Of course I know the constitution has been amended - but that's like adding support beams to a crumbling building.
Any other nation would re-do the building from foundation up, re-using the good parts and adding new material as necessary.
While you keep trying to shore up the skyscraper the US is today, based on a foundation meant to support the small wooden hut the US was 300 years ago.
It won't hold in the long run - it simply won't.
The only one who's painted themselves into a corner is the Republicans.
They've tied themselves to a shrinking white base of rural supporters while they piss on anyone non-white and non-rural.
Their base is a demographic minority now and it will only grow worse over time.
Not only is the rest of the country out-producing you in new voters - both by births and by immigration. You're also steadily loosing in your own core as young rural whites move to the cities as they get fed up with the backwards mentality of the towns they where born in.
You're bleeding support - and your leaders know it.
Which is why they are forced to take ever more drastic action in trying to suppress the vote, to cling on to their position.
But most of the country you control is already gerrymandered to the point where you can't squeeze out more votes - and you're still loosing ground.
And that's before the courts start striking your partisan redistricting down, like they did in Pennsylvania recently.
Voter-suppression laws are the next step, and to support them the Republicans are pushing lies about widespread voter fraud and racist fearmongering about illegal aliens voting.
Now none of this is true of course - but the Republicans now only care about keeping their own base of supporters fired up to keep the ship afloat as long as they can.
It's a losing long-term strategy, as they're not convincing a single new person by pumping out lies - but if they can increase the fear in their own base of losing power, they can motivate them to turn out at a higher rate.
The problem with that is that they have to keep ramping up the lies to produce new threats to scare their voters into voting.
They're well past any reasonable argument they could make, and into fantasy land completely already.
Millions of illegal's voting (never happened), the liberals are coming for your guns (no one ever proposed that), Obamacare will kill grandma (quite the opposite), the "deep state" is out to get Trump (yeah - the FBI is treasonous - not the guy with all the Russia contacts) and on and on.
Add to those lies, the level of fear and the unhinged conspiracy mentality the right-wing media fosters to promote new lies, the insane amount of guns in private hands in the US - especially in the hands of the rural GOP-voter - and you have a recipe for disaster.
So, now let me tell you what is the most likely thing to happen here:
Sooner or later the GOP will begin to lose power. They hold all the branches of elected power right now, so there is only down to go from here.
Having ratcheted up the fearmongering in their own base for so long, this will seem like impending doom to a lot of GOP voters.
Now the government will come for your guns, the black helicopters will land to take you away to the re-education centers where you'll be forced into same-sex marriages and socialized medicine death-panels will kill grandma.
Some elected Republicans will realize that their seats are no longer safe, and they'll feel forced to vote with the Democrats on some issue.
Right wing media will go ape-shit - we have traitors in our midst! Someone accepted a compromise with a Democrat! We must strive for ideological purity!
The GOP primaries will be filled with ever increasing amounts of loony-tune candidates that won't stand a chance in the general election and the GOP will lose even more seats.
Even more elected GOP representatives will feel the need to cross the aisle and eventually some will simply switch parties as they realize it will become impossible to win elected office as a Republican in increasing parts of the country.
The Democrats on the other side will sooner or later experience the exact opposite effect. They will win seats, and their base will become more enthusiastic for every win they score. People who haven't even bother voting before will - and they will vote Democratic, because the GOP has already maxed out their voter base with incessant fearmongering.
Now either the GOP at some point wakes up to these changes, or they'll continue losing like this.
They already had a study made after one of their lost presidential races against Obama that said the party has to broaden it's base and stop shitting on latinos and women.
In response to that the GOP primary voters elected Trump, who does that more then any previous Republican president in recent memory.
And Trump is still incredibly popular in the GOP base - despite, or rather precisely because, he's shitting on everyone except this white, rural base.
So despite the GOP leadership actually knowing this is a losing strategy for the party, it continues down this path - because that's what their base want.
Which tells me it's unlikely the party will ever wake up and correct course.
So the GOP won't change course, because GOP members that does will be forced out by a rabid base, whipped to a fearful frenzy by right-wing media pumping them full of lies.
The GOP will only continue losing power this way and eventually something will crack.
Either individual GOP voters, or a particularly nutty GOP elected official will start threatening the peace of the nation.
They won't see it like that of course - they will only see it as they defending themselves against the black helicopters by "2nd amendment remedies", succession or some other harebrained scheme - but it will be just as irrational as when the southern states went ape-shit over Lincoln's election.
There won't actually be any federal "gun grab" like you fantasies about, no more then there was ever any actual intent by Lincoln to free all slaves.
But the right-wing extremists in the loony-tune GOP base will tell themselves that something like that is coming, and decide that they must act first - while claiming self-defense.
