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Elison, I *know* you know your history better than this. I'm not a fan of the lengths to which the Second Amendment is taken either, but that's no reason to be deliberately obtuse in this question.
Setting aside rather offhand way you dismiss examples of vastly inferior militaries (in armaments), for some reason you assume that in any sort of uprising against the government, the entire military will with all of its firepower (and unlimited supply, I guess?) would side at once and permanently with the government. You also seem to assume that nothing short of direct armed confrontation would see those weapons change hands.
Insurrections are about as political as armed struggles ever get, and that's saying something. If this is a rhetorical exercise for you, alright, fair enough, but it it's not then by the standards you're using all that's needed to determine the outcome of any conflict is to tote up the guns and sizes and declare a winner.
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Nah, he knows this. You can't be as much a fan of military history and not either know it, or have the information to put together the conclusion. This is either a rhetorical stance or stubbornness born in an argument.
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Well, maybe it's not common knowledge. I mean, it's not like very many historical movies depict small, poorly armed groups with a lot of gusto and spirit and better manueverability taking out vastly larger, better armed opponents... right?
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We have lots of examples in modern history of independence movements beating armed governments.
But I think that argument might fall apart a bit when applied to the United States, simply because I can't think of a better armed government in modern history. The US government, if it really, really wanted to, could bring unimaginable weaponry to bear upon its own citizenry.
I honestly don't think we're even kind of close to anything like that. But let's not forget that American history HAS seen several insurrections. The Early American Period saw several small rebellions like the Whiskey and Shay Rebellions, both of which are quickly and efficiently stamped out. The Civil War was ultimately won by superior northern weaponry, money and manpower. Dozens of largescale, violent labor rebellions were repressed by government military force. Dozens of small scale militia type domestic terrorists have been tracked down and taken out by the FBI alone.
I think guerrilla tactics and the like can be incredibly effective. But I also think the US Military, in its full, total might, if the army could be held together and the government really decided to go for it, would likely level any opposition.
But I don't see that ever happening. We're far more likely to either descend into civil war, or to have a much smaller regional conflict.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Nah, he knows this. You can't be as much a fan of military history and not either know it, or have the information to put together the conclusion.
We have a decade of posting right here on this very forum that proves you can totally maintain these deficits steadfastly no matter your enthusiasm for military history or claim to expertise in those matters. Not that I'm actively looking to stir up shit today but I could be more specific and clear about why if you need.
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We have lots of examples in modern history of independence movements beating armed governments.
But I think that argument might fall apart a bit when applied to the United States, simply because I can't think of a better armed government in modern history. The US government, if it really, really wanted to, could bring unimaginable weaponry to bear upon its own citizenry.
I honestly don't think we're even kind of close to anything like that. But let's not forget that American history HAS seen several insurrections. The Early American Period saw several small rebellions like the Whiskey and Shay Rebellions, both of which are quickly and efficiently stamped out. The Civil War was ultimately won by superior northern weaponry, money and manpower. Dozens of largescale, violent labor rebellions were repressed by government military force. Dozens of small scale militia type domestic terrorists have been tracked down and taken out by the FBI alone.
I think guerrilla tactics and the like can be incredibly effective. But I also think the US Military, in its full, total might, if the army could be held together and the government really decided to go for it, would likely level any opposition.
But I don't see that ever happening. We're far more likely to either descend into civil war, or to have a much smaller regional conflict.
Sure, if we're considering a situation in which the government is completely unrestrained with respect to what force it brings to bear on its citizens. And I don't even mean in the deeply unsettling and long-term very worrisome style of 'hey, the Fourth Amendment is really more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule' style. I mean blowing up a skyscraper with people in it, dousing a suburb with napalm, gassing a city, drone strikes on people in schools, taking and punishment of hostages, that kind of thing. In such a case, if we're also assuming the military goes along with this (potentially a downside to a military with no conscripts, in fact), then I agree with you.
All of which you acknowledge of course. It's just in the rejection of the Second Amendment Elison was applying, he was suggesting that was simply the only way things would go. That the argument for the Second Amendment as a defense against tyranny was invalid, because the American military would be invincible if turned on its own populace.
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In such a situation (a rebellion or civil war), while I could see the military remaining loyal and fighting the rebellion with small arms, I have a hard time seeing them bombing or using artillery or tanks against their own people. Especially when it might be your little brother or sister or parents or kids you're blowing up, or those of your buddy's. If you were to, say, firebomb Dallas you could expect violent mutiny at several military bases, especially those belonging to the Texas National Guard.
