People keep talking about “Federalizing the National Guard” and now you’ve got other States pledging their NG to Texas in defiance of the Supreme Court (see image).
It’s not a totally unreasonable impression, but no, this will not turn into a second civil war. The Guard units of each state can be called up for federal duty. The National Guard is part of the US Department of Defense and thus ultimately answers to the DoD and the US president as commander in chief. The US military has multiple components, including regular services (eg the full time Army), reserve components (eg US Army Reserve) and National Guard components. The latter two are part-time military with one weekend per month training duty plus an annual training. Guards members and Reservists hold regular full time jobs.
The Guard units are deployable by the governors of their respective states, and so can be used in emergency situations like natural disasters. They have also been deployed against what have been perceived as riots that threaten lives and properties of the individual states.
However, they are subject to activation by order of the US president and they fall under the national command authority. Guard personnel take the same oath to the constitution as other military personnel, and cannot legally refuse federal activation. Guards personnel would be subject to courts martial and face potentially extreme penalties including being discharged from service under criminal conditions, being stripped of rank and benefits, and jail time in federal prison. This would be what we call a career limiting rule.
So, if push comes to shove, Biden can activate the NG and order them to stand down or to implement policies to maintain order. Thinking the NG units and in particular their commanders would disobey a presidential order because they just love their state governor and hate the president so much is getting into Turner Diaries levels of right wing apocalyptic fantasy.
The forming of the Confederacy wasn’t “legal” either.
We can handwave away concerns about mounting threats of violence by citing regulation and law, but none of that actually addresses the underlying issue that if these people want to start shit, they will find an avenue.
And let’s also not sit here, in 2024, and assume the institutions, norms, checks, and intended safeguards in our system will always work when they need to. We’ve seen far, far too many breakdowns and failures in our system over the last decade to believe otherwise.
That’s what frustrates me so much about the framing of the situation we’re in right now: most people - and the vast majority of major media organizations - are fully intent on presenting this as “normal”, but it’s very fucking clearly not. It’s assumed by so many that the rules will simply be followed… and then they turn around and cover Trump, whose whole bit is to not follow the rules because he doesn’t feel like it and wants to stay in power forever. It’s like being unconcerned about standing 3 feet away from an uncaged, unleashed siberian tiger because someone once told you at one point that it had been “trained”.
You have to understand that the US military today is a very different organization than it was in the 1860s. I know - I served and majored in military history for my first undergraduate degree, and studied the civil war in particular. I also come from a military family with a father, grandfather, and uncle who served as officers until retirement age.
Far right domestic terrorism is a real and developing threat coming from both former military personnel and from civilians. The election of a far right government that shreds the constitution is also a major threat to American democracy. But if the shit does come down, it’s not going to be because some Guardsmen decide that they’d follow DeSantis over Biden.
Military justice is no joke. Falling on the wrong side of it can end people. The military is also very integrated and has political as well as ethnic diversity. I’m not saying you couldn’t find an Army colonel who wouldn’t want to engage in an armed rebellion, but the country today is very, very different than it was mid-19th century, and so is the military.
Please do note that I do see the rise of American fascism as a real threat. It’s just not going to manifest because state Guard orgs decide to disobey orders.
Since you studied the Civil War, I got a book from my grandfather before he passed, Don’t Know Much about The Civil War, by Kenneth C. Davis, and was wondering if you’ve read of heard of this book and if it would be a good resource or not to read about the Civil War? Or if you can recommend another book or author that is great for learning about the Civil War, I’d appreciate any helpful insights as I’m curious to learn more about the Civil War, thank you.
Thank you for sharing this insight! It’s frustrating to hear everyone everywhere speculate about how easily the active military would turn, not considering…well, everything you wrote.
Yeah, ex-military of course is part of the brainwashed; nowhere else in the civilian world (outside of mercenary work) is warfare conducting knowledge of direct use.
