Anyone here that knows me probably knows that I like to play devil's advocate, so here goes...

While I think this judge is off his rocker a wee bit, I'm curious as to why everyone is so dismissive of the idea?

I'll admit that my initial reaction to this story was the same as everyone else's, but then I recalled thousands of years of the history of human civilization. Like it or not, the odds are probably more against us NOT having another civil war than otherwise. We have always been a divided nation; this is nothing new. However, we are still a young nation, and historically ideological conflicts tend to boil over.

Indeed, I don't believe that President Obama being reelected will cause a civil war. But, I do believe that such a conflict is possible, if not probably. We'd love to believe that our union is everlasting, but history suggests otherwise.

Can we beat the odds? I hope so. Still, I can't ignore history. So maybe this judge is a moonbat. But still, history seems to suggest that SOMETHING will set us off. Why not this?

But wasn't it that in Texas everything is bigger :O:

HunterICX

A wee bit????????
Everyone is dismissive of the idea as the judge is a raving loony.
Now some of his lunacy has been posted here before by crazy birthers NWO freaks and people who believe in Obama secret armies of nazi dentists or Fema death camps.
They get dismissed just as simply as the judge because their views make no sense

If you want to play devils advocate then deal with what the judge said and argue his position not some mythical sideline, unless of course you want to make an arguement that the vatican is going to erupt into civil war at some time in the possible future because well...civil wars do happen so it must be a possibility which means this judge isn't quite so fruity and the swiss guard had better get themselves aligned.

True, but I read these headlines and my first instinct is "Please be Mississippi or Florida, please be Mississippi or Florida..." and 2/3s of the time, I'm relieved. But it's that 1/3 of the time...

You try and try and convince people that this state's a pretty good place to live, all in all, but then you get some balloonhead like this guy and then all the stereotypes come back.


Couldn't have said it better myself.

"Please be Mississippi or Florida, please be Mississippi or Florida..."
That what they say in Alabama during hurricane season.

You Texans correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a "County Judge" in Texas more akin to a county administrator than a jurist? What I mean is, this fellow's position is more like that of a county supervisor/justice of the peace, right? He doesn't wear a black robe and sit in judgement of others, right? He doesn't interpret the law or mete out justice, right? Please tell me I'm right.
Please.

Oy. Well, at least he can admit himself into a psychiatric hospital.

Show me some factual evidence.

Well, no one put a gun to your head and said you had to live here. :)
At least, now we know that stereotypes are always true.
I don't try to convince that Texas is a good place to live for anyone, except myself.

I'm what Virginians call a "come here:" which is a polite way of saying I'm a Yankee transplant. Been here 30 years, but as soon as I ask for "a cuppa cawfee" that big red "NY" appears on my forehead again. Being a product of these two cultures, I can't but help notice how the South is portrayed in the predominantly northern-centric media as being populated by quaint eccentrics, frequently charming, occasionally disturbing, and (seemingly) wholly baffling. The material for any national story seems ready-made to appeal to a northern audience: Just listen to the difference in their accents! See what they cook for dinner! Get a load of their attitudes towards guns and religion! They'll even say 'Yes M'am!' right on TV! How quaint!"

Well... they have a point. There ain't nothing "quaint" about New York City. But so much the worse for them. But when some bozo pops up in the South (and I will include Texas in that fold) and starts shooting his mouth off about the end of times, it's "newsworthy" to the North, not so much because of what's being said, but because who's saying it. How many stories have you read about Charles Barron, a former Black Panther and Brooklyn City Councilman? The guy is shot from guns - spouts off the most ridiculous nonsense - but his is just a local story. He isn't "quaint" enough to ridicule.

Eh, what do I know. I'm sure I carry my own biases around, and I dearly love my old home town. But I grow weary of the ignorance so gleefully displayed by the folks wielding the national megaphone. All my children are Virginians. And God bless them.

I agree with that. We have this quaint, as the word was thrown around, notion that our modern nation states are somehow things of permanence. People point to the nations like the 1000 year old Britian and the 3000 year old China as examples. The truth is that each of those nations existed in a multitude of different governances and styles of government and were wroght with various civil wars and wars of succession. They blew themselves apart and reformed themselves into something different; much like nature's cycle of death and new life. Sometimes they didn't reform themselves at all, or were absorbed into another state. The likelyhood that something of that sort will occur again in the United States is so high as to almost be a certainty.

Yep, and in some sense the US is blessed to be as stable as it has been. There is very little living memory of uncertainty and social collapse in the US, and while most people know it can happen, it's not an immediate reality for most people living there. So that does give many a somewhat naive perspective, and I don't mean that as an insult - just as a suggestion that for most, something like a revolution is so surreal that they can't even picture it as anything other than a bad movie plot. Then compare this to, for example, people from Eastern Europe. There's some massive changes in their recent memory. For me, having lived through the collapse of the communist system is really a bit of an eye-opener. Things can and do change violently, for better or/and worse. The good news is that even massive changes aren't all people cut them out to be. In these cycles of social and political change, people who have little personal experience of them tend to see something apocalyptic. In reality, stuff happens, life goes on. Instead of panicking and stocking guns, I think people need to be more open-minded and proactive about changes they see happening around them, especially if they live in a society where it's their right (and even obligation) to do something about their own civic circumstances.

I think the main reason is because the good judge isn't preparing for some potential long term danger but rather his plans are against a specific person in the very near future. To say that if he's reelected the President, is going to use UN troops against the residents of North Central Texas just begs for dismissal as the wishful thinking of a disturbed individual.

The funny thing is that you never hear this kind of crazy from the Left side. It's 99.99% of the time from the Right. The Republican's have gone so far to the Right that crazy seems to be the new norm. And I'm not even going to get started on the Tea Party.

Nah, I wouldn't go that far. I think there's a very loud, obnoxious media tradition in the US that gives a particularly prominent voice to that sort of right-wing crazy, but there's lots of the same from the other side. It tends not to make the news as much, but there's some places where it's blatantly apparent. There are some legitimately extreme Marxists, anarchists, radical feminists etc. out there who are no less vocal. I've bumped into them no less than the right. And I say that even as someone who's well on the left side of things myself.

I would add Greenpeace and the 'free Mumia' crowd to that list.

Probably been like that since Kpt Lehmann moved there a little over a year ago :O:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/pict...&pictureid=802

It's one thing to read it, it's another to hear it.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/pol...ar-outrage.cnn

I really didn't hear an elected official say these things did i? :damn:

On the upside, the Civil War did bring out some fantastic songs, like "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkVfZkLOZM8

It's a good marching song, I have it on my MP3 player along with The British Grenadiers, both are good for getting into a nice stride.

Sure is :D:D:D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIh7UPvHxAk

When you compare it to the music of our civil war:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN55RceP41c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJYUz31i_Go