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The disconnect is between current social experience and the socioeconomic conditions that would largely permit armed rebellion to have tipping point traction within a society. Americans are, even with our present large divides in socioeconomic status and the presence of largely neglected minority groups, possessed of the typical first world comforts and relative life stability that make any sort of actual civil war a remote prospect. Most of us would just want to stay out of the way of an armed conflict within our borders or would otherwise act (indirectly, legislatively) to contain it so as to prevent greater socioeconomic instability in our lives. We're more concerned with keeping our internet running. Actual rebellious insurrection being the driving force or present force in a revolutionary war or civil war usually involve a hell of a lot less in the way of comforts and availability of modern lifestyles, even if our cultures can be provoked into xenophobia or hold legacy cultural conflicts.
Looking at contemporary examples: usually as a prerequisite (not always, but pretty much most of the time) you need a failed state. As an additional almost-prerequisite, you need a startling degree of undeveloped, pastoral, or otherwise primitive and/or failed economies. Having an islamic sect cohabitating with another sect, demographically, also increases your odds greatly, even if it is another islamic sect. Fanatical religious fundamentalism in general helps a lot. Ultranationalism, racist, and ultranationalist groups getting enough traction cause blistering conflict but usually have to have the stage set for them by a greater socioeconomic collapse (e.g., Front National or Moshe Feiglin Fanboys or BNP or whatever aren't gonna achieve much on their own but if the whole country's situation goes tits up they start Golden Dawning it up and create a scary situation). Military reprisal within your own borders is often where it really starts heating up, because if sustained conflict continues for a period of years it dissolves the public structure that would hold an actual insurrection at bay away and replaces it with a tidal wave of capacity for armed resistance.
All we have is a handful of isolated nutbags in various militias that aren't much of a danger to anyone but themselves (and I guess some protected environmental preserves)
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I don't think many people will disagree with the point that a civil war in America as it exists now is nearly impossible, if only because of the lack of people actually willing to fight. What conditions do you think would need to be met to make civil war a possibility? What would that hypothetical America even look like? Because in my mind, an America at the brink of civil war is one that probably has had it's military capacity, cohesion and discipline vastly reduced by the factors that led us to that point.
Let's start by assumming "billionaire liberal builds army of battle robots and invades New York" is not one of the plausible scenarios.
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One plausible scenario over the course of a 15-20 year timeframe would require default, economic collapse, cities all over start resembling detroit, something happens on the federal level of government which collapses our current tenuous balance of powers and represents an autocratic/oligarchic power grab at the same time that we start resembling Greece 2.0
followed by widescale and fairly destructive riots in cities, followed by the common military response in cities to public dissent, followed by many years of sustained conflict, continued total loss of faith in the government along wide socioeconomic and sociopolitical lines
if you can make a scenario work along racial lines, that always helps immensely. Have something happens which makes white ultranationalism and separate cultural identities grind each other hard.
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Yeah, the remaining well-off or affluent portion of the population can talk about art galleries and symphony orchestras, while a percentage approaching literally half of the severely imploded populace of detroit doesn't get to do this 'lots of great stuff to do' because they are direly impoverished and living in crumbling, violent neighborhoods, their children in completely unworking schools, rampant health and drug abuse problems, food deserts, routine police brutality, dealing with things like how they can't even afford water anymore, and with ethnic enclaves strongly reinforced from decades and decades of racist laws and rent/neighborhood control, and they're otherwise not the sort of person who could spend the money if they wanted to. A divide in wealth and opportunity is open like a chasm. Which is why it makes a perfect startup scenario even before you have Specially Appointed Grand Moffs replacing the prior democratic system and the whole city literally declaring bankruptcy.
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The museum is free to residents of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties, actually. I'm not sure what the demographics of those counties are like, though.
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Sure. But the indispensable core of the point is that what affluent amenities you can still laud Detroit for even possessing are only still just largely a testament to the cycles of poverty and urban decay which grip larger and larger (and even more starkly race-delineated) portions of the populace. It has a sustained a huge underclass. Their socioeconomic model is a dire portent and the constant activist battles over the water shutoffs and the growing wastelands of junked, shelled, copper-looted houses right there in the midst of a right-wing austerity junta. As Charity Hicks put it, the current state of Detroit is that of an affront to human dignity — lauding their symphony orchestra and art museum doesn't get much traction in the face of the world nearly half of the occupants grapple with.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: ...constant activist battles over the water shutoffs and the growing wastelands of junked, shelled, copper-looted houses right there in the midst of a right-wing austerity junta.