Add that our Government has not always done even the bare minimum for our vets, and you got a recipe for the radicalization of the “disenfranchised warriors” (quotation because I don’t consider oathbreakers worthy of any title).
They’re gonna fall and listen to the honeyed words of Fascism in a different, harder way than your average civilian. That’s a call to something they amongst the rest of their group are genuinely and tangibly valuable for–until they aren’t.
Please do note that I do see the rise of American fascism as a real threat. It’s just not going to manifest because state Guard orgs decide to disobey orders.
Same, and I do still worry for the death tolls. That “theirs” (the civilians, who can be said to not know better) would be orders of magnitude higher than any on the military’s side doesn’t mean I’d like to see deaths on either side.
I hope you are right. I am sure there are some Guardsmen who see themselves as Texas soldiers over US, and I am concerned that the number is growing. After all, someone voted in these state politicians who are laying deadly traps intending to kill brown people.
Robert E Lee famously didn’t want to fight the North but didn’t think of himself as a traitor for doing so, because his loyalty was to his state first, to the US second. And that was a common mindset at the time.
I think it’s possible that there will be resentment, but those with rank would be risking everything for zero gain. It would be determined by the people who wear the birds and the stars, and although there have certainly been high ranking officers who have engaged in conduct we might consider treasonous, it’s simply not going to be a common enough occurrence.
A Handmaid’s Tale scenario, where the US goes down the path of a Christian theocracy, is a possibility that concerns me,
it’s simply not going to be a common enough occurrence.
Again, I hope so. I do not have strong confidence in this statement.
If you look across the entire US political spectrum and distribution of different beliefs, you are going to find very similar distribution within the military, if not edging slightly more right/Republican compared to the general US population. It takes one high-ish ranking officer engaging in rebellion for any like-minded lower ranking person to see that as permission and justification to do the same.
You also have to factor in the fact that the military today is not a bunch of guys with rifles. It is carrier battle groups, fighter jets, sophisticated artillery systems, and other platforms that require massive supply chains to deploy and maintain. That’s just what modern warfare is. US aircraft carriers alone are crewed by 5000+ people.
Raytheon, Northrop, and Lockheed are not going to side with Ohio against the US government. The question is about civil war, not about a single military unit going rogue until the members are arrested or killed. Keeping planes in the air and tanks running requires a lot more than Ohio can do. The Feds spend about a trillion dollars per year on the military, and some Confederate missile battery is going to be in trouble once they run low on things to shoot and when their vehicles start to break down.
I’m not a fan of the military industrial complex, to say the least, but it’s an absolutely necessary part of warfare today.
For sure. Any rebellious splinter faction would be low tech guerillas for a while. Now would they eventually open up to weapons from Russia or China? Interesting. I am sure Putin would jump on the opportunity. I think Xi would be a little more sensible and not openly cross the US.
The difficulty with that scenario is that the US is bound by two oceans and has a navy more powerful in some estimates than the rest of the navies in the world combined. Ukraine can be supplied because they’re contiguous with Western Europe. North Korea could be supplied by China, as could Vietnam. To supply the neo-confederates, Russia or China would have to cross an ocean and get past the US Navy, as well as the navies of other allied countries. Then they’d have to bring in the systems via either Mexico or Canada, both of which would be allied with the US.
I think you could imagine a scenario where they smuggle in small arms, but not artillery or other modern weapons systems.
Abraham Lincoln thought they could not. In his inaugural address, he opined that the union was formed for perpetuity and that if the accession of a state to the union required the consent of all other states, so would its secession. He was, among other things, a lawyer so he usually knew what he was talking about.
Legal Eagle just released a video on exactly this topic. Spoiler: the whole Texas being allowed to secede is basically a myth and pretty much all scholars agree that Texas nor any other state has the ability to leave except by a mutually agreed dissolution or via revolution.
