Chaos

Paul Blumenthal reports on the 16 year trend to de-emphasize the threat of domestic right-wing terrorism.

The president and his aides support gutting efforts to counter violent extremism stemming from white supremacy and other racist ideologies in order to divert funding to anti-jihadist measures.

At the same time, violent incidents, including murders, committed by far-right extremists continued to rise.

While police efforts shouldn't be maligned, there have been troubling incidents.

It’s not just the violence the nation saw in Charlottesville, but also right-wing protests in Berkeley, Sacramento, Portland and Huntington Beach, where police took a hands-off approach.

C. Wright Mills wrote that Marx differed from other social scientists in foreseeing a "qualitative break" in society brought on by revolution. And Chris Harman documents the history of violent class struggle. If the U.S. "alt-right" is pushing for a violent revolution, are they likely to win?

Of course, the Right points to Leftists as the ones doing the plotting. Data scientist Sam Harris argues that civil war most strongly correlates to the number of teens versus the number of people 35 and older in a country. Lacking enough teens, he claims violent revolution won't happen here.

But it seems clear that we have a president who is fostering differences rather than bringing people together. Yet, Jefferson Morley has hopes that two groups can find common ground.

[I]f the resistance and the #Never[Fuckface] movement could rise above their differences and stand together against incipient fascism, they could show the rest of the country how “we the people” can rescue our government. They would show the Congress that the time has come to put country ahead of party and to impeach a disgraceful president.

I know, I know. It’ll never work: Americans are too divided. Which is true. It’ll never work until Americans learn how to put aside lesser differences in service of a greater good. Then it just might work, if it's not too late.

Update (August 22):  Max Pensky and Nadia Rubaii are optimistic that the U.S. is not heading toward genocide.

Update (August 23):  Rick Gell argues against counter-protesting.

Update (August 25):  Roger Stone expects a violent reaction to any attempts to impeach von Clownstick.

Try to impeach him, just try it. You will have a spasm of violence in this country, and insurrection, like you’ve never seen.

Update (August 31):  Even though some fans have been critical, there's a solid base of supporters that like von Clownstick because he's an asshole. I'm guessing a lot of them are armed and Charles Blow fears that Roger Stone may be right.

If these people should come to believe — as [Fuckface] would have them believe — that establishment systems have unfairly and conspiratorially acted to remove from office their last and only champion — another thing [von Clownstick] would have them believe — what will they do?