Second American Civil War and other crisis scenarios - The Trump Factor

And I completely forgot Delaware existed because of course I did. I don't know what HI and AK are off doing, but if the US were to disintegrate to such an extent I can't imagine that they'd have any particularly strong ties to any of the factions.

Just to let it be said, if you had an "all blue states out" scenario, Colorado would split in two. Just because electorally it runs blue does not means the entire area of the state is. It pretty much is only the Denver Metro Area that runs super blue and colors the rest of the state that way. And it generates a lot of resentment that folks in Denver who are often completely ignorant of the needs, wants, wishes, complaints, grievances and issues surrounding many of the areas of the state dictate so much with so little redress.

You'd end up with at least 3/4 of the state's geography (including the headwaters of the Colorado River) seceding from Denver and the rest of the Front Range corridor and leaving it an isolated, starving city-state. (One that is absolutely dependent on the rest of the state's resources especially water. It has nothing to stand on its own otherwise. Not much agriculture base in or immediately around it, no minerals, no water sources that begin within its borders and insufficient infrastructure to keep things like the power going.)

@Major Tom Most states espeically blue states are like that where the big cities are blue and the rural counties are red.

If we break things down in those terms then it gets considerable more complicated where you have the US breaking up into city-states trying to join into political entities with other city-states and rolling over the rural counties in the process.

I think California is the only big state where most of its counties are blue and most red counties in California are weakly red.

edited 28th Jan '17 10:08:34 PM by MadSkillz

That is an issue, especially in the big Western states. When trying to see where I'd put Nevada, I checked the map and saw that Clinton had won just 2(!) counties, Clark and Washoe (where Vegas and Reno are respectively) and carried the state anyway.

Colorado would be a critical state to control because of the rivers, most notably the Arkansas, Platte, Rio Grande, and, of course, the Colorado River itself, and whoever controls that controls the Southwest.

I feel like my world is starting to take shape, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Trump or the political climate as it stands. Should I keep it here anyway?

For future reference, this is the 2016 electoral results in Colorado. I'm not from CO so I couldn't comment on it, but I'm trying to dissect it a little. Obviously, Denver and Boulder and such went blue, but it seems that there was a fair amount of support along the spine of the Rockies too?

edited 28th Jan '17 11:07:09 PM by LinkToTheFuture

@Major Tom: My impression is that there is a growing agglomeration in that part of Colorado. Or maybe people who ordinarily vote Republican but not in this case.

And that's a thing to consider because historically that's how we got West Virginia. Folks in the Appalachians didn't quite want to be in the whole Confederate thing (or rather were more persuaded/enticed/coerced/your-descriptor-here to stay in the Union) and thus broke away from Virginia proper and became their own state.

Quite a lot of the American West would not agree with secessionist movements. More than one state besides Colorado would literally split apart,

Which interestingly when you get down to brass tacks for this little soiree, the US already had the debate of popular vote vs equal representation vs city and rural and all that jazz. It occurred in 1787 and that's why we have the Electoral College and a bicameral Congress. (And you can blame Connecticut and Rhode Island for why.)

It's hit and miss along those areas, especially considering how sparsely populated some of them are. It's entirely possible that just because they voted Democrat last election does not mean they would side with secessionist movements. Some of those areas especially in the south can often be more swayed by certain things than others. (For example, many of those counties that went for Hillary in the last election solidly voted for Bush 43 in 2004.)

And then when you look at some areas like for example Pueblo County which is where I'm at, you find almost no Democrat presence outside city of Pueblo proper. So even carving up support by county is not a reliable metric.

^^Case in point, some counties in northern California have been thinking loudly about seceding from the state, presumably because in Cali the big cities tend to follow their interests and waltz over everybody else if the Owens Valley water war is any indication. I suspect that in case of a Calexit they'd become the West Virginia of the west.

Anyhoo, the setting I namedropped in the US politics thread is not quite as extravagantly different from the present day world as some of the ideas floated here; it's basically an alternate universe almost identical to ours, with three major differences:

• Thanks to different physical properties of the sulfate ion, volcanic eruptions in that universe cause heatwaves and "volcanic summers", not a volcanic winter.
• Eternal youth does exist as an uncommon hereditary condition, but since it's usually in the form of Not Growing Up Sucks it's considered a disease more than a desirable property.
• Most importantly, the New England hotspot has created a bunch of active volcanoes northwest of the Cape Verde islands. This archipelago is the heart of a mid-sized country with an extreme population density, and the key setting.

