SECOND Civil War Game Out Online, Former CIA Says ＂It's Coming＂ And TRUMP Is To Blame
Summary
Is a civil war coming to the United States in the next ten years? Is it even possible? And if so, who would fight and who would win? Today, a new poll shows that 43% of Americans believe it's likely to happen.
Transcript
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An alternate history channel on Reddit is gaming out a shockingly realistic
00:01:07.340
You know, I've talked to prominent individuals,
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I go outside, I look around, nobody's fighting.
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To which I respond, do you think, in 1864, in Atlanta, some dude walked out of his house
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and looked at his neighbor who was flying an American flag, a Union flag,
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No, they went outside and said, howdy, neighbor.
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But I do know that it is now in the highest levels of government.
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Quote, the FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people
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asserting that the top ranks of the bureau should be eliminated.
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Behind the scenes, his vision of an FBI under Trump is quietly taking shape.
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Others have been demoted or put on leave with no explanation.
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And in an effort to hunt down the sources of news leaks,
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Mr. Patel is forcing employees to take polygraph tests.
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Among the younger generation, and this is what I think matters most,
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43% of Americans say a civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years.
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Among the younger, I'm sorry, this is general, public, posted in 2022.
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However, it's actually much crazier than that among young people.
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Among the younger generation, they actually think it's much more likely there will be a civil war.
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UGOF has the data that shows it skews largely into the among younger people.
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32% think it's likely between red and blue states.
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20% think it's likely between urban versus rural.
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I know a lot of people may be saying they don't think it's going to happen.
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But the question is, why do you believe that UGOF thought it necessary to do this poll in the first place?
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And why do you believe they found 43% of people think it's possible?
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When I talk about the issue, people tell me I'm crazy.
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I recommend you guys watch the episode of Triggernometry I did, where we basically had this debate.
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Now, I'm not sitting here saying I think a civil war is going to happen.
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I'm not sitting here saying it's guaranteed or anything like that.
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I'm saying the precursors are as such that people believe it may be coming, a substantial amount.
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Nor do I ever actually promote that it will happen.
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However, to be fair on Twitter, people don't understand nuance.
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So when I say things like civil war, I'm not saying it's literally happening.
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I'm saying these are all precursors to and indicative of.
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Among Democrats, they say Democrats are more confident than other Americans in the government's ability to defeat an uprising of armed citizens.
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They say that how concerned are Americans about political, racial, and religious extremism?
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That's the media, largely targeting the older demographic.
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So Bloomberg, I think, I don't know if I have them breaking it down.
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They say, the survey conducted among 1,500 U.S. adults found two-thirds of Americans believe political divisions have gotten worse since 2021.
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In comparison, only 8% say it's grown less divided.
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And the fact that young people are more likely.
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47% of Americans under 30, according to you, Governor the Economist, said a civil war in the next decade is at least somewhat likely.
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Here's over at military.com, talking about the alternate history, people gaming out a shockingly realistic civil war.
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Now, what I want to say, which is hilarious about this, I live here.
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This map they're showing on the screen, for those that are just watching, shows Harper's Ferry.
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And it says, the second battle of Harper's Ferry, April 15, 2025, to 27 of April, 2025.
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I don't think this stuff is actually realistic, especially considering the article was written after, I suppose, the battle already took place.
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It's fascinating to look at a map where people are wondering what would happen to Harper's Ferry, because I use these bridges like every day.
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Harper's Ferry is a postal jurisdiction and actually extends well down into the southern area, into these mountains.
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And though each of these areas are unincorporated and have their own names, it's the postal zone is still Harper's Ferry.
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And then we have, this is the walking bridge and train.
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So when I talk about how close we are, our old studio is actually just over here.
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Alternate history writing looks at what-if scenarios.
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It also allows readers to look critically at the world they really live in and reflect on current events.
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Popular alternate history stories have even become major television shows or movies.
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Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel, The Man in the High Castle, set in an alternate timeline where an assassin killed Roosevelt and Germany and Japan won World War II.
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The book was later adapted into an Amazon Prime series.
