A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies
James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies".
If you prefer, you can call it the Third American Revolution:
In political science, a revolution (Latin: revolutio, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures.
Really, what is happening right now is both: a war between conflicting organized groups, and a war to rapidly transform society’s state structures. It is not yet meaningfully violent, although violence has been employed, until now exclusively by the entrenched side.
Whatever you call it, we are at war. We know 1776. We know 1861. It is clear now that we are in the middle of a third one. Just as in the first several years of the earlier two, it is too early to tell which side will win.
The first real trigger was likely the regime’s reaction to the 2008 financial crisis. By far, popular support was against any bailout of financial institutions – let the chips fall where they may. I still remember the time TARP first came up for a vote: from memory, something like 90% plus of contacts from the public to congress expressed the desire to vote no – which happened the first time the vote came up.
Maria Bartiromo, on CNBC at the time, scream into the camera, “COME ON, PEOPLE!” apparently, you have to be dumb to not want to give billionaires more billions. Well, congress kept voting until they got it “right.” The Tea Party was born from this and from Ron Paul’s run for president that same year. Both the Tea Party and Ron Paul’s run were hijacked.
Then came the Obama years – relatively quiet domestically, but clearly steps were put in place to transform America even further to the left. However, anytime someone spoke up about it, they were labeled racist, etc.
So, instead of speaking, they voted in Trump. Out of twenty or so republican candidates for president in 2016, he survived. He survived because he was the only one who fundamentally spoke against the regime and for the people (Rand Paul a little, but he couldn’t match Trump’s personality).
The deplorables voted Trump into office. While he spoke in revolutionary terms, he was nowhere near prepared enough to act on his words. We all remember; we kept asking ourselves: is he playing four-D chess? What’s going on? When will he turn over the winning card? It never happened.
In fact, he gave us Operation Warp Speed.
Meanwhile, the other side planned and schemed. Biden was voted in, the most popular president ever. More votes than ever. Magical midnight reversals, truckloads of ballots, etc. Thousands went to prison because they thought something was fishy about the outcome and they wanted to make their concerns known.
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Trump won the election in 2024. Admit it, you thought that this would never happen. I thought it would never happen. They tried suing him, convicting him, putting him in prison, killing him. None of it worked. The opponents didn’t even try to steal the election – or, if they did, they were unable to do so.
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Something was different this time. There was little talk coming out of the Trump team between election night and his inauguration. Sure, we heard the words: DOGE, end the wars (but not the slaughter in Gaza), nominees including RFK, Jr., Gabbard, Hegseth, Patel. No, not saints, but a sea change from what I have seen in my lifetime.