What’s the difference between a civil war and a revolution to overthrow the rich?

  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 days ago

    How would a civil war be fought in the US in 2025? Where would the battle lines be drawn? It seems like if any skirmishes were to break out anywhere, the police and the military would come in and reestablish order very quickly. Maybe if there was fighting within the military itself, but then whichever side controlled the most strategically important military bases would win quickly and easily. I just don’t see it happening.

    I could see some kind of guerilla action, however. I could see assassinations, shootings and bombings, kind of like what happened in Northern Ireland in the 90s. Maybe cyber attacks as well.

    • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 days ago

      The 30 years or so before the Civil War kicked off was a time of outbreaks of street fighting, insurgencies, guerrilla actions, and general instability. The uniformed, shooting war didn’t just materlialize out of nothing.

      And as for the military, they can kill huge numbers of people, but that doesn’t mean they can control an unwilling civilian population. Hell, they couldn’t even control a few miliion starving-ass Afghans.

      Over three hundred million Americans, 200 million of whom hate your guts? Endless insurgency.

    • EvacuateSoul@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      That type of diffuse, guerilla warfare is how modern civil wars generally go.

      The first several episodes of It Could Happen Here are revealing on this.