Coronavirus thread

[deaddmwalking]

With 4.4 million new Unemployment Claims, the total is now over 26 million since stay-at-home orders were mandated. Unemployment is paid by State Governments. Mitch McConnell is suggesting that states be allowed to declare bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy essentially allows you to walk away from your financial obligations with minimal penalty. That is, the people who you owe money won't get any. This could potentially include current employees (no last paycheck, no benefits, no pension), as well as everyone who relies on state aid (the recently unemployed, food assistance programs, etc).

I don't think Mitch McConnell has the power to make a change along those lines, and I don't know what it would take to implement, but it would be monstrous.

In positive news, the +$600 unemployment benefit has raised the salary of many unemployed people above their normal employed wage. While that won't last forever, poor people need things and spend money. Building up extra money for people who have traditionally had less will help get the economy going once it does open up.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Governor Cuomo: *trying to play down the seriousness of UI delays*
Reporter: is there a fundamental right to work when the government can't get me the money when I need it?
Governor Cuomo: You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker.

Emphasis mine.

[hyzmarca]

The problem with New York's unemployment system isn't a lack of motivation. It was just never designed to handle so many unemployment requests at once. This isn't a money issue. This is a logistics issue, a manpower issue, and a "We're using still 50 year old Mainframes that only understand COBOL" issue.


It's a core weakness that these systems just weren't designed to rapidly scale up in the event of nationwide disaster. "What if everyone is unemployed because every business in the State shuts down at the same time" just isn't a question any of the designers of New York's unemployment system considered, and this holds true through the country.

And while you can throw out a lot of rules for processing requests, essentially telling every case worker to rubber stamp every case, that doesn't solve the problem of poorly documented speghetti code written in a language that no programmer under 50 has bothered to learn or the fact that workers can only swing that rubber stamp so quickly and for so long in a day. Even just hiring more workers isn't a solution, because those workers need computers that are connected to already overloaded mainframes and phones that are connected to already overloaded switchboards.

There are IT and infrastructure solutions for this problem, but those are solutions that needed to be taken years ago, before this happened.

Note, in a lot of places case workers are just rubber stamping things without any of the required documentation, simply because the case load is so high that its impossible for them to review anything. I don't know if this is the case in New York, but I suspect it is.

[Kaelik]

Governor Cuomo: *trying to play down the seriousness of UI delays*
Reporter: is there a fundamental right to work when the government can't get me the money when I need it?
Governor Cuomo: You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker.

Emphasis mine.

Yes, when you edit out the entire part of the conversation about unemployment benefits not being paid to people in italics summary, the question looks like it isn't about unemployment benefits. But once you include that part, the same reporter asking follow up questions is still clearly asking about people who can't collect unemployment, and Cuomo's answer is still about people who can't collect unemployment.

The problem with New York's unemployment system isn't a lack of motivation. It was just never designed to handle so many unemployment requests at once. This isn't a money issue. This is a logistics issue, a manpower issue, and a "We're using still 50 year old Mainframes that only understand COBOL" issue.

Manpower and logistics are money issues. The way you get more logistics and manpower towards a specific thing as a state government is you spend more money on those things.

And since Cuomo's singular belief is that we should not raise taxes at all even if we have to cut medicaid, he also believes we shouldn't do it for the unemployment infrastructure.

[hyzmarca]

Manpower and logistics are money issues. The way you get more logistics and manpower towards a specific thing as a state government is you spend more money on those things.

It's not magic. You don't just throw a huge wad of cash into a pentagram and burn it while chanting. You have to actually build shit. And that takes time.

If you asked last year if everyone thought we should improve unemployment infrastructure to the level that it could accept applications from literally everyone just in case of an apocalyptic disaster completely shuts down the world economy, most people would say no. "Well if the world ends unemployment will be the least of our problems. "

One of the major lessons of this crisis is that this isn't true, if the world ends unemployment will be among the biggest. If nothing else, this is a new lesson for zombie apocalypse fiction to learn.

[Username17]

Governor Cuomo: *trying to play down the seriousness of UI delays*
Reporter: is there a fundamental right to work when the government can't get me the money when I need it?
Governor Cuomo: You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker.

Emphasis mine.

I understand that this is the out of context quote that your quote from Kaelik showed him misquoting in order to pick a beef with Cuomo. However, the really important context is the beginning of the video:

I don't know if you can hear, but there are protesters outside, honking their horns...