And scientists there (one of them is an example of the abovementioned Not Growing Up Sucks condition, and later became a politician) have named a pathogenic protozoan Antropospora eumerina which in 2017 caused a major outbreak in the United States. While not Trump's fault, his policies and his allowance for Congress greatly aggravated its extent. That all effective medicines are produced in other countries - many of which not impressed by the Trumpian flavour of US foreign policy - didn't help. It caused negligible death tolls but a severe economic crisis and demographic collapse in parts of the Midwest.

We have to be clear now: in the current climate any rebellion would get roflstomped.

Historically, just about every rebellion in US history ended up as that. Stood little or no chance against regular US Army or even National Guard/militia. (With one exception...)

Now did all of those amount to nought politically? Nope. Perhaps the most successful of them, one led by a lad named Daniel Shays is a big reason why we have the Constitution of the United States and all the rights and separations of powers we take for granted today. When his little band of plucky farmers met the US Army under Washington at Springfield Armory, he stood no chance militarily, but the political ramifications afterward were massive and directly led to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. (And the end of the root cause of his rebellion.)

Successful rebellions typically get some part of the military on their side.

But not always.

And these would be the reasons why my setting does not involve any armed resistance. The plague itself did eat up Trump's political capital to the point that it wasn't necessary anymore, too.

I might be a little off-topic with this post, for which I apologize.

I'm planning on writing a story that uses the 2016 US elections last year as a plot point, where on voting day in November 8, terror attacks across America ensued, with everyone in the government as the victims, Taking over the United States is a group calling themselves "The Messengers of God," who begin to turn the United States into a theocratic dictatorship ala The Republic of Gilead from The Handmaids Tale. Remnants of the Democratic and Republican parties and elements of the US Armed Forces form a new government in Portland, Oregon.

Now here are my questions that should be on-topic:

1. How much of the military should be loyal to the Messengers of God-dominated government, and which elements of the military should be loyal to the Democrat and Republican remnants?

2. How should the United States be divided? My idea of dividing the United States is similar to this◊ from the Spanish Civil War, but which areas should be held by the Messengers of God-led theocracy, and which areas should be held by the government led by the Democrats and Republicans?

1. Nobody? I find it rather unlikely that a wholly covert organization would have significant backing by the military. Maaybe it'd work if we are dealing with a pro-military group, but a theocracy? Implausible.
2. My impression is that it'd depend on how the split arises.

By everyone do you just mean POTUS and Congress or the entire civil service and even the SCOTUS, because the country would hardly just stop, even if the elected branches vanished. You'd need a good reason for the bureaucracy to take orders from the MO Gs. Remember at this point its still the appointees of President Obama. Then there are the 50 still intact state governments and Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, etc.

You may want to skip forward two years to make the rising a result of the midterm elections. You can plausibly have an incompetent civil service and a ruined military by then on top of a demoralized population. (Those are similar to the conditions that allowed the fall of Tsarist Russia to a small group of disciplined mutineers).

As for divisions, the MO Gs could (relatively) easily take all of the South. If that is their key support base. Remember, the Bible Belt term. If they have to fight for the South, well think about where half of he military comes from. Also. evangelicals won't be a big chummy family. If they focus on religion, they'll find distinctions b/w Baptists, Methodists, the outright scammers teaching wealth gospel (who actually have the best chance of building a stable caste system), etc.

Democrats will probably hold the cities and the entire west coast in general. They also have a more than decent chance of holding the Bos Wash Megalopolis (necessitating that the MO Gs find a new capital). Republicans—or their remnants who haven't joined the MO Gs—will likely hold the countryside and the Midwest in general. In institutional terms, republicans may inherit the bulk of the military and police forces, while democrats inherit the scholars, the entire civil service, and most of the skilled and artistic population. (Rather like the civil war scenarios discussed earlier).

Resurrecting this because the idea struck me for a somewhat dystopian vision where in the 2030s political polarization continues to only get worse and after the election of a charismatic but controversial Democrat to the presidency and a populist blue wave sweeps the House (but not the Senate), conservative strongholds, elements of the military, and alt-right types rise up in revolt against the Federal government. By the time the story takes place, the Federal government only has total control of parts of the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, the West Coast, and Hawaii. The rebels have finally seized Washington, DC, forcing the Federals government to relocate to Boston. In the West, a string of shocking military defeats has lead to California and the Pacific Northwest completely cut off from the remnant of the US and each other. Meanwhile, the rebels have fractured into a number of squabbling factions that are running a serious risk of falling apart, much to the frustration of the rebellion's leaders.