The thing about law though, is that it’s just a framework of written social contracts between rational parties agreeing to abide by the terms and consequences.
Reality is a bit different.
Texas could halt physical transport of goods/services. Refuse to buy US imports. Stop collecting tax revenue. Gun down federal employees that don’t swear Texan allegiance.
It doesn’t really matter what legal papers say, when it comes to actions.
Sure - there may be consequences for such “illegal” state actions, and the documented illegality would be articulated as official justification after administering such consequences.
But that also only matters if Texas is defeated … in the unlikely event they “win,” - they’d write their own narrative with legal justification.
I’m not saying they have any chance - just making the point that “legal” and “illegal” are arbitrary and determined by whoever is the dominant power. Texas seceding is “illegal” only so long as the US remains powerful. If by some unholy miracle, Texas were to win independence from the US, they would probably write their own laws to say rejoining the US is illegal.
Another pair of cases to make my point - the Holocaust was “legal” to the Nazis. After they were defeated, the UN made genocide “illegal.” But how many genocides have occurred around the world since 1949?
Laws are only as good as they are enforceable, which is exactly what you underscore by citing the strength of the US military. Is it “legal” to make drone strikes or drop a nuke on Texas? 🤷
So far as I understand, there is a common idea that Texas has the legal ability to leave it it wants, but it’s just a popular myth as far as I’m aware. Whatever their state constitution says doesn’t matter anyway, because federal law trumps state laws and as far as I’m know there’s not a legal mechanism for states to leave again, it’d have to either get the government as a whole to make legal or possibly even constitutional changes to allow it, or leave illegally, either by force or by having a sympathetic government just not press the matter and just ignore the laws in question. I can’t really see them getting enough support for the former two, they’re too weak compared to the federal government for an actual war, and the current administration is not likely to just let them go, so I don’t expect them to go anywhere unless one of those things drastically changes.
Even if they voted for it and ratified it they couldn’t over turn it or legally secede from the USA.
In the 1869 case Texas v. White, the court held that individual states could not unilaterally secede from the Union and that the acts of the insurgent Texas Legislature — even if ratified by a majority of Texans — were “absolutely null.”
When Texas entered the Union, “she entered into an indissoluble relation,” Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase wrote for the court. “All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States.”
Chase added: “The ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law.”
Another source of confusion and misinformation over the years has been language in the 1845 annexation resolution that Texas could, in the future, choose to divide itself into “New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas.” But the language of the resolution says merely Texas could be split into five new states. It says nothing of splitting apart from the United States. Only Congress has the power to admit new states to the Union, which last occurred in 1959 with the admission of Alaska and Hawaii.
Now that’s not to say if it was challenged again in today’s Supreme Court that they wouldn’t overturn that like they did with Roe v Wade. But as far as I can tell they legally can’t right now.
I got downvoted elsewhere for saying this, but let me ask - if they just …went rogue and reeeeeeally started stirring shit up - like setting blockades on highways, rail stations, and ports, stopped exports - like really tried to cause the US economic trouble - attacking federal buildings etc.
What’s any legal precedent matter? Aside from justification for getting totally railed by the US military.
enslaved person being emancipated in 1942 Beeville, Texas
From the Wiki article…
In September 1942, Alfred Irving, who is believed to be one of the final chattel slaves in the United States, was freed at a farm near Beeville. Alex L. Skrobarcek and his daughter, Susie, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Laredo, Texas on November 9, 1942.[11][12][13][14] The pair were found guilty in Federal court in Corpus Christi, Texas on Thursday, March 18th, 1943. Alex L. Skrobarcek was sentenced to only four years in prison, while his daughter, Susie Skrobarcek, received two years. [15]
Can we just have a normal, boring year for once, please? I’m so tired…
I’m right there with you.
But at least you can think of this to console you: You’re not actually fighting in a world/civil war, down in some troops trench somewhere, reading this (at least that’s my hope for you).