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I do think it's largely silly, though, The Man in the High Castle, because I don't think the U.S. would ever get invaded and taken over nor forced to have a Nazi ideology.
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To be fair, though, Nazism was prominent in the United States before World War II.
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On Reddit's alt-history subreddit, users post scenarios asking what if the Soviet Union intervened in Iran, or what if the U.S. plan for the Middle East was implemented after World War I?
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The usual posts garner a handful of likes or comments, but a new alternate history timeline is making the rounds with interactions in the thousands.
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This new timeline from Redditor George Squershington looks at an alternate world where someone really did hack the 2024 election, both sides contested the results, and America fell into a dark civil war.
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Now, I've talked about this before, this alternate timeline.
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What I want to say is they're entering an alternate path for us.
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What I think is interesting about it and why it's worth looking at, the posts that they fabricate—I say fabricate, but the posts that they've created artistically to represent the real world actually look like real world posts.
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What I mean is when you see someone saying, we've created a path for an alternate timeline where there's a civil war, they mention in themilitary.com that they're looking critically.
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At How It May Play Out, you'll see a story that says something like,
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far-life extremists, you know, open fire on, you know, right-wing group or something like that.
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And when you look at it, you're like, wow, that's crazy.
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Then you take a look at our own actual news, and it's like far-leftists open fire on Tesla vehicles and attack private owners.
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And you start to understand, oh, that it's actually, it is actually happening, this escalation and before our eyes.
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Now, again, that doesn't mean the predictions of these people are correct in that it would lead to a civil war.
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The point is, we are looking right now, a man in Colorado with Molotov cocktails set fire to several individuals who are pro-Israel.
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They were raising awareness for the hostages, the Israeli hostages.
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And this man was screaming, free Palestine, screaming that he had to do something.
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The man who went into D.C. screaming, free Palestine, and gunned down two young embassy staffers, Israeli embassy staffers.
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If someone were to write up a story about how a war broke out or a civil war broke out,
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these things are realistically believed to be components of that escalation.
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The issue now is, in the fictional reality that's being drafted about a second world war,
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many people, it's easy to believe, oh yeah, like someone, you know, blew up a car or whatever.
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Of course that makes sense in this story you've written.
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What about the people who are unloading rifles into Tesla dealerships?
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The point is, because of optimism and normalcy bias, people want to reject the possibility outright.
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Instead of saying it's probably low, but these are the precursors.
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George Squarshington, asked only to be identified by his username because of harassment, calls a scenario, how would Reddit react to a modern civil war in the U.S.?
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The story plays out in fictional screenshots from social media, Wikipedia, YouTube, and more, all posted to the Reddit channel.
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I saw where people were claiming that the election was stolen, like even my mom and dad talk about it sometimes, saying the 2024 election might have been hacked.
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And I just started to think, what would happen if it were true?
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Or at least if an intelligence agency or people in the military thought it was true, and the story granted that.
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Meaning, it may have a very small amount of members, but it gets a lot of activity for how small it is.
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They genuinely believe the 2024 election was stolen.
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They say, from last week, New Georgia voter website glitch briefly exposes personal data.
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Big report on 2024 election interference in conjunction with Election Truth Alliance.
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Rosie O'Donnell has been making videos that are insane and make no sense because she genuinely believes this stuff.
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She had a video where she was like, explain to me how, for the first time, the Republican won every swing state.
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He said, what would happen if it were true, at least?
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Readers learned about new developments in their war through simulated internet reactions to the war's events.
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George Squashington, along with his supporters in a special Discord channel, game out scenarios, and the story continues to evolve.
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Then he and some of the collaborators create detailed screenshots of what it would look like as the internet responded to the news.
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In the story, the first contested election results lead to recounts in key states.
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Tipping the election from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris.
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What about the people that are claiming these silly stories are actually real?
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June 1st, from El Paez, which is Spanish language news, Barbara F. Walter, civil conflict expert, quote,
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I see Trump provoking a foreign war to force a third term.
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Now, all these people, there's many people who believe it's not possible for the U.S. to break into civil war.
