On the Edge of?
From Raw Story: As the most divisive presidential election in recent memory nears its conclusion, some armed militia groups are preparing for the possibility of a stolen election on Nov. 8 and civil unrest in the days following a victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton.Three years ago, in the course of a discussion about RW attempts to rehabilitiate ( Read more... )
Views in Oakland are probably a little more messy than in SF. The local bastion of liberal politics is Berkeley, which is small enough to feel heat from more conservative areas like Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, and Fairfield, so there's a kind of tension in Oakland. Plus the poverty that comes from the balkanization of centuries of racism, of course...
I bring this up to point out how quickly perspectives can change, with even a tiny change in location in the US.
From where I stand, the chances of some kind of armed uprising are unbelievably small. Any group that really thinks it's time for a revolution, or coup, or even general violent uprising, is absurdly small. Even the vast majority of the people supposedly at 'ground zero' of this scenario - Trump's rallies - are way too patriotic to take up arms against their own countrymen. At most they'll gather around a bunch of government buildings and wave weapons, and perhaps drum up some kind of "occupy" movement, or a bid to take over some god-forsaken federal land in Oregon or Montana (Utah's too mormon, the Dakotas and Wyoming are too barren) and it will get derided and hen-pecked on all sides until the military comes in, starves it, then sweeps it gently away with a mop.
The interesting thing about politics in this country is, the more deeply you pay attention to the process at the ground-level, the less cynical you tend to become. Many, many people are disengaged and don't even vote, but those who do tend to take it seriously as hell, including those who oversee it. Over and over again, cynics have cried foul, proclaimed that they are gonna go in and make sure nothing "funny" happens, and then when they get there they find a process that is already more paranoid than what they were aspiring to.
Also, it helps to keep in mind that for a very long time, about half of the population has seen their candidate lose to the other guy. Not 80/20, not even 60/40, but close to 50/50. This nation has been sharply divided in politics for generations. This election is absolutely nothing new in that regard.
And, of course, the biggest factor of all: The military. Thank the fucking gods above, the military has maintained a strong stance on being indifferent to party politics. Even if the entire fucking state of Missouri, down to the last farmer with a shotgun, decided to march on the capital and force the president out of office, the military would stop them so incredibly dead in their tracks it wouldn't be funny at all. And that wouldn't be necessary, because if a group of rebels that big coalesced, an equally big group of private citizens - no, actually a much larger group - would take up their own arms and Civil War their asses until everything was on fire. And everyone knows it, so nobody wants to start.
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Certainly I don't find the possibility of right wing violence in the wake of the election at all "remote." My perspective includes not only San Francisco, but the American south, where that kind of terrorism is practically old hat. My concern is less about a coup than an increase in the kind of militia violence we saw in the '90s, and have been seeing on the increase lately.
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