Now society is much more diverse these days, so the GOP base of conspiracy-fed voters that will actually believe this doesn't actually control whole states.
They may win elections, but it's not like there is a majority support in even the reddest of the red states for succeeding over guns or some other stupid issue.
You saw that when the GOP tried to run a credibly accused child molester in deep read Alabama and lost - primarily because African Americans finally got fed up with that stupid cracker shit and went to the polls.
So if your "knife fight in a phone booth" breaks out, the loony-tunes right-wingers who want to take on the federal government won't even be in majority in the states they actually won - far from it.
Also, the right-winger love to believe that somehow the armed forces would be on their side, or split along partisan lines. They won't.
Have you looked at the numbers of racial and ethnic minority groups in the armed forces lately? They made up 40% of Defense Department active-duty military in 2015.
Also, the officer corps is much more highly educated then the general public. Eight-in-ten DOD active-duty officers have at least a bachelor's degree, including 42% who hold an advanced degree. They are four times as likely as average adults ages 18 to 44 to have completed a postgraduate degree.
Now many of them probably have voted Republican in the past, because they want to see defense spending increases. But do you honestly think they're believe the right-wing media fearmongering?
And do you think they believe an armed militia can take on the US military and win?
But more then that, they're of course loyal to the rule of law, and to think that a significant minority of them would betray their oaths to run of and join some rag-tag band of militia wanting to take on the federal government over some conspiracy idea they pulled out their ass today is ridiculous.
Some individuals probably will, as some individuals will do everything. But it's not like a significant part of the armed forces would.
So if anything like that ever was to happen, it would be nutcase militias armed to the teeth with semi-automatic weaponry - against drones and tanks.
It would be over in a far shorter time then the Civil War and I'd think historians would later question if it should even be labeled a civil war, when such a small part of the nation was ever effected and the casualties where as small as they where.
But, the loony-tune base having crossed the Rubicon like that would open the doors to radical change that never was possible before.
Like Lincoln couldn't free the slaves until the Confederacy actually started a Civil War over them, no Democratic president or Congress today could grab the guns - until a large enough group of gun-nuts misused their guns in such an obvious way popular support was radicalized into actually supporting outright repeal of the 2nd Amendment.
Which is way I say the south may yet get to fuck itself by overplaying it's hand and overreacting to democratic change with undemocratic and violent action, again.
And if they do - they will lose, again.
0
@Dorsai
Of course I know the constitution has been amended - but that's like adding support beams to a crumbling building.
Any other nation would re-do the building from foundation up, re-using the good parts and adding new material as necessary.
While you keep trying to shore up the skyscraper the US is today, based on a foundation meant to support the small wooden hut the US was 300 years ago.
It won't hold in the long run - it simply won't.
The only one who's painted themselves into a corner is the Republicans.
They've tied themselves to a shrinking white base of rural supporters while they piss on anyone non-white and non-rural.
Their base is a demographic minority now and it will only grow worse over time.
Not only is the rest of the country out-producing you in new voters - both by births and by immigration. You're also steadily loosing in your own core as young rural whites move to the cities as they get fed up with the backwards mentality of the towns they where born in.
You're bleeding support - and your leaders know it.
Which is why they are forced to take ever more drastic action in trying to suppress the vote, to cling on to their position.
But most of the country you control is already gerrymandered to the point where you can't squeeze out more votes - and you're still loosing ground.
And that's before the courts start striking your partisan redistricting down, like they did in Pennsylvania recently.
Voter-suppression laws are the next step, and to support them the Republicans are pushing lies about widespread voter fraud and racist fearmongering about illegal aliens voting.
Now none of this is true of course - but the Republicans now only care about keeping their own base of supporters fired up to keep the ship afloat as long as they can.
It's a losing long-term strategy, as they're not convincing a single new person by pumping out lies - but if they can increase the fear in their own base of losing power, they can motivate them to turn out at a higher rate.
The problem with that is that they have to keep ramping up the lies to produce new threats to scare their voters into voting.
They're well past any reasonable argument they could make, and into fantasy land completely already.
Millions of illegal's voting (never happened), the liberals are coming for your guns (no one ever proposed that), Obamacare will kill grandma (quite the opposite), the "deep state" is out to get Trump (yeah - the FBI is treasonous - not the guy with all the Russia contacts) and on and on.
Add to those lies, the level of fear and the unhinged conspiracy mentality the right-wing media fosters to promote new lies, the insane amount of guns in private hands in the US - especially in the hands of the rural GOP-voter - and you have a recipe for disaster.
So, now let me tell you what is the most likely thing to happen here:
Sooner or later the GOP will begin to lose power. They hold all the branches of elected power right now, so there is only down to go from here.