There are two obstacles I'm trying to fix in order to make this work as a setting for a story-again, this is not really meant to reflect real life-which are "what about the nuclear arsenal?" and "What about NATO?"

I've been looking for a thread like this, in order to ask a related question. Nelly, if a civil war like the one described here did indeed happen, what would be the best place to go to wait it out?

Most likely they'd have to fend for themselves. Russia would be positively giddy at the US being to decided to defend it's ally.

(Still incredibly late)

I was thinking more along the lines of "why wouldn't NATO just intervene on the side of the government?"

In light of what's going on with Puerto Rico, I have this to ask in relation to this thread: For a Second American Civil War scenario, how to factor Puerto Rico in? If one wants to write in Hurricane Maria that is.

Angry Puerto Ricans assassinating Trump/Republican politicians/influential rightwing figures out of revenge?

For my idea, I'll relate it to how my Second American Civil War scenario in Assault Knight Ronin works. You can refer to here.

My idea is that, while the United States is in civil war, a military junta seizes power in Puerto Rico. The ringleader of the junta, backed by the same shadowy organization that started the civil war in the United States, seizes a majority of the main island and the surrounding smaller islands, and proclaims independence.

I've been developing a story that takes place well after the United States collapses (ultimately bringing Canada and northern Mexico with it). No one state is a monolith, so I decided to cut states up and regroup based on a lot of factors.

Here's what happens when an entire continent gets shunned after a world war, ideological divides get steeper, sea levels rise, and Yellowstone blows up:

• Cascadia: southern British Columbia, western Washington and Oregon, northern and central California
• Deseret: southeastern British Columbia, eastern Washington and Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, most of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada
• Lakota: parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming
• The Townships (basically just completely disorganized prairie): southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, southwestern Manitoba, parts of Montana and North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and eastern Colorado
• The Great Lakes Alliance: southeastern Manitoba, Ontario, eastern North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan (which itself splits into 2 states), Iowa, and northern Illinois
• New England / etc: Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, eastern / northern Pennsylvania
• The Confederacy: southern/central Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennissee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi
• Texas: most of Texas (obviously), Oklahoma, northwestern Louisiana, most of Arkansas, Missouri
• Aztlan: southern Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas
• Missing because sea levels: Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, coastal Virginia / North Carolina / South Carolina / Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama has a chunk taken out of it

And that's not even getting into how those states' boundaries were entirely redrawn!

edited 25th Nov '17 12:42:44 AM by AwSamWeston

My story's crisis scenarios are a deal more fantastical but all the same they involve Trump just as much in his capacities or more appropriately lack thereof as President.

First and foremost I need to mention the "Sandfield War". After an attempt by some powerful moneyed interests to deal with the entire town the heroes live in failed, a total lunatic named Caine Dekeren took over and involved a group called the Umbral Horde.

This just after the world went Unmasqued World and reintroduced magic and other fantastic elements.

The Trump government basically tries to pretend it all doesn't exist out of a hope this will make it fade away.

The Umbrals basically splintered into a bunch of branches after Caine's death...and there's the thing. I already thought of which one the government would go after first, but I do not know whether that assumption is right.

The first branch, Umbral Horde Carta \ the Lore Keepers is led by Antonius Lucidius, and is based out of Baja California. They most closely resemble our idea of a crazy cult - they're focused on morale, theology and trade. Including drugs in that trade thing which is why I thought Trump would decide to go after them first - they're middling in strength, and are trying to establish a city.

The most militarily powerful bunch is led by Aaron Cascade, Umbral Horde Ragos. They worship a war god, and are basically a traveling mercenary band, not really having a standing base.

Second strongest is Umbral Horde Caith, a bunch of insane sense freaks and hedonists led by Elwood Sexton. They are based in India, and are trying to some success to make a new Thuggee cult to cover their activities.

Umbral Horde Blivia is middling in terms of troop numbers, but are focused on bioweapons and poisons. They're led by Tobias Hainemann, a rancid man styling himself after a reaper. They mostly eke out a living on islands and deep jungles, trying to live near poisonous life.

And lastly is the dark horse - Umbral Horde Fina, led by an awkward nerd named Reiji. They're focused entirely on learning esoteric magic and live out of it Siberian citadel cities. They probably have the best, ahem, trump card in that its implied they have some form of deal going with Putin.

I try to tie together Urban Fantasy and in this case a more typically fantastic set up with real politics. So I'm trying to see where a Republican led USA would go in an Unmasqued World and which Umbral Horde group they'd pick a fight with first.