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To be fair, life's better when you don't have to rely on the guns. If you're willing to work together to make the pie bigger for everyone, peacefully, you get further.

Which is why you have to occasionally knock the people willing to exploit the peaceful order, off.



Completely agree. But I think something lost in this is how much violence the "end of history" state of affairs increasingly relied on to keep that "peaceful" context in place - among the reasons Russia walked into the Ukraine was that Russia considered the Ukraine to be its buffer against NATO, which it viewed as genuinely an existential threat. The Middle East has been in a state of war for 20 years now, the US drug wars in Central and South America have had absolutely disastrous consequences, and the level of environmental destruction we've outsourced to other parts of the world would preclude a lot of our current economic practices if we tried to do them at home. Even in the US, the Mangione killing highlighted this - UHC was the absolute top in denying health care claims, an activity with actual deaths associated with it. Just because the power centers aren't threatened doesn't mean there's not violence present in the system. In the west, we've relied a lot on the fact that the majority of the people with guns have typically been further out in the periphery than us, and all those guns have been pointed at other people on our behalf - our peace is not everyone's peace.


A nit: "Ukraine" (not "the Ukraine).

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18233844


And the violence of the next system is going to be far, far greater.

But the others will have their peace.


Which takes guns. And back at square 1.


I don’t know that it takes guns. If we moved to, say, ranked-choice voting and a multi-party system, the more extreme elements of our country would probably be sidelined.


Did you see the bill introduced the other day?

H.R.3040 - To prohibit the use of ranked choice voting in elections for Federal office.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3040


I did not. Talk about a blatant attempt to power grab, though. Hopefully it never makes it out of committee.


And if they feel sufficiently shut out of the political process they'll rely on their guns. If you think the US is immune from insurgent dynamics, please read more widely. I think you'd find it particularly worthwhile to look into the collapse of Yugoslavia, which also had a federal system.


Well, we did have a civil war some time ago! But given the gross imbalance of military capability between the state and the citizen, I’m not worried today about a successful violent overthrow of the USA.


That was equally true in Yugoslavia, and indeed in Afghanistan. I think it's extremely naive to assume the US is immune from this. When I told people 10-15 years ago that I thought the US was ripe for and vulnerable to autocratic political leadership nobody took it seriously either, yet here we are.


It still takes them.

You need to present it as a choice: you either bring about ranked-choice voting and a wider range of political parties so that issues can be dealt with peacefully, or, face real consequences for attempts to block the efforts at peace.


A few smaller guns used judiciously will achieve that purpose. You don't need everyone using a tank in a Mexican standoff just to have peace.


glances at the MAD stockpile I’m not sure that is really true, eh?




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