Other generations have had to go through major wars, but so far we’ve been dodging that bullet, for the most part.
In a for profit economy; to create an upper class, you have to have an under class. Wealth isn’t created, it’s extracted through exploitation. Rich/Poor. Empire/Colony. Master/Slave.
Wake up! It’s time to wake up America and re-discover our socialist past.
My take on it is that the Republicans will do their best to drag this out until the election. No compromising or middle ground. Just make it out to be the crazy Democrats fault. This stuff gets to be very predictable after all these years.
Of course, they will drag it out until the elections. It is only being done because of the elections. It is all a performance to rally their base and get them to vote. Too many Republicans are tired of, or at least too embarrassed by, Trump and the other crazy fuckers, like the Freedom Caucus. While nothing is great, nothing is also so bad that they can really shit on Biden, at least not enough to rally around. Even his support of Israel isn’t something they can use against him since they are 120% pro Israel too. They also seriously need a smoke screen for the shit show that is the impending government shut down.
It’s all for show, a way to get the very poor but very racist core to take time off of their jobs to go vote for a states right to murder brown children while at the same time diverting attention from the fact that the reason that those poor racists aren’t getting their social security and other government support is due to the Republicans massive incompetence.
There is many more people in the states that would be a Union Army, the fools that would wage war on the United States would be defeated and most Americans wouldn’t even need to do anything but watch
The real problem is that they cut us up along crazy lines and lump the second and third groups together, so that the nice bluish-purple i see out my window looks bright red from space.
This has to be purposefully not getting media coverage so as to not incite panic/public support, right? When I saw the first ruling posted by Gov Abbott it seemed almost like a secessionist rant, but it’s NO WHERE to be seen in MSM
Them defying the supreme court is a step they haven’t taken before. It forces Biden to respond or look incredibly weak. Either he allows a red state to actively break federal law and make treasonous statements or he arrests Abbott. It’s not just drama anymore.
No one in the National Guard is going to stop the CBP from cutting the fence down because their pension is on the line. The government of Texas doesn’t control that.
They were ordered to stop putting the fence up, ignored it, and continued to put the fence up. Yes, if the Texas National Guard is federalized they probably won’t refuse orders but that has to be an active choice by Biden to do. Until then, they are under the Governor’s orders which have been to ignore the supreme court ruling and federal law.
It is the definition of treason as the Governor is expected or trusted to obey federal laws.
Point of order: Nobody in Texas has been ordered to do anything. They’re completely allowed to put up razor wire under whatever rule Abbot cited. The court order was to allow the federal border guys to cut the wire if they needed to.
Legally, Texas is allowed to put up wire, and also legally the feds are allowed to cut it. That’s it. It’s a literal Looney Tunes situation. The nonsense from Abbot and the rest of the Rs is just chest-puffing.
They’ve been ordered to allow the federal agents to carry out their duties but adding new wire has “effectively barred” the agents from doing what the supreme court has ruled they have the legal right to do. Yes, they’re allowed to cut holes in existing wire but by constantly adding new wire and barriers, it’s actively defying that ruling.
I know the ruling doesn’t explicitly say “Texas can no longer put up razor wire” but this is like being told by your mom “your brother is allowed to play on the xbox” and you giving them an unplugged controller. They’re allowed to play on the xbox, you’re allowed to give them an unplugged controller, but you actively went against her ruling and earned a whooping.
Because the CBP barely tried to access it? I feel like the CBP was just told to wait them out, like a child. Let Texas have a temper tantrum and wait.
They probably had to wait for the fence cutting equipment anyway. This isn’t the DMZ border with North Korea. If there was a pressing reason to do it, it would have already happened.
Like I’ve said before, if Biden really wants to access it he could just sign the federalization order at 8 AM EST. All the Guard troops would wake up to a direct order to sit their asses down or lose their pensions. By 10 AM Texas time, the fence would be on the ground or the Guard CO would be unlocking the gate.