I saw this. This was especially messed up. We even sent in a water convoy. It's like something out of Fallout 1.
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quote:The US government, if it really, really wanted to, could bring unimaginable weaponry to bear upon its own citizenry.
That weaponry still has to be wielded by people.
Blayne, of course the various insurrections I mentioned were won through lack of political will. Obviously. So what? Civil wars are all about political will. Come on, dude; read your Mao, not to mention Sun Tzu. Hundred victories in a hundred battles, anyone? Protracted Struggle ring a bell? Hello, three-phase guerrilla warfare?
The lightly-armed side doesn't have to win any battles; it just has to remain a credible force in being, capable of doing some damage.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Sure. But the indispensable core of the point is that what affluent amenities you can still laud Detroit for even possessing are only still just largely a testament to the cycles of poverty and urban decay which grip larger and larger (and even more starkly race-delineated) portions of the populace. It has a sustained a huge underclass. Their socioeconomic model is a dire portent and the constant activist battles over the water shutoffs and the growing wastelands of junked, shelled, copper-looted houses right there in the midst of a right-wing austerity junta. As Charity Hicks put it, the current state of Detroit is that of an affront to human dignity — lauding their symphony orchestra and art museum doesn't get much traction in the face of the world nearly half of the occupants grapple with.
If that's the only part you're focusing on, then that description mostly applies to almost any major US city.
Detroit will never be rebuilt in the way most people seem to assume it NEEDS to be. When they mention the abandoned buildings and what not, the assumption seems to be that unless Detroit returns to its 1940s hey-day, it's still a failure. But that will never happen. Detroit has one of the largest municipal footprints in the country, but relative to its size, a small population. Midtown and Downtown are finally thriving after years of them basically being scenes out of Robocop. Greektown and Corktown are coming back in a big way. Occupancy rates are almost to 100%. There's finally a core to rebuild the City around, and people are finally investing in the City again.
Most people in the City CAN afford water, by the way, they simply knew, until very recently, that if they didn't pay their bill, nothing would happen to them. The water shutoff thing was pretty stupid, but the majority of people, when threatened with a shutoff, paid their bills or worked out a plan to pay them.
But the major problems in Detroit; race issues, poverty, bad schools, etc are pretty much the same in any major urban US City. Detroit has a couple special circumstances that make them worse off (geography and terrible leadership for the last decade), but the underlying problems are the same elsewhere.
I wasn't a fan of the Emergency Financial Manager when he was first appointed, and I'm holding final judgment until after he leaves. But for the moment, I'm leaning toward the belief that he's the best thing that's happened to the City in decades. They dug themselves into a pretty serious hole, and when the history books look at the City, they'll say that Kevin Orr and Mike Duggan probably saved it.
Edit to add: I'd also note that the "growing wasteland" is actually shrinking significantly. Thousands of abandoned buildings have been razed, with thousands more slated to be razed in the next two years. Duggan wants every single building slotted for demolition to be torn down within two years, and it looks like he might actually do it. Blight has been shrinking, not growing in Detroit.
You just wouldn't know it because EVERY media story on Detroit opens with a picture of a burned out building.
quote:But the major problems in Detroit; race issues, poverty, bad schools, etc are pretty much the same in any major urban US City.
It would be interesting to tell someone in, say, Seattle or Providence that their city's problems with race, poverty, schools are 'pretty much the same' as Detroit and see what their response would be.
I get that there's Detroiters that don't like that their city has a reputation. Other cities don't usually have to deal with the attention Detroit gets, like the current example of UN condemnation of significant human rights issues when 1 in 10 citizens had their water shut off. But Home Teaming aside it's really just an amazingly broken city compared to most other US cities, and it may be the worst of them all (who's going to compete? Little Rock, maybe?). More coming years of republican appointed Emergency Managers and shock doctrine and Don Gilbertization and bankruptcy at the end of a long hard road of tax base implosion mean that its climb up is fraught with more peril.
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Well, I'm not sure I'd count Providence as a major US city. But I guess I should more specifically say any major urban US city with a majority black population, which is most of the cities I'd actually call Major Cities. Providence proper has only twice the population as the suburban city I grew up in. If that's major, then so is half of suburban Detroit.
