The government does have a great deal of power. But it's power confined by convention and popular edict. If the government does too much too fast, there's the threat of rebellion.

The police and military have power because they hold a monopoly on violence and no one wants to get in a shooting war with either. The government leadership hold power as long as they hold the support of key institutions.

The state isn't the enemy, the state is Order,

And if everything is ordened, then nothing can change, nothing improves,
The state should maintain the order of the people,
And let go of how the people manage things,

This way society will have chaos to break loose the weakness,
And have order to rebuild it.

And in the end, through a mixture of chaos and order, you evolve stronger.
Weak perish, strong survive.

But **why**

it is a cycle

Like, if the military turned around and said "fuck off leadership".... What would they do?

Dr. Wol gets it. The state is order. It can be a good force or a bad force.

They would have no power

It depends. What if the CIA said "fuck off Trump" but the US Army responded "no you don't"

That's why it's a balance of power between institutions which hold their own influence and power.

I mean, the CIA really has no physical power

They just have dirt on people

They hold *alot* of pseudo-miiltary power. Particularly if the revolution is localized.

you are correct Grenade,

but the military is there to ensure the sovereignty of the state.

The people in it (the soldiers) stay loyal because they believe the state is there to protect the people they love.

They are the fist of society

Imagine what you could do if you could dox anyone at will, if you knew what everyone was doing, and had a couple trained assasins and hackers at your disposal.

But that's a side issue.

and well, its the Central Intelligence Agency,

All they do is gather intel, its not the Central Elimination Agency 😉

My point is, why do all these individuals work together at all? And literally play house.

I just seems so impossible yet here we are

strength in unity,

They want to protect their own, so they stand together to fight off those that would be a danger to their families

This is also why people go around proclaiming the 2nd amendment as the "ultimate defense against tyranny."

A large, sudden organized force can violently revoke the monopoly on violence of the state.

Yes. And in tyrannical states, the military is specifically designed so that members cannot defect easily without exposing themselves and or their families to grave danger.

And any incipient rebellion cannot spread easily.

as much as i like the 2nd amendment,

Organised force is not gonna happen, too many people, too many aggression, and too many targets,

But no organisation

Yeah, the organization element is the big issue. Really, the bigger issue is how easily any potential leadership could be targeted.

But organization springs up quickly given the proper threats. And decentralized organization is actually advantageous in a hypothetical 21st century civil war.

Because it becomes harder to eliminate.

you get a guerillia war

That's what a hypothetical civil war would probably look like, TBH

and at that point, you'd better hope the state still has a shred of humanity left

Unless something cleaved people apart politically in clean lines beforehand.

I think at that point, we can assume the breakdown of order means the destruction of just about everything and extreme bloodshed.

nah, an American Civil war will not end in extreme bloodshed

The hypothetical civil war scenario only makes sense with very widespread popular backing.

Honestly, it's so hard to figure out how a new American civil war would end, it's probably better not to speculate.

The most important factors are the kinds of factors that are hard to predict.

It's also the kind of thing that's going to get everyone on here put on a watchlist. Care to change topic?

an american civil war will end with a very 1 sided massacre,

considering the people who want to abolish guns, are against

-The Police
-The Military
-The NRA
-The people who like guns
-The State

And the ones who don't wanna abolish guns favor the current ruling party 😄

you're not gonna be put on a watchlist for speculating civil war,

We're not plotting to overthrow the government, in fact,

I for one support the current US government 😄

Still, no one else is in awe that this has worked and more or less stayed together at all?

That's what people *say* but so much is dependent on how it starts.

Did the state cleave cleanly? Are there divisions within states? Is it a set of guerilla actions? Is it more of an open rebellion? Is the rebellion contained to one region? Who is most directly opposing the government? Where is the foreign support?

all these questions can dramatically change the outcome.

One thing that can be said, is that if the US descends into a true civil war, everyone (and I mean everyone, including outside the US) loses. It's an outcome better avoided IMO.

I actually am not,

I had to do school projects, where 8 people have to make a product, and none of us know what we're doing, yet the project was completed succesfully


Reality is pretty much the same on a larger scale :D

A bunch of idiots being forced to work together to finish something favorably

You would think. But human society has a weird way of finding stable regions and holding together.

Humans were built, in some sense, to create societies of one form or another.

If the system wasn't somewhat stable, it would collapse into something stable (barring world-ending or species-ending events)