But that’s what Abbott wants to happen so he can escape this dumb situation he created. Biden is trapping him by not taking the bait. Now Texas looks dumb paying money to lose in court. Abbott wants Biden to do something so he can shout “Federal overreach!” and get donations.
I’d say its not getting coverage because Texas talks about seceding almost every year and states have been using their national guard as political tools for years now.
When the national guard was sent to DC after the insurrection, Texas pulled their national guard back because of “poor treatment”. I was there, there was no poor treatment. Texas (and several more states afterwards) used their national guard as a political tool to make the other side seem bad.
Very good point. I’d like to also think it’s not getting attention as to avoid prompting more idiots from joining in on the idiocy, but that’s likely me giving MSM too much credit.
Eh. Something clearly needs to be done, and the concerns aren’t being addressed (and haven’t been for awhile). Congress and the senate haven’t done anything aside from attempt to impeach hunter Biden (from who knows what) or show off his dick.
Doubtful it’s any kind of civil war, but Texas (and other states) is being hit hard by the number of immigrants, and if the federal government can’t (or won’t?) do anything to curb it, makes sense that they will do something on their own.
I never understood why Republicans hate immigrants. Low educated labor that is highly religious. And if crimes are committed, these people can fuel the incarceration complex America has as well.
These are all reasons why they actually enjoy immigration. As a hot-button topic, this has paid out endlessly and will continue to because there’s no way immigration will be solved peacefully. So they get the fearmongering and political outrage out of it, in addition to cheap labor, and bogeymen to pin rape/violence on as well. They’re the perfect target for them to hate, and they love to hate. Nothing gets an old Republican fired up like illegal Mexicans coming here with their guns and drugs and taking our jobs and sending all the money back home and raping our daughters (“well not my daughter, but y’know” 🤠 ) and bringing caravans more of em in their wake
Same. Tons of hard working people that do a lot behind the scenes. But South Park probably got it right with ‘they took errr jerbs!’ Jobs they wouldn’t do themselves anyway.
Republican voters hate immigrants. It’s a target the GOP can point at while knowing the flow of cheap labor will continue from increasing desperation all while they “heroically fight at the border”.
but Texas (and other states) is being hit hard by the number of immigrants, and if the federal government can’t (or won’t?) do anything to curb it, makes sense that they will do something on their own.
That’s the thing though, they aren’t. Things aren’t worse than they were, this is a manufactured crisis because Republicans need some kind of tangible policy to lie about to their voters for the upcoming election. Just like the immigrant caravan which disappeared as suddenly as it appeared (as in it never existed) the previous election.
I don’t think this is an accurate view of the current border situation, but it’s a view that one might have consuming media from a different kind of media bubble than the Fox News kind.
There really is a situation with migrants who cross the river illegally and immediately turn themselves in and claim asylum. This isn’t a new situation, but the numbers have gotten worse over the last year.
The migrant caravans, plural, really did and do exist. What tends to happen is they gather into thousands strong mass marches in and around Tapachula, after crossing from Guatemala to Mexico. So these big marches start towards the US in southern Mexico, but they tend to break up and thin out over the 1800 mile journey to Texas.
If anyone could organize a mass foot march over the whole distance, that would be an extremely impressive feat of logistics. But that hasn’t happened yet.
Conclusions: this border situation is not completely made up. Many right wing conspiracies going around have some kind of kernel of truth to then.
And some mainstream media outlets (I have this experience with NPR in particular) have started to seemingly impose total blackouts on not just the conspiracy ideas, but also on the little nuggets of true news that get them started.
Just like in Europe, to say there is no problem with migration is false, but to present it as an existential problem for the country or even the state is ridiculous. Starting a civil war over ‘nuggets’ of truth seems pretty dang evil.
Yup! Thank you. It’s not as big as it’s being made out to be (obviously people trying to get political points), but it’s still an issue that does need to be addressed, and it is disproportionately effecting some more than others. No one is going to start at civil war over something like this.
