placeholder

‘They are preparing for war’: An expert on civil wars discusses where political extremists are taking this country

Author Barbara F. Walter sees echoes of Nazi Germany in polarized America.

Click to view the original at washingtonpost.com

Hasnain says:

This was a scary read from someone who studies civil wars across the globe. It’s from march and things have only gotten worse since.

“The analogy is smoking. If I started smoking today, my risk of dying of lung cancer or some smoking-related disease is very small. If I continue to smoke for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years, my risk eventually of dying of something related to smoking is going to be very high if I don’t change my behavior. And so I think that’s one of the actually optimistic things: We know the warning signs. And we know that if we strengthen our democracy, and if the Republican Party decides it’s no longer going to be an ethnic faction that’s trying to exclude everybody else, then our risk of civil war will disappear. We know that. And we have time to do it. But you have to know those warning signs in order to feel an impetus to change them.”

Posted on 2022-07-09T16:49:50+0000