They don't put ex police officers in with the general population in prisons.

They are offered protective custody, which allows them 23 hours in their cell, and 1 hour in the showers and on the yard. There isn't some "cop only" prison or specified zones for convicted cops.

I didn't say there was. However, a lot of cops will end up in lighter security prisons to avoid having them in the same prison as the people most likely to kill them.

I know this because that's what they did with my dad.

Relevant video

Fucking pathetic.

How stupid do they think people are.

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/88/88712...5bc77571bd.jpg

The USA will get torn apart by civil war within the next 20 years because shit like this is going to happen more and more. And luckily the constitution secures your right to start a civil war (or, well, force the government to step down at gun point, which comes down to the same thing at this point).

Good luck with that.

Can we put a wager on your Civil War hypothesis?

I'm waiting for the next civil war tbh because I know it's going to happen in my lifetime

I will seriously put money on this guys.

Our law enforcement is so militarized that the citizens' only hope of ever overthrowing a corrupt government would be if the law enforcement is on the side of the civilians, and not on the side of a future oppressor.

Sometimes people say stupid things. Sometimes people band together, and join with Havoc to say really stupid things.

It's all Havoc's fault. Wonderful.

My point is, in this moment in time, there's very little chance of success in a civilian population trying to overthrow the US government by force. The protesters in Ferguson were up against these fuckers, and they weren't intent of toppling the federal government. I can only imagine what forces rebels would be met with when protesters in Ferguson were met with scenes like this:

http://static1.nydailynews.com/polop...g-protests.jpg

Well, for one thing, that's a picture of the police line set up outside their headquarters where protesters were trying to break in, using bricks, and other weapons. Would you prefer they protected themselves with cotton balls, while wearing pink nighties?

To be fair, that's what the police force looked like on Florissant responding to protesters too. No one's saying they shouldn't protect themselves, but the situation in Ferguson is an insignificant little speck compared to a potential nationwide revolt. If this is how they respond to protesters in Ferguson, how would they respond to rebels?

On the bright side, I think the presence of the media would discourage martial law as a decision.

Are we actually entertaining a discussion about the feasibility of an American civil war? If you think an underclass is going to spark a revolution you need to read some history. Revolution is instigated by the middle class and no American Joe Bloggs is going to give up his suburban utopia to campaign for national freedom.

My point is that even if they wanted to, they wouldn't be able to. We're outgunned and ill equipped.

No. We aren't. A couple of people said some things that are nonsense, and I assume the rest of us just wrote it off as that. I hope.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that there should be a revolt, or that it would happen. I'm saying that a hypothetical rebellion would be quelled in a snap.

Well yes...as is every revolution that doesn't have the backing of the armed forces.

I think you are confusing UKIP with the EDL.

UKIP wants UK out of the EU so silly laws don't get enforced that cost us billions, or having to pay CO2 fines that cost billions, which in turn means needing to build nuclear power stations which costs even more money. Common sense IMO.

You're implying the middle class is living comfortably right now

There are a number of reasons I'm personally expecting some form of civil war within the next 100 years or so, though whether or not I believe it'll be sparked by racism is a different story.

As far as I'm concerned UKIP is the EDL gone political.

Care to explain what those reasons are then? More over how you expect even an attempt at 'civil war'?

They're probably very personal.

Civil war generally only occurs in countries with pretty dire conditions. Despite what you think, SB, the citizens of the US are living very comfortably relative to countries which have had civil wars over the last 100 years.

So unless American society seriously degrades over the next 100 years I don't see any sort of civil war breaking out.

You know

I honestly can't be bothered

We'll just wait and see.

E- Sock speedied before I could post and I still can't be bothered

We get it. It's personal, guys.

No, I just know that no matter what I say, you'll just roll your eyes and dismiss me because when it gets down to it I'm just a scared child who wants out

See? Personal.

And there you go

And here I am

Hello!

Follow M..... No. No Oddworld jokes.

Constant and repetitive police brutality, the ever growing gap between rich and poor, the ever growing gap between the police/army/government and the people, the fact that the government is spying on just about everyone, the fact that the government has given itself the ability to arrest and jail people without cause or trial for an indefinite amount of time, the fact that the government's favorite past time is funding terrorists and then starting a war with them and the simple fact that the US government is corrupt to the fucking bone.

Pick one. I'd give you a list of links to sources and references to those reasons, but I'm sure you know how to use Google.

As for an attempt, there are areas in the US where civilians are sitting on enough firepower to occupy Switzerland. Including armored vehicles and high explosives. No, they wouldn't be able to outgun the combined firepower of the US military, but they wouldn't have to. Because if shit seriously starts to hit the fan enough to spark a civil war, chances are that the military is going to be split in half just the same. The President may be the commander in chief, but the people on the field are still commanded by hundreds of generals who, during such magnitude of chaos, may just start working for the other team. Not to mention international pressure on the government if the country were to become that unstable.

Hence the term war, there has to be an actual two sided war to call it such. Not some Texans yelling yeehah with their rifles while getting roflstomped by a tank. Otherwise I'd refer to it as a civil slaughter.

Well, that was a whole lot of bullshit. Nice work, sir. Your ability to blow things out of proportion, and believe every negative thing you read about the U.S. is still unparalleled on this forum.

Thanks man, it takes a lot of training to keep my skills up.

Your ability to claim an entire post as bullshit without any reasons as to why is also still very sharp. Good job, kind sir.

I'll just reiterate my point about civil war being a middle class construct and how no one in the middle class wants a mass conflict.

No-one wants a conflict. There's no-one currently sitting in their basement planning the trigger for a civil war in 2038 except maybe a fiction writer.

Civil wars (or any war for that matter) have a tremendous build up before the main conflict starts. All kinds of smaller conflicts build up over time. Look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...d_States#2010s

Even if you leave out all the relatively minor occurrences of riots on universities and after sports matches, there's still a good 12 accounts of riots as a direct result of police brutality or government summits. That's almost 1 a year. That's a ridiculous number for what is supposed to be a first world country.

A riot does not a civil war make.

Yes it's true that there have been conflicts in recent years but only a number proportional to the size and population of America. Let's stay that your '12 accounts' is accurate (I didn't check), that's 12 accounts of localised conflict in one year for a population of over 500,000,000 people.

Historical uprising comes from the systematic stamping on of the working class, this is true. However the working class are not (from what we have seen) educated or intellectual enough to unify and promote a common interest. That is where the middle class come in; Lenin, MÃ*cheál Collins, Jefferson Davis and William Sherman. On an even lower scale, these leaders require the financial and political backing of a middle class elite. All these leaders comes forth at a time of national distress or when popular discontent has fermented across the world.

In 2014 and likely in 2044 there will be no popular backing for any mass civil war, there are no trends to suggest there is any more popular discontent than ever there has been in America since before the civil rights movement (a nadir in race relations that was far more aggravating than the current events in Ferguson, MO). The point I was trying to make was that your average Joe Bloggs of Middle-America, with his family of four, his sedan, his Ikea furniture and his new washing machine is not interested in taking up his .22 pistol and charging heroically towards the local government office to demand immediate rectification of society's problems. We, a collective of the Western World, are far too comfortable with the status quo to bring any sort of violent upheaval to the capitalist oligarchy.