Political Memes

Nailed it! A modern civil war would almost certainly take the form of the Troubles, unless there’s a state secession, which I find highly unlikely.

We had that in the first one...

Kentucky fought for both sides. A family could even split with brothers going to each side, and possibly both making it back.

That's what the whole Hatfield's and Mcoys shit was. Was side was union, one confederate. One side was made about a member that died in war, and killed a member of the other.

They were the most famous feud, but all over Kentucky the civil war kept playing out for years after it ended.

The resulting exodus to escape the violence is why you see rebel flags still in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and other northern states.

Sounds exactly what I would expect.

And it's already happening. Local government buildings getting bomb threats and packages with apparent explosives. Mass shootings. It's just gonna get worse, and more painful to observe and experience.

Unfortunately, you get Pattons from the military just like you get Grants.

Pretty sure Grant is widely considered to have been a lousy president.

the thing is, only one of those sides is deluded into thinking they're actually patriots.

This is a fundamental problem with any kind of civil conflict. You're inevitably going to have inteliigensia at the highest levels of each side of the dispute. You're going to have mountains of propaganda to justify the need for the conflict and the existential nature of the threat of the opposition. You're going to dehumanize your opposition in order to de-legitimize any kind of dispute. And you're going to tap a rich vein of low-income, low-education civilians to fill out the rank and file of your military.

Plenty of liberals lined up to march into the deserts of Iraq and mountains of Afghanistan and jungles of Vietnam. Plenty of conservatives are still part of the Soy, Woke, and Gay modern military, NSA, FBI, and CIA. Even if you're looking dead center, you're only going to see the view that your lens of observation affords. Its not like Bezos owned WaPo or Bill Gates's MSNBC is above filling your eyes with Murdoch-tier bullshit. Just look at how the clusterfuck in Gaza has been covered.

What we have, at the end of the day, are all the same tools of dividing and conquering our own nation that we have historically inflicted on our colonial territories. Fascism is just imperialism returning to the core. And when your wild-eyed gun totting next-door neighbor breaks in to your house, convinced that you've got an adrenachrome factory in a non-existent basement, it'll be under the same conditions that turned Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis against one another or Serbs and Bosnians or Koreans and other Koreans or Texans and Mexicans time and time again before.

Sure, they'll say they are, but their actions will make it obvious which one it is in actuality. Did you attempt to violently disrupt the peaceful transfer of power? Do you ban books? You're not on the "intelligent and patriotic" side.

That’s not patriotism. Being patriotic is like being honest; if someone has to stress how honest they are, they’re not.

The most patriotic thing an American can do is criticize politicians and hold the ones they vote for accountable.

Blindly insisting your country/party is perfect and excusing every fault is nationalism.

That's what the nazis had, the Republicans have, and I swear moderates want Dems to adopt.

Grant isn't referring to "ruh ruh 'Murica" as patriotism, he's talking about appreciation of what we have. Different political alignments just appreciate different things; the left, liberty, and the right, supremacy of rich, white males.

Someone on Shermanposting posted more of the speech. It's even more prophetic than it seems - Grant speaks on the dangers of religious instruction in schools and the need for separation of Church and State.

I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics, but it is a fair subject for soldiers in their deliberations to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled in a republic like ours. Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.

The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

Now in this centennial year of our national existence, I believe it a good time to begin the work of strengthening the foundation of the house commenced by our patriotic forefathers one hundred years ago, at Concord and Lexington. Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion.

Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolve that the State or Nation, or both combined, shall furnish to every child growing up in the land, the means of acquiring a good common-school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistic tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. With these safeguards, I believe the battles which created the Army of the Tennessee will not have been fought in vain.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-ninth-annual-meeting-the-army-the-tennessee-des-moines-iowa