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[PTTG??]

I suppose the thing to be said isn't that a second civil war is inevitable. It's that before election day, if you'd asked me "will there be a civil war in the next couple decades?" I'd have laughed and said "no."

Today, the answer is "I don't know."

Which is far from "It's possible;" I don't even know if it's possible, but Trump's election proved that we can't predict the future with significant confidence. FiveThirtyEight came close, although they still had Trump at only 30% going in.

[Sergarr]

For reference, the Syrian civil war, which is at the forefront of peoples' minds as an atrocity, has lasted for longer than that and has killed a combined total of 300-470k people, military and civilian alike, from a dozen or more actors, using modern weaponry.

That's only because there simply aren't that many people within Syria to be killed in those kinds of numbers. Look to Russia and especially China for the really bloody civil wars.

[EnigmaticHat]

We might have a civil war but we're not going to have another Civil War.  A new conflict would look very different.  For one, we have nuclear weapons in both red and blue states, so a true old-style civil war would be a rather short conflict.

The big question mark in the case of some kind of domestic conflict is whether the US military plays it by the book and doesn't intervene.  If they do intervene, whatever they say goes pretty much.  But the intervention itself would be a huge blow to our country.  Once you've had one coup, or put down one populist uprising, that leaves the eternal doubt of "why not again?"  Even if the first intervention is justified.

[Flying Dice]

For reference, the Syrian civil war, which is at the forefront of peoples' minds as an atrocity, has lasted for longer than that and has killed a combined total of 300-470k people, military and civilian alike, from a dozen or more actors, using modern weaponry.

That's only because there simply aren't that many people within Syria to be killed in those kinds of numbers. Look to Russia and especially China for the really bloody civil wars.

True enough, though it's damn hard to get reliable numbers after decades of communist rule.

More of the point was about the relative magnitude, though. It's still far and away the worst war we've experienced, and it was over divisions which were never properly settled.

[Reelya]

http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/explosive-situation-at-us-border-as-trump-unleashes-department-of-homeland-security/news-story/41a73ef4364aa34f2c86cb616589c465

Previous US policy called for only Mexican citizens to be sent to Mexico. Migrants known as “OTMs” - Other Than Mexicans - got flown back to their homelands.

However under a sweeping rewrite of enforcement policies announced Tuesday by the US Department of Homeland Security, migrants might be dumped over the border into a violence-plagued land where they have no ties while their asylum claims or deportation proceedings are heard in the United States.

US officials didn’t say what Mexico would be expected to do with them.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

This is the first thing that has happened during Trump's regime that I genuinely would have thought he was too smart to do.

[TheBiggerFish]

I don't...I don't...I don't even what the EFFING HECK.

[Descan]

Spoiler: Prescience. (click to show/hide)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We're not at war with Mexico.

Yet, anyway...

[Reelya]

http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/22/media/trump-media-trust-quinnipiac/index.html

There is also a profound split between college-educated white voters and non-college-educated white voters, with the former trusting the media more (55% to 37%) and the latter trusting Trump more (also 55% to 37%).

Beware, Trump could in fact try and defund higher education, as his voter base is the uneducated.

[TheBiggerFish]

We're screwed, we're screwed, we're screeeeewweeeeeddddddd...

I don't know what I'd do without federal college loans.

[TheBiggerFish]

What, why is my browser exploding when I try to open these?

[TheBiggerFish]

They're PDFs.

That doesn't explain why it's exploding.

[TheBiggerFish]

Most likely.

[Reelya]

We're screwed, we're screwed, we're screeeeewweeeeeddddddd...

I don't know what I'd do without federal college loans.

Well you'd have to see exactly how that goes. Student loan money is actually moolah that a lot of Republican donors actually suck up with their greedy Cthulu tentacle mouths. It actually makes up 86% of private for-profit colleges revenue for example, according to one study I read.

What Trump will probably do is his threat to cut off grant money to public colleges, so you still get the "debt" part of it, less of the "student" part of it.