https://forwardobserver.com/2018/04/...stic-conflict/
1. When Americans believe the ‘Social Contract’ is failing them, they seek to revise or leave it. The Social Contract states that citizens give up some power to the state so that the state can enforce law and order. This is the foundation of “liberal democracies”, whereby the people give legitimacy and authority to the government in exchange for some security. This is not a referendum on the merits of the social contract, however, what we’re seeing is a “contract” under some duress. When terms of the contract can’t be revised through politically-engaged social movements, it’s changed through violence. We can observe this in the lead up to the American Revolution (e.g., “no taxation without representation”) and again concerning States’ Rights prior to the secession of the South (e.g., Lincoln’s election despite not carrying a single Southern state). More recently, the Obama administration was radical. It heavily favored international interests at the expense of the nation; it weaponized neo-liberal policies against traditional America. Obama ‘fundamentally transformed’ the terms of the social contract, and Americans, through the election of Donald J. Trump, showed their desire to have the social contract reformed. At some point in the near future, some Americans may find the current social contract so intolerable — or consider the prospects of changing the terms through politics so unfeasible — that they decide to fight over it.
2. As America becomes ungovernable, it will split into governable factions. One concept I’ve talked about before is that of exponential difficulty in governance. In 1790, America had just under four million citizens, or about 153,846 citizens per Senator and 61,538 citizens per Representative. In 2018, there are 3.2 million citizens per Senator and 737,931 citizens per Representative (based on an estimated 321,000,000 citizens). As the nation has grown, we’ve become more poorly represented. This is a large dilution of representation (especially considering that the interests of so many non-citizens are represented so widely). Similarly, government has grown exponentially, but our representatives’ ability to govern has not kept exponential pace. This means that as the nation grows more complex, it also becomes more ungovernable. As Johns Hopkins professor Michael Vlahos describes it, recent political events represent an “existential shift” in the nation. Let’s look at two specific cases. In 2011, the Texas state legislature considered passing a bill that would outlaw patdowns by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents in Texas airports — open defiance to federal laws. That move triggered federal authorities so badly that the Department of Justice threatened that the TSA would be forced to ban all flights out of Texas if the bill were passed. “Either Texas backs off and continues to let government employees fondle innocent women, children and men as a condition of travel, or the TSA will cancel Texas flights,” one Texas legislator summarized. When Texas was put to the test, the state decided that it was governable after all. Now let’s look at California’s sanctuary state situation. California is being openly ungovernable over federal immigration laws, and its state authorities cannot be made to enforce federal laws. If this is the hill that California is willing to die on, then they’re going to have their chance. Should they remain defiant and the Department of Justice is unable to end that defiance of federal law, then we could see other states follow over this and other matters. Secession is being floated as an alternative. Imagine what red states will do when faced with an indefinite, and perhaps permanent, period of Democratic rule after amnesty gets passed.
3. As Americans move father apart politically and ideologically, they will likely favor alternatives to the ‘united’ states. Twenty-three years ago, Pew Polling began asking a series of questions aimed at measuring the political sentiment of the nation. As of 2017, their study shows a widening ideological gap among several key factors. In fact, in the past 23 years of polling, these gaps have never been wider. According to Pew, “the average partisan gap [on all issues] has increased from 15 percentage points to 36 points.” And Pew also notes that the percentage of democrats and republicans who view the other party unfavorably has also grown — in fact, it’s more than doubled since 1994. Nearly half of all participants viewed the opposition party as unfavorably. Ultimately, this study shows that more Americans are moving either further left or further right on most issues. This is probably why, in recent years, more publications have focused on both amicable and violent separation in America.
4. Societies collapse when decisions beneficial for elites in the short term are bad for the people in the long term. Anthropologist, environmental icon, and UCLA professor Jared Diamond made an observation in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed that societies (in this case, empires) can collapse for a number of reasons. Diamond argues that when elites make poor decisions — especially so when those elites are insulated from the consequences of their poor decisions — they create fault lines that lead to future instability and collapse. Diamond calls this a “blueprint for disaster”, yet this is exactly what Americans have observed of their politicians for decades. (Here’s a report entitled, “LAWS THAT DO NOT APPLY TO CONGRESS” which appears to be published by the Democrat-led House Rules Committee. It clearly shows a laundry list of laws that apply to the public, but not to Congress. This is how Congress insulates themselves from their own poor decisions, ensuring poor decisions in the future which will inevitably lead to collapse.) Furthermore, our four to six year political cycles ensure that every politician focuses on short term popularity (i.e. re-election) in favor of ensuring long term national success. This incentivizes the electorate to support what Bastiat called Legal Plunder — government theft against one class in order to support another class. (“As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes.” – The Law, 1850) This system of short term decision making and the use of government as a blunt force instrument against political enemies will continue indefinitely until brought to an end, which leads to my next point.
5. Eventually, government will grow so powerful that one political party is likely to not give up power. This is what conservatives widely feared under the Obama administration, and it’s what liberals fear under the Trump administration. It’s what each political party is likely to fear during every administration past this juncture, and eventually one will finally be correct. It was my fear that the Obama administration had created such a powerful executive branch that he would not be willing to give it up to a Republican. Whether through an incompetent conspiracy (now being revealed through revelations that Obama-era apparatchiks planned and supported a soft coup against President-elect Trump) or the sheer will of the American electorate, the neo-liberal power structure couldn’t hang on. Maybe this is a lesson that another administration will take to heart as it go to greater lengths to ensure partisan succession in a future presidential election. Through the growth of government, it bears to reason that every successive president wields more and more power, until eventually one is no longer willing to allow his political opponent to use that power against his party. When liberals accused Bush of ushering in a dictatorship, I didn’t think they were that far off base, considering the effects of the Patriot Act and domestic surveillance (and how easily that could lead to a dictatorship), followed by the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and I’m a veteran of both). When conservatives accused Obama of ushering in a dictatorship, I didn’t think they were far off base, either. But now after all the hand-wringing and accusations of Trump ushering in a dictatorship, I wonder just how long it will be until a future president seizes the reigns and actually becomes a dictator. The key assumption is that the power of the executive will grow to represent a point of no return, at which point no one wants to give up Frodo’s ring. And that’s when we’re going to have a major domestic conflict, either top-down or bottom-up in nature.
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Originally Posted by Bourbon
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