Having ratcheted up the fearmongering in their own base for so long, this will seem like impending doom to a lot of GOP voters.
Now the government will come for your guns, the black helicopters will land to take you away to the re-education centers where you'll be forced into same-sex marriages and socialized medicine death-panels will kill grandma.
Some elected Republicans will realize that their seats are no longer safe, and they'll feel forced to vote with the Democrats on some issue.
Right wing media will go ape-shit - we have traitors in our midst! Someone accepted a compromise with a Democrat! We must strive for ideological purity!
The GOP primaries will be filled with ever increasing amounts of loony-tune candidates that won't stand a chance in the general election and the GOP will lose even more seats.
Even more elected GOP representatives will feel the need to cross the aisle and eventually some will simply switch parties as they realize it will become impossible to win elected office as a Republican in increasing parts of the country.
The Democrats on the other side will sooner or later experience the exact opposite effect. They will win seats, and their base will become more enthusiastic for every win they score. People who haven't even bother voting before will - and they will vote Democratic, because the GOP has already maxed out their voter base with incessant fearmongering.
Now either the GOP at some point wakes up to these changes, or they'll continue losing like this.
They already had a study made after one of their lost presidential races against Obama that said the party has to broaden it's base and stop shitting on latinos and women.
In response to that the GOP primary voters elected Trump, who does that more then any previous Republican president in recent memory.
And Trump is still incredibly popular in the GOP base - despite, or rather precisely because, he's shitting on everyone except this white, rural base.
So despite the GOP leadership actually knowing this is a losing strategy for the party, it continues down this path - because that's what their base want.
Which tells me it's unlikely the party will ever wake up and correct course.
So the GOP won't change course, because GOP members that does will be forced out by a rabid base, whipped to a fearful frenzy by right-wing media pumping them full of lies.
The GOP will only continue losing power this way and eventually something will crack.
Either individual GOP voters, or a particularly nutty GOP elected official will start threatening the peace of the nation.
They won't see it like that of course - they will only see it as they defending themselves against the black helicopters by "2nd amendment remedies", succession or some other harebrained scheme - but it will be just as irrational as when the southern states went ape-shit over Lincoln's election.
There won't actually be any federal "gun grab" like you fantasies about, no more then there was ever any actual intent by Lincoln to free all slaves.
But the right-wing extremists in the loony-tune GOP base will tell themselves that something like that is coming, and decide that they must act first - while claiming self-defense.
Now society is much more diverse these days, so the GOP base of conspiracy-fed voters that will actually believe this doesn't actually control whole states.
They may win elections, but it's not like there is a majority support in even the reddest of the red states for succeeding over guns or some other stupid issue.
You saw that when the GOP tried to run a credibly accused child molester in deep read Alabama and lost - primarily because African Americans finally got fed up with that stupid cracker shit and went to the polls.
So if your "knife fight in a phone booth" breaks out, the loony-tunes right-wingers who want to take on the federal government won't even be in majority in the states they actually won - far from it.
Also, the right-winger love to believe that somehow the armed forces would be on their side, or split along partisan lines. They won't.
Have you looked at the numbers of racial and ethnic minority groups in the armed forces lately? They made up 40% of Defense Department active-duty military in 2015.
Also, the officer corps is much more highly educated then the general public. Eight-in-ten DOD active-duty officers have at least a bachelor's degree, including 42% who hold an advanced degree. They are four times as likely as average adults ages 18 to 44 to have completed a postgraduate degree.
Now many of them probably have voted Republican in the past, because they want to see defense spending increases. But do you honestly think they're believe the right-wing media fearmongering?
And do you think they believe an armed militia can take on the US military and win?
But more then that, they're of course loyal to the rule of law, and to think that a significant minority of them would betray their oaths to run of and join some rag-tag band of militia wanting to take on the federal government over some conspiracy idea they pulled out their ass today is ridiculous.
Some individuals probably will, as some individuals will do everything. But it's not like a significant part of the armed forces would.
So if anything like that ever was to happen, it would be nutcase militias armed to the teeth with semi-automatic weaponry - against drones and tanks.
It would be over in a far shorter time then the Civil War and I'd think historians would later question if it should even be labeled a civil war, when such a small part of the nation was ever effected and the casualties where as small as they where.
But, the loony-tune base having crossed the Rubicon like that would open the doors to radical change that never was possible before.
Like Lincoln couldn't free the slaves until the Confederacy actually started a Civil War over them, no Democratic president or Congress today could grab the guns - until a large enough group of gun-nuts misused their guns in such an obvious way popular support was radicalized into actually supporting outright repeal of the 2nd Amendment.
Which is way I say the south may yet get to fuck itself by overplaying it's hand and overreacting to democratic change with undemocratic and violent action, again.
And if they do - they will lose, again.