Skip to main content

What is the likelihood of Civil War in the US?

 Obviously, this is an impossible question to answer.  Some would say that the January 6, attack on the Capitol was the first nail in the coffin of democracy.  Recently, several studies have shown that nearly 40% of Americans believe that a strong president is more important than democracy.  The same percentage that believes that "White America is under threat".  There is a smaller percentage of the population 30% who believe that violence is acceptable.  Many Americans perceive democracy as a non-event as politics is a non-event.  They have seen the US government attempt to set up democracies in the Middle East (no not really but still) and they "see" the economy of Russia and China thriving -- again not really but with low information, voters will believe almost anything, that fits their social anxieties, and what the talking heads tell them

So it could happen, but:  Civil wars don't start by chance, they are engineered and it's hard to see what group in the US would push for that, because of the law of unintended consequences.  The instigator is rarely the winner of these actions.  A perfect example is US Senator Josh Hartley who was encouraging the mob on January 6th, until he realized that they were pissed, they didn't recognize him and he had to run for his life, in a very "Benny Hill" kind of way.  

Many Americans see democracy as the US president saw the village of Mai Lai "to protect the village you have to destroy the village".  Americans tend to be low information voters, years ago I was staying with some Americans in DC, at the Hay Adam hotel, across from the White House.  I said to one of the two Americans, "I wonder why the US flag is at half mast on the white house"  one of the two, said to me, "that's not the White House, it's too small!" (it was the White house -- he was a client no point in making him look like a bigger fool I just kept my mouth shut -- I have no skin in that game)

It was, but he didn't think the White House was such a small building!  Americans generally don't understand the meaning of democracy and care more about the football score than they do about the Supreme Court.  If they vote, they either vote the same way their parents did or based on stuff they heard on the TV the night before.  Americans care so little for democracy that fewer and fewer bother to vote!

There is no use in pointing out the obvious, most Americans are not listening anyway.

P.S. As a Canadian I am concerned with the strength of our border with the US, sometimes I wished that Trump had built the wall between the US and Canada, oh wait he didn't actually build a wall between USA and Mexico.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more