferable to anything that truly threatens the power of the billionaire class.