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Once again, they say silly things like, I go outside and nobody's fighting.
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They say things like, who would the factions be?
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And I just, I ask them, please, for the love of all that is holy, read about any other civil war.
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Basically, every single civil war that's ever happened except the United States
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was various jurisdictions falling to ideological groups.
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The Syrian civil war had something like 12 different factions fighting the government.
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They slowly got defeated and then started to unify under, was it al-Nursra and ISIS,
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then eventually just ISIS, a unified group, the Islamic caliphate at war with the Assad regime.
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In the United States civil war, in fact, you had seven states secede from the end before Lincoln was
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even inaugurated. And then they formed their own confederacy.
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It was stated that Texas only joined out of necessity because of the proximity.
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Certainly, they were a slave state, but they were also just like,
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we can't be part of a union with no access to the union.
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So for the most part, they just said, I guess we're out.
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People were pissed. Nobody died from the conflict.
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The union was routed and then Lincoln rallied the North and then invaded the South.
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They were two-thirds pro-union, not in favor of the Confederacy,
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but after the Lincoln rallying of troops and the invasion of the South,
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several states then said, we're breaking from this.
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The point I'm making is, no one really understands how these things can escalate to this point.
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But I do have questions about where we go from here.
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If Barbara F. Walter is correct, or more importantly, I doubt she is.
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But if she feels this way, and many other people do, then I have some questions.
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What happens when, with a moderate coalition on the right, Republicans win 2026 and 2028,
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They're not going to tolerate being in the minority is what I mean to say.
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Barbara F. Walter, 60, has spent her entire career studying what drives countries to civil war
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She's a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego.
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Farber Debt Solutions, licensed insolvency trustees.
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Particularly in the wake of the pandemic and the assault on the Capitol,
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she began to have an uneasy feeling about the signs of instability.
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She had seen places like Yugoslavia, Syria, and Iraq were beginning to appear in her own neck of the woods.
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In 2023, the publication of her book, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them,
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caused a considerable intellectual impact in the United States.
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In the book, which includes interviews with civil war survivors
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and presents all the precedents to internal conflict with scientific rigor.
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she argues that her country meets the two requirements
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that usually occur before a fratricidal conflict.
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And the fact that the U.S. has fallen for the first time
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since its founding into the group of what the Center for Systemic Peace calls
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These regimes fall somewhere in the gray area between full democracies and pure autocracies.
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Two systems that, for opposite reasons, never slide into civil war.
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This is a scale on which the former are rated plus 10,
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countries that rank between minus 5 and plus 5.
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So here's what I want to say before we read on for more of this.
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about how younger people are more likely to believe
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The issue is that hyperpolarization among the youth
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With all of these generations voting right now,
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you will get an older generation voting for unity
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and a younger generation voting in a hyperpolarized manner.
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In fact, our own market research here at TimCast suggests
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we have to be extremely aggressive on what we want this country to be doing
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to the enemy factions, to the opposing political faction.
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Older people don't believe it's coming, and they are less.
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you know some people in your family are liberal and conservative,
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you probably don't hang out with any people of the opposing political faction,
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These people are prepared for something to escalate.
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They are more likely to believe a civil war is coming,
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then every single person in this country is going to be in the camp of,
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we are heading towards some type of civil conflict.
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and it's fascinating that they can only conclude one of two things.
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Do you believe that Democrats are unscrupulous?
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Do you think that they are willing to violate the Constitution to steal power?
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stealing elections and doing all of these things.
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And that's where we end up with the two potentialities.
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Either you get a communist revolution and full Democrat takeover,
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Do you think he is doing things that are unprecedented?
00:22:00.080
So you think there will be a fascist revolution in this country?
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You are either arguing on the left or the right that there will be a fascist revolution,
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I don't see how anyone could be arguing for something else.
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We're going to have this, you know, hyper-polarized nation where both sides are committing,
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are violating the constitution against each other, but it never breaks out in a fighting.
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Like, Democrats are going to be like, they're all fascists.
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They're arresting people illegally and doing whatever they want, but we don't care.
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But then we're going to go arrest people illegally.
