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Comment by plankers | Hacker News Reader

"Alternatively—and more likely—Americans must wait for another of the political realignments that ended previous spells of intense partisanship, including the antebellum rivalry that stirred Abraham Lincoln’s appeal to “the better angels of our nature”. The civil war, which led to one such rearrangement, started the following month."

Is it just me or has war fever begun to seep its tendrils into our more reputable and even-headed publications? It doesn't seem to be a thing that people are willing to talk about directly. Not that I blame them, war is scary.

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Is it fair to say that both sides see the primary issue as demographic change? (Right: illegal immigration. Left: transition to majority-minority society.)

If that analysis is correct, then tensions can't be resolved unless demographics resolve. While I can imagine the US becoming a more closed society, it's hard to imagine ethnic cleansing of the citizenry.

This is a hard topic to discuss within the constraints of the HN guidelines.

I'd say both sides are engaging in identity politics, buoyed by technology, centered around the far left and far right. These groups attribute malice to any opposition, and attack their own more moderate adherents. Demographics won't change this, the institutions and groups themselves will shift in focus in a bid to retain their own power.

Take immigration for instance. I'd like to improve border security and reduce illegal immigration. However, also provide amnesty and citizenship for the existing undocumented workers and their children. If they have been paying taxes, they should get a fast pass to citizenship. I'd like to also drastically expand legal immigration by uncapping all skilled immigration quotas, relax chain migration restrictions, and dropping arbitrary country restrictions.

Accordingly, vocal subgroups would call me racist or that I hate America for that position. It doesn't fit cleanly in either left or right camps.

> Is it fair to say that both sides see the primary issue as demographic change? (Right: illegal immigration. Left: transition to majority-minority society.)

What is a "majority-minority society", and what makes it the primary issue for the left?

"Majority-minority" means a population where no one group is more than 50%. Alternately, a population where two minorities combine to form more than 50% (which is a mathematically equivalent formulation).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_minority

The progressive narrative holds that inevitable demographic change in the wider US will eventually yield electoral and policy victory, similar to what has happened in California.

They are not mathematically equivalent. Counterexample: 10 groups, each with 10% of the population, qualifies under your first definition but not under your second definition.

You're right, I was imprecise. Here's the Wikipedia definition:

a jurisdiction where one or more racial and/or ethnic minorities (relative to the whole country's population) make up a majority of the local population

I wasn't speaking of ethnic cleansing... The U.S. Civil War was fought over many things, but the desire to wipe out an ethnic group wasn't one of them. Yes, there were obvious ethnic issues at play, but I'm not sure where you're getting ethnic cleansing from.

> it's hard to imagine ethnic cleansing of the citizenry.

The truth is, no matter what the country or political climate, it's always difficult to imagine ethnic cleansing would happen in your country. The other day an excerpt from a German Jewish newspaper was posted (either to hacker news or my twitter feed -- I do not remember which), it was dated the day before Hitler put into action "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question". In it, the Jewish editor is talking about the rumors and talk of the extermination being put into practice, and they dismiss it off-hand as just being political clout. That it was put forward to advance the party's image among right-wing circles, nothing more.

No matter what the subject matter, whether it be forced deportation, concentration camps, or out-right genocide, it is always difficult to believe that it is being done if it is in your country.

I would argue (only somewhat tongue in cheek) that our best hope for averting civil war is the obesity crisis - we are too out of shape and too unwilling to risk hunger, to turn our very real animosity for each other into armed conflict.

That mainstream Dems would speak well of GWB, tells me the divide is not so much Dem vs Repub, but along other axes like Globalist vs Nationalist. Roger Moore speaks to that, the anti-WTO of the post NAFTA agreement and Trump’s eventual election point to that as well. Elites and globe trotters like Globalization, Unions, the rust belt and “uneducated” distrust globalization.

  That mainstream Dems would speak well of GWB

I don't understand this at all. Did you mean GHWB (#41) rather than GWB (#43)?

No, #43. I see him as the fist “bro” president, too quick to war, but ultimately a globalist. Obama took the warring and globalism and ran with it and many Dems lament that today’s republicans aren’t more like 43, because other than some minor differences, they are cut from the same cloth. Rightly or wrongly, I was for mr Gore, despite his bad rep, i.e. PMRC, etc.

I think Dems speak well of GWB both because (1) he was objectively preferable to liberals who care about good government, and (2) it's useful as a partisan to use GWB against Republicans. Obviously 1 is a valid reason and 2 isn't, but I think both are at play.

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