The only difference between Detroit and most other major cities is that they have enough wealth to prop them up. Chicago is a mess. I'd be surprised if there aren't more murders there than in Detroit. Likewise Washington DC, LA, Philly, etc.
I see the problem in my description, since I left in cities with majority white (read: wealthier) populations that never experiences serious racial discord. But when you look at any other major city that experienced the latter half of the 20th century the way Detroit did, you see remarkably similar problems. But they don't get talked about because those cities have enough of an upper class to paper over the problems, which is why Chicago's murder sprees and incredible levels of segregation don't make national news the same way ruin porn does in Detroit.
It's "amazingly broken" compared to other cities because they were hit harder by structural forces than others were. But others have similarly weak cores. They just have the money to keep the vultures away.
As for the future, if the City Council can get their act together, I'd actually say the future looks brighter than it has in decades. "Don Gilbertization" might get bad press, but Dan Gilbert is investing millions, much of it in abandoned and hollowed out buildings that no one has touched in years. Sure, he's going to reap huge profits, but those profits are largely dependent on the city making a comeback. If him getting even richer is the price we have to pay to revitalize the city's core, then gee, I'll go for it. He's also shown a penchant for rebuilding rather than replacing, which believe me is NOT the norm. He tends to renovate rather than raze, which is keeping a lot of historic landmarks in place.
The EMF really has stabilized the City finances after years of really horrible mismanagement. I think he's coming to the end of his reign over the City, as more and more pieces of control are handed off to the Mayor. Once the City emerges from bankruptcy, which could happen in the next couple months, I think he'll be done, and Duggan will take over.
Tax policy in the City needs a huge, huge overhaul and everyone knows it. Property taxes are ridiculous and keep most people from even considering moving in. Your tax bill can be several times your mortgage payment, which negates low property prices. But people are moving back into the City. I don't blame them for not moving into the neighborhoods, which are where the real fixes are needed. But ultimately the City needs income to fix most of its problems, lacking the financial underpinning that keeps other major cities afloat despite racial and other tensions. I think that will start to come back as the City continues to come back to life. The road ahead is rocky, but it's finally at least climbing rather than sinking.
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quote:Chicago is a mess. I'd be surprised if there aren't more murders there than in Detroit. Likewise Washington DC, LA, Philly, etc.
On this point, Detroit is posting a murder rate that is three times Chicago and four times DC. Detroit really is pretty extreme (I don't count Flint since its even smaller than Providence).
quote:But Chicago also has some 2.7 million residents, more than any other city except New York and Los Angeles, and you’d expect it to have more murders (and other crimes) than most other cities for that reason alone. Adjust the raw numbers for population size to get a murder rate, and a very different picture emerges.
According to the FBI figures, Flint, Mich., had the highest murder rate of any sizeable U.S. city in 2012, the most recent year available. There were 62 murders per 100,000 population (which, coincidentally, was just about Flint’s estimated population that year). Trailing Flint were Detroit (54.6 murders per 100,000), New Orleans (53.2 per 100,000) and Jackson, Miss., (35.8 per 100,000). Chicago, whose population is several times bigger than any of those cities, came in 21st, with 18.5 murders per 100,000 — nearly quadruple the national average, true, but still nowhere near the highest in the country.
quote:Among cities and towns with at least 100,000 people, 54 places recorded poverty rates above 25 percent last year. Detroit, which filed for bankruptcy in July, had a poverty rate of 42.3 percent, the highest of any big city or town in the country. Syracuse, N.Y.; Hartford, Conn.; Cleveland; and Lansing, Mich., also had high poverty rates, ranging from around 35 percent to 38 percent.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Well, I'm not sure I'd count Providence as a major US city.
Ok, it's just a random throw-in anyway. SF, Boston, Denver etc would all work too.
Even other cities which I also think are bad cities can't really match detroit's Misery Index topping situation. it's really just (still) an amazingly broken city, yes, even compared to other dungheaps like Chicago.
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I feel like that rate for Chicago isn't really fair. Detroit doesn't really have upper class neighborhoods to balance out the numbers. If you break apart the Chicago geography my bet is you'll find hundreds of thousands with a very very low murder rate and hundreds of thousands with an extremely high one. Again, Chicago's socioeconomic status hides huge problems . Detroit doesn't have that cushion in the numbers.
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