00:22:38.080
No, that just sounds like administrative civil war, which is what we're in already.
00:22:43.140
Now, I certainly think, I think many of you would agree, that on the right, Republicans,
00:22:50.260
Trump, Cash are enforcing the law, upholding our constitution, and fighting corruption.
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I think when you look at the data, you can see that it's a fact.
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He's targeting his political opponents because, well, they don't read the news.
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Where does this country end up going if this is the case?
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Because of the Democrats' willingness to say, I don't know, like publish the private
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phone records of a journalist like Adam Schiff did, or to arrest Trump's lawyers like we
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saw in Wisconsin and Georgia, to falsely accuse Trump of felonies, to falsely accuse a sitting
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president of being a traitor to his own nation and working for the Russian government.
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Is Trump just going to be like, no, no, no, we're completely okay that they did all that
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Certainly it's possible that Trump just says no.
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And then Democrats simply just go like, well, we're not going to be communists anymore and
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we're not going to violate the law and everyone just calms down.
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But I don't think anybody sees it as a realistic probability.
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They ask Barbara F. Walters, did you enjoy the movie Civil War?
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She says, you know, they invited me to the premiere in New York and I didn't go because
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I didn't want to be seen as legitimizing the movie.
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I would have bet that it was going to be a very terrible movie, but I watched it and
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thought they did a very, very good job of living against Americans, the sense of what
00:24:31.260
The movie didn't do any justice to the concept of civil war.
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It was a bunch of journalists who were on a vulture romp gloating over the death of
00:24:40.800
other people and it was just, there were some instances where you were like, that's
00:24:49.680
Really, I think the movie's goal was to show you the depravity of modern journalists and
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In the journalism industry, I've largely met 80% evil.
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On the ground covering conflict and crisis, mostly evil people.
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Now, I know that a regular vulture ain't evil, just it eats carrion, right?
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But these journalists choosing to go in and seeking to inflame and laugh and enjoying
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It wouldn't look like the first one, North versus South.
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Walter says, there wouldn't be soldiers in tanks.
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But that middle section of the movie, when they're traveling to D.C. and they're stopping,
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for example, at a gas station, that's exactly what I thought of, to be honest.
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It's anarchy that allows these subplots and subfights to happen.
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So you may have a rebel group fighting the government, but then you might have energy at
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the local level, where if your neighbor wants a piece of your farm, they just walk into
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And Americans don't realize that a civil war could unleash a whole series of micro events.
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They just want to have hope that things work out.
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There has been two years since you've published the book.
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But the conditions I describe in the book remain the same or worse.
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With Trump's return, there's been a drastic decline in the quality of the democratic system.
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And everything indicates the president wants to weaken it further.
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If he can, he will eliminate the checks and balances on the executive branch.
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I can imagine a scenario in which he's successful in creating a dictatorship.
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The only problem is, like her and Stephen Marsh, they ignore the fact that Democrats were
00:26:49.180
It's like their brains shut off when Democrats do things.
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Donald Trump and the gutting of USAID and these institutions was detrimental to the global
00:27:05.060
liberal economic order and the way they view democracy.
00:27:08.840
They view democracy as powerful, deep-stated, bureaucratic institutions doing whatever they
00:27:15.120
So when they see Trump gutting this stuff, they say he's ripping our institutions to shreds.
00:27:23.120
I can tell you outright, Donald Trump shuttering of these agencies can escalate the tensions.
00:27:30.060
Donald Trump and Cash Patel and Bongino and Pam Bondi going after Democrats can push us to
00:27:38.460
But I think it is right to hold these people accountable for what they've already done.
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On the left, they seem to completely ignore the fact that Democrats falsely charged Donald
00:27:49.000
Trump with felonies, falsely accused him of rape, falsely accused Brett Kavanaugh of gang
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rape, falsely accused Trump of civil fraud, raided his home, falsely arrested his lawyers
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She's asked, when did the U.S. join the Anacratic Club?
00:28:13.720
Now, what I want to add is many people may say, well, why are you talking about this, Tim?
