It seems like there's more and more tolerance for
political violence in America.
Turns out, there's also more and
more belief that it's going to get far worse before it gets better.
More than half of Americans polled say that they think a civil war
will erupt in the US in the near future.
I don't know exactly what that means or how big it would be, but
they do think violence is coming.
When asked to respond a statement in the next few years, there will be a civil war
in the US, 47.8% said, do not agree, so hey, there's your good news for the day.
36% said they somewhat agree, 8.4% agreed strongly in 5.3%, very strongly.
2.1% chose not to respond, which seems like a weird choice, take a position,
buddy, come on.
Anyway, why were they looking into this?
Why poll people about the odds of violence?
Well, the researchers say there's some things that have raised that
as a concern in their minds.
The first is an actual rise in violence, particularly firearm violence,
which is common in America and it's very high.
Second is an equally unprecedented increase in firearm purchasing that began
in the beginning of the pandemic and continues.
There's growing uncertainty about the stability and
value of democracy in the US.
And expansion into the mainstream of American public opinion of extreme false
beliefs about American society.
And fifth, growing support for the use of violence to accomplish political or social
objectives, things that we talk about, I'm gonna say every day on the show, actually.
And so, yeah, a lot of people worried about it,
they're worried about what it might have to say about our government.
If this violence happens then what happens to our form of government?
Two thirds say that this is a serious threat to democracy, 90% say it's very,
extremely important for the US to remain a democracy, that's more good news for you.
Unfortunately, more than 40% said having a strong leader is more
important than having a democracy.
And that right there is all the right needs to take this as far as they want.
They have a bunch of people who theoretically would be fine with
democracy.
If democracy produces right wing governance,
if democracy produces white majorities, then fine, let's do the democracy then.
But if it doesn't then that's not fundamentally what they were
interested in.
They were interested in the outcome democracy can provide it,
they'll be fine with that, but if not then they need a strong leader.
And in this case a strong leader is literally being contrasted with democracy.
So it implies that the strong leader would be doing things that most people
don't want.
And yet 40% are like, yeah, that's pretty important Bret, kind of scary data.
>> So when democracy fails in America, you gotta ask yourself
who is the beneficiary of that, and it is right wingers.
And a lot of that is systemically built into the system,
so to speak, because of the Senate.
And weird old rules that we add to the Senate that make it
less likely that the will of the people will make its way into action.
Now, when I look at polls like this, I won't put anyone else.
When I look at polls like this, you always ask what you think,
the person who's answering the polls is really being asked.
Lot of them think, yeah,
this is a question about whether I think the other side is crazy.
So that is a portion of the people answering yes,
I think there will be a civil war.
A lot of people aren't saying I'm gonna fight it, they're like,
those people are crazy, they're gonna fight it.
So it's an inflated number, but when I look at the fundamentals,
those ones that you listed, the first two are about like people buying firearms.
A lot of that in the wake of Covid, was a result of a lot of economic uncertainty,
and that was built into the fact that they weren't able to buy toilet paper.
And when you're afraid you're not gonna get toilet paper, you're afraid more
of general lawlessness than you are of the need for a civil war to achieve an end.
So I would write those off, but the rest of those really do make sense.
When people are uncertain about democracy, about their own, they are about
not just their beliefs, but generally like the will of the people making it into law.
And when there's a lack of civility between the parties who are disagreeing,
that is fertile ground for a movement that will end in a civil war.
But also a strong leader looking at that and
taking up the challenge to push us over the edge into that chaos.
And as we saw play out these last few months in the January 6th riots,
there were a lot of people who were like, I was just kidding.
Me, Mark Meadows, I was going along with it, Kevin McCarthy,
I was going along with it.
But when it seemed like we were actually going into an insurrection,
I the leader that I am literal leader in the title Kevin McCarthy,
it was like we're not gonna go into that.
We're not gonna go over the edge into that, but
they're not the ones fully in power.
The checks and balances were able to check Trump, but
he was fully willing as we learned to push us over the edge into that.
Because he doesn't care about America, whether it's in practice or
in promise, he doesn't care about any of it.
He proved he only cared about himself and
sending his minions into armed combat proves that.
And him ending up back in the white house and
just willing to reap the benefits of the dissolution of American democracy.
There is fertile ground for that to happen, which raises the likelihood is
gonna respond, yes, it's likely to happen if they're informed about the situation.
A couple of that with the people who are on the edge of taking up arms,
you got a big problem.
>> Yeah, yeah, it's a sort of headline like a Rorschach test,
like we would look at that and be like, God, that's a bad sign, but you're right.
I don't think Josh Holly or Rhonda Santis look at that and think, no,
we've gone too far, let's step back from the brink.
I think they say chiching, I can cash in on that,
Trump is a couple of big macs from popping, so I can step in and
I can pick up that movement and I can do whatever the hell I want, that's my fear.
>> And it's different.
>> I think a lot of people would be active participants.
Okay, final point.
>> Messaging in politics used to have an era of, well,
I disagree with them on the policy.
And a lot of people that were rich, were just, I want tax cuts, and
the other people like, I want job security and that's it.
But now the messaging weaponized by the landed aristocracy in
America to kind of to just broaden their
umbrella because there's not that many rich people in America.
They just wanna get the votes, unfortunately,
they're just throwing gasoline on these people.
And that's the problem saying that everyone else isn't just on the wrong
side of the issue respectfully, but evil to their core, baby murdering, godless.
>> Yeah.
>> Which is, that's bad messaging.
They convinced people in Germany that Jews were gonna steal their Children and
sacrifice them.
And now they've convinced them that trans second grade teachers are going to have
sex with and possibly cannibalize their children.
We're the bad guys for drawing these historic parallels, but
kind of feel like that's the playbook they're using very consciously.
>> And the thing is, [CROSSTALK] it's so easy with lives of Tiktok and Whatnot.
It is so easy to find all millions of examples of insane, crazy people to say,
yeah, here's proof, here's the ocular proof that these people are evil.
There's tons of people that you just couldn't find them to prove it, but
now you're just misrepresenting everybody on one side as the worst craziest of all.
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