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Originally Posted by tater
US politics is no more vitriolic now than it has ever been, and the availability of firearms is LESS than ever before in US history. Particularly "state of the art" military weapons. In the Adams Administration citizens could—and did—own every single item in the US military's possession. Even warships. Laws restricting even machine guns are very modern.
The lack of political violence in the US is in fact the norm, even with more weapons and bile floating around. Heck, Washington had the Whiskey Rebellion.
Bottom line is that 200 years of US political history demonstrates you are wrong. Violence sometimes happens, but more often than not it's by kooks, not some sort of definable political movement. And the kooks are roughly evenly divided in the spectrum (left slightly more than right, actually, on assassination attempts, least for executives and candidates). The assumption or thought that things now are worse, better, whatever than the past is frequently heard, but has no basis in fact. It's like polls to name the best presidents, "modern" guys always score as more important than they deserve.
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In the past violence was used for a resolve, moreso as we struggled to become a nation as one to the 1900's. Certainly there were other times, prohibition started the gangster and mafia movements to a point of almost equal power to the government and people protected these folks as they saw the government infringe on our rights.
During the depression robbers and crooks were often seen as hero's, fighting the mean banks.
But overall few people had the military weapons you spoke of. Back then people seldom got violent to the other. Americans for the most part were of same mind and values...you know, the day when your kids could walk to school 5 miles and a parent not worry about it. Now our population has more than doubled and we face complex issues.
The fact is our past certainly shows we are capable of turning violent again. Overall, we are more in debt than we've ever been at a time the world is most dangerous. Once we went off the gold standard it went to hell.
We only look at out past to realize we could become that way in the future, but with our popualtion it could lead to chaos....as many nations are now finding out.
Course, I'm sure they're some GOP members that would feel another world war would solve everything.