00:28:16.140
And Barbara F. Walter did work for the CIA and did track when other countries would fall.
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So I do think, functionally, she brings up interesting points.
00:28:24.440
I just think she's biased and has ignored the fact that Democrats are the ones who started
00:28:30.060
She said, in December of 2022, we were at a plus five.
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It was the first time we hit it in history of the United States.
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This lasted until early 21, when it became clear that Trump would actually leave the presidency
00:28:40.300
peacefully and that his successor, Biden, wouldn't try to exploit the undemocratic features
00:28:52.640
The risk of civil war isn't just if you're in this Anacracy zone, which we now are, but
00:28:57.880
it's exacerbated if you get there very rapidly.
00:29:00.880
If you have a two-point or more change in the score, we've had at least a five-point
00:29:06.180
So this is extraordinarily rapid, which tends to be quite destabilizing.
00:29:12.780
The way civil wars break out, they're usually started by the group that's losing power or
00:29:18.240
So if Biden or Harris had won, then this group would be Trump supporters on the far right.
00:29:22.440
The MAGA movement is heavily driven by white Christians.
00:29:24.900
The declining population in the United States are whites.
00:29:27.660
And so had Biden won historically, this would be the group that you would see mobilized.
00:29:31.640
If Trump is successful in fixing elections, if he's able to suppress the vote, and if he's
00:29:36.780
able to purge the voting rolls, it becomes very hard for Democrats to win again.
00:29:42.960
If we have elections, but Trump always wins or the Republicans always win, then you'll probably
00:29:46.580
have more than half the American population essentially excluded from government.
00:29:51.720
And I think they would eventually begin to mobilize to demand reform.
00:29:54.200
But if it became clear that they were never going to get back into power through nonviolent
00:29:58.440
means, I could see extreme elements emerge within the Democratic Party.
00:30:07.620
Which political faction has got a voter base going around that's anti-Israel, anti-Zionist?
00:30:18.180
Anti-Zionist conservatives or right-wing individuals, however you want to call it, said don't vote
00:30:22.420
Well, famously, Nick Fuentes told people not to vote for Trump.
00:30:26.360
On the Democrat side, the anti-Zionist progressives told all their followers to vote for Joe Biden.
00:30:32.260
We here at TimCast had people super chatting on TimCast IRL saying they would vote for Joe
00:30:37.660
Biden because Joe Biden was more anti-Israel than Trump.
00:30:43.120
So you mean the Democratic Party, these progressives who voted for Joe Biden and advocated for the
00:30:47.620
Democratic Party, who were shooting up Tesla locations, firebombing Tesla vehicles.
00:30:51.640
Who have protested violently for years in black bloc for a variety of issues.
00:31:01.380
This is the insane world that these people live in.
00:31:05.020
Now that the popular vote went to Trump, Trump has the popular mandate, I would not be surprised
00:31:14.740
I'll grab a couple of rumble rants on the way out.
00:31:20.780
I do humbly request you guys share this video if you can.
00:31:23.820
You can follow me on X on Instagram at TimCast.
00:31:28.960
So we will grab some of your ramps before we send you on a raid to our friend Russell Brand.
00:31:38.840
We saw that Bigfoot video last week and it looked like a guy in a suit.
00:31:46.500
The bandwidth sucks almost all the time and we have to restart the video multiple times.
00:31:57.640
Pinochet says, in the second U.S. Civil War, the Harvard Shield should serve as an identifier of a legitimate military target.
00:32:06.120
My friends, thank you all so much for hanging out.
00:32:09.420
I'm going to gear up that rumble raid for our friend Russell Brand.
00:32:12.980
You know, sometimes I check and it's like, you know, they're not live.
00:32:19.200
Okay, I don't know if Russell is going live right now.
00:32:43.680
So I guess we'll just check Russell one more time before we get out of here.
00:32:50.460
And he has not appeared to be going live and doesn't look like we've got any word.
00:33:38.120
Hi, I'm Chris Gethard, and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast
00:33:54.420
I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison.
00:33:56.420
I've talked to people who survived mass shootings.
00:34:01.020
Somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends.