By 2040 or so, because most young Americans (and immigrants) are migrating to the few large metropolitan areas in states where jobs are plentiful, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent of the population will choose 70% of the senators. And the 30% minority choosing 70% of the Senate will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70% majority who are only getting to vote for 30% of the Senators.
I do not see how the United States is going to survive this. Not as a democracy, anyhow. We have a name for a nation where 30% of the population rules the other 70% of the population. That name is *not* democracy or even republic. That name is “tyranny”.
Americans have thus far shown a remarkable tolerance for living in a police state, as long as that police state is primarily targeting brown people. (For details of this police state, read Radley Balko’s columns in Reason and the Washington Post). But once 30% of the population is using police state powers to impose their rule upon 70% of the population, they may find that the tolerance of Americans is limited. I don’t see a good outcome from that end state. At least, not an outcome that is nonviolent.
– Badtux the Demographics Penguin
2040? Really think it will take that long.
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It’s happening slowly. Right now it’s 46% of the population dictating to 54% of the population. As more of the population moves to the few states with viable economies and away from the MAGA states, it’s going to get increasingly worse.
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We’ve had an education on the utility of guns to ward off tyranny. Concentration camps for children have been set up and no one took up arms against it. Not even the ones against being fascist.
That’s how it will go when the government strengthens to the point where they come for our guns. It will be incremental, and no single point will make EVERYBODY fight. Tyranny will be ‘fought’ one front door at a time. Almost all of that fighting will involve meekly handing over guns, or laying motionless as the guns are taken.
The most rabid gun owners will die with just one gun from their collection in their hands. Their survivors will see no inheritance, as everything will be confiscated by the state.
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Uhm, nobody is going to take up guns to protect brown immigrant children. That’s not how America works, or has ever worked. Sad to say.
When it affects daily life, the majority will start getting upset. Right now, it’s not really affecting daily life for the people in the winner states….
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The FutureTyrannical .gov is not going to give a shit if you keep your guns. As long as you just fondle them at home. It’s not worth FuTyr.gov’s labour costs to collect them. Just don’t use the guns to try to oppose the .gov, or you’ll wind up as dead as that dickhead Lavoy Finicum from the Oregon bird sanctuary shitforbrains mob. Wave your pistols, ARs and AKs all you want. Matters little to squaddies in body armour who know how to teamwork their crossfire, or the guy at the controls of a helicopter gunship.
Gun-fondlers are no serious threat to TPTB because they’re antisocial at heart and incapable of cooperating with other would-be rebels who are just as disagreeable as they are. Plus, gun-fondlers LOOOOOOVE authority. They’ll keep licking those boots that are stomping on their face, even as they starve in filth. Any time a few get out of line, they will be shot down as an example to the others. You think a futureTrump who’s actually served in the military is going to be as kid-gloves as Obama had to be with the Bundy Bunch? Slaughtering the most rabid gun owners will be a perk, not a bug, for the ruling demons to come.
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C’mon, 2040 is an entire generation away! You’re assuming that the zeitgeist of Amerika, and Western civilisation as a whole, will remain the same. You’re too optimistic thinking that politics then will be linear from the way they are today.
Sudden financial collapse(s) that disrupt the just-in-time supply chain in such a way that shit breaks down in ways that can’t be fixed are gonna happen. It’s going to be like falling down a flight of stairs. Civilisation might not tumble ALL the way to the bottom in one go. But every time it falls, it’s going to regain its balance a few steps lower, with more bruises, pain, and new broken bones. Dimitri Orlov encapsulated the likely scenario for that in his two “Collapse” books.
Then there’s Peak Oil and Climate Change. The rate of increase of greenhouse gases is accelerating each year, and that’s before methane from melting permafrost and deep-sea clathrates kick the dynamic into exponentiality. The hundreds of thousands of refugees lurching into Europe from desert conflict zones are only the beginning. At the moment, they’re begging to get in. What happens when they start gunning? Remember the trajectory of how the Goths interacted with the Roman Empire. Canadians should keep that in mind when they deal with Amerikkkans fleeing the routine 140-degree Fahrenheit days in Arizona etc. by 2030.
Our current pattern of civilisation runs on oil, especially the food part. We basically eat hydrocarbons, when you count in nitrogen fertilisers, mechanised farming, transporting food across countries and continents… Oil won’t be there at a price that billions of people can afford. So billions will die. And I reckon that hundreds of millions of them are going to be pissed off enough that they’ll fuck some shit up as they’re going down.
If there was going to be continuity, I’d say your 30% ruling 70% might happen. Hell, the 1% already controls the 99%. What I foresee happening is that everything will go OUT of control. I’m glad I got to live through what’s likely to be the height of human civilisation (at least in terms of materialistic comforts). I hope my end won’t be too painful or drawn-out. I’ve got a decade left to work. I would not be surprised if my final years will be spent passing out government-issued euthanasia tablets and counselling people on the best way to end their lives, instead of trying to PREVENT suicide as I do now. The last tablet I touch will be the one that goes in my mouth…
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I wouldn’t argue against this for a second.
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Well I wish someone would. Because I’d love to be wrong. As it is, I think to myself “I sound like one of the paranoid schizophrenics” when I’m in the wards discussing politics and current events with he patients. (Which I do as a way of assessing their mental state rather than asking the standard questions that they hear every shift: “Are you hearing voices? Do you feel like killing yourself?” They get sick of that, because the queries are “confronting” as Aussies say.) When patients agree with me (they often take it further, weaving in the Illuminati, demons, etc. to the doom-ish mindset) I have to conclude that yep, they’re loony. (Not to their face, of course. I am always MC, “medicolitically correct.”)
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I am an observer in life and at 68 there’s been nothing close to this. The Iraq war for lies was hideous enough but this is something else. Unless something very dramatic happens with the elections we are not ever getting out of this. Have said for some time we have lost and now with Trumper and his minions the press giving as always credibility where there is none and all the many things being undermined to screw “We the People” for years to come – yes we have lost and totally screwed. I will be leaving for Mexico again soon and this time have no specific time frame on returning. Only if I have to.
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Soylent Green…..
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One Fly, Mexico is a pretty good proxy for the U.S. in twenty years, on the security/safety/wealth distribution scale. The question is, will Mexico fall with the U.S. to a lower level, or hold roughly its current level of “stability”?
The Mexican level is good for a while, I suspect…but I’m not sure I want to be a moderately wealthy person in Mexico, because you are the target, almost all the time, for the police.
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I don’t think Mexico will fall to our level CP88. Some are making more money than ever before. Problems of course. Hopefully, the new president will make a difference.
Police look at me and don’t give a shit.
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Do you read the Fred On Everything blog? He’s a cranky old fart, and rather right-wing in a lot of his politics, except for his disgust at the military-industrial complex. He bailed on the U.S. for Mexico years ago and likes it pretty much. Prolly helps that he has a younger Mexican wife to help him navigate through the twists and turns of the culture.
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Yes a bedroom dictionary. Will take a look at Fred.
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I think your analysis is not quite correct, but I’ll take it up on my own blog.
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Which I did.
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What about the House? The younger browner population will have a majority in this legislative body. With this we will have a natural compromise. The electoral college will tilt to the 30% but the voise of the young will heard.
AC2usn
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Yeah, that’s what Comrade Misfit claims. But: Look up “librum veto”. By having the power to effectively stop national governance, they have the power to force their agenda upon the rest of the nation even if the House is not under their control. They already exercised the librum veto to deny Obama his Supreme Court pick despite the fact that this left the Supreme Court under strength. Expect that they will continue to do this in order to keep the Supreme Court packed with conservative ideologues who will allow them to impose whatever they want upon the majority.
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