Yeah, no. This is still an entirely manufactured crisis. Even if what you’re claiming is really happening, it’s still being framed as a problem, which it’s not.
Our colonialist pearl-clutching over the southern border has got to stop. It’s fucked up that you’re perpetuating this brand of fascism.
I see this a lot, “the liberal media doesn’t want you to know!” or “why isn’t anyone talking about this!” meanwhile everyone including the lefty sources are indeed talking about it.
The problem is, only one party wants to do anything to actually ease the crisis. Republicans are a half step away from suggesting land mines at the border because trying to escape to the land of the free for a better life is illegal, and that apparently should mean death for you.
To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.
We can beat them! The US Army, Navy, Air Force, and that other one that no one cares about, they don’t stand a chance!
Like, we can all joke about civil war and splitting up the red and blue, but, like, when it comes down to deciding who gets the nukes in the divorce, it becomes pretty obvious that it’s just super dumb to think about realistically.
I honestly don’t think the active duty and national guard units would be willing to fight each other. A lot of guard guys are former AD and AD gets supplemented by guard all the time. Some missions they even work side by side with active guard positions.
The states leveraging their guard units like this strikes me as highly presumptuous.
I was in the Army NG for 6 years. The president is still Ultimately the top of the chain of command and we swear the same oath to the constitution.
I just want to throw out there that it’s just not really like that. There is no chance of civil war from inside the army in this manner. The big green weenie gets everybody in the end.
Edit: like for example, we all wear the same unfiroms, they both do US Army on the front. They have the same MOS (military occupational specialty) We receive the same training, at the same places, and both go to overseas for deployments as well.
Usually, you get deployed twice during a 6 year contract for the National Guard. When they aren’t deployed the NG trains at home bases in their states and sometimes in large Active Military Bases for Various reasons. So it’s all very much intertwined.
I don’t know if anybody answered your question, lemmy is weird about replies deleted or not showing. AD is Active Duty, which is anyone in the federal component of the military i.e. not guardsmen. “Active” means full-time, and most guardsmen are one-weekend a month, so they are not active. It’s a little fuzzy, because if a guardsman is on full time orders, depending on where the money is coming from, it could be called AGR, or Active Guard Reserve, but they are not technically Active Duty (AD).
All you really need to know is that AD is just the Big Army or Big Air Force, paid for and run by the federal government, and the national guard is distinct from AD because of split loyalty to state and federal govt, and they are usually paid by the state. Otherwise, same regulations, same uniforms, same bad leadership.
Guard units are also only under state control until they’re not. By the book anyway the DoD(?) can say “okay you’re activated under federal orders now, so you are now active duty, do this instead”.
I’d love to think this is true but when I was active back in the day there were a LOT of right wing militant nuts. I can only assume that’s skyrocketed in the years since.
I can’t speculate as to what Abbot wants, but he’s definitely asking for an armed confrontation with the U.S. Military, and as a Texan, I think Biden should give only Abbot exactly that.
I’m not aware of anything outside of the civil war. There have been impeached governors sure, but the feds stepping in to stop one or more states from being egregiously bad happened only once that I know of.
Ain’t no way this is actually going to happen, any attempt at succession will be put down by the much larger national military. There will be no civil war.
If they vote on it Brexit style it will be one thing. If 51% of the population shows up and votes 51% to leave we can consider it. Wait until that happens.
Eh there won’t be an organized civil war of large standing armies, but I can definitely see the Redneck militias doing some damage. If it dragged on long enough they could theoretically get organized somehow.
I really doubt that the politicians in the GOP states want a Civil war though, it is gonna be hard to extract wealth from the poor if the whole system explodes.
i also notice nobody mentions the possibility that cartels could try to take advantage of any significant unrest in some states. i doubt states or feds want that mess.
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