The entire interview, the entire interview is the reporter pretending that the protesters are decent people who have a reasonable point of view. But we know that the protesters are in reality far right brown shirts supported by the Mercer family and astroturfed with pre-made signs that miraculously have identical handwriting-like fonts in several states on the same day.

All this bullshit about whether Cuomo showed enough "empathy" for the protesters is pure unadulterated horseshit. The reality is that he showed them way too much. Those protesters are fucking Nazis.

All that stuff where Cuomo was going on about how economic hardship is bad, but death is worse; and how every death in New York felt like he was losing a family member and four hundred and eighty four New Yorkers had died the previous day is all beside the point. The reporter was supporting Nazis. Cuomo should have punched her in the fucking mouth. The protesters are fucking actual brownshirt Nazis, and they don't deserve a nuanced explanation or an emotional appeal.

Despite all the restatements and turd polishing of that Quisling reporter, the actual demands of the protesters is that we kill a bunch of minorities and healthcare workers and old people in order to make rich people slightly richer and help the re-election of Trump. Those people are monsters, and Cuomo was way too soft on them in that interview. Now is not the time to tell them that we feel their pain. Now is the time to beat them with rods until they disperse.

Which of course comes back to why I have Kaelik on ignore and you should too. Kaelik is not a good faith actor. Kaelik is not a helpful source of information. I don't know where he gets his information, but it's so far out into horseshoe leftist town that he is utterly incapable of seeing whether things are obvious bullshit before he starts ranting about them. In that little bit you quoted from him, Kaelik is complaining that Cuomo was being mean to Nazis. Leaving aside the fact that actually he was pretty measured and empathetic in that interview, being mean to Nazis is GOOD!

-Username17

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks] Edited out advocacy for violence and murder[/TGFBS]

[Hicks]

I called it. The message is getting out.

Pandemic and Class Relations: The Bourgeoisie Warns of “Uprisings and Revolutions”

Prepare: Connect, Plan, Organize, Collectivize.

[MGuy]

So anytime people start talking about how a politician should start punching reporters and talking about executing citizens you should probably stop listening to them. Horseshoe leftism indeed when you are equating 'being mean to Nazis' to executing your citizenry.

That aside in the part of the video, a bit before and a bit after, the concern the reporter brings up is that citizens are concerned about their livelihoods and if the government can't prevent them from going into financial ruin then they should be allowed to work. Cuomo's reaction is basically that the check will be delayed but the people will get it in a few days and that while you can say that it isn't enough you can't say it is not coming.

I don't know the validity of 'couple of days' or whatever so I don't more if Cuomo is lying out of his ass here. I also don't know what things Cuomo could do in the face of this disaster but it seems as though his administration has been taking the opportunity to make cuts to programs. So you could argue that there was no way to prepare for this disaster but you really can't make an excuse for the motions Cuomo seems to be making with regards to what he wants to do with the budget in response.

I distrust the government and politicians like Cuomo in general. With my bias I can look at Cuomo essentially saying something to the tune of 'let them work at cake factories' revealing an absolute disdain for people in need. Stepping back and seeing the situation he and the state is in I can still believe that's exactly the case and add to it that he's probably frustrated with trying to keep order in a hellish situation and that was probably just a real dumb outburst.

In Cuomo's place, being a public official who doesn't want to punch media figures just because they are annoying and also not wanting to advocate for executing citizens, would probably explain myself instead of being mad. It doesn't take a lot of nuance to just say:

"we have bodies piling up and I'd rather help my citizens through economic hardship than watch them die"

[Kaelik]

Reporters asking questions about the government's response to the coronavirus are not in fact supporting the nazis.

I realize this has now because the official position of the forum because Frank said and his team will line up, but reporters are there actually to ask questions about the governments response to the coronavirus, and questions about unemployment benefits are not actually questions about nazis because Frank can't tolerate criticism of right wing democrats.

When a reporter, apparently an hour earlier, according to Frank, I'm not going to go back and watch the beginning of an hour long video to check something so meaningless that doesn't demonstrate anything, gestured in the general direction of protesters for rhetorical effect that doesn't make them a nazi sympathizer or make their legitimate questions about the state's ability or lack thereof to provide for it's citizens in a timely manner all about defending the nazis.

I realize that Frank believes that Cuomo should execute democratic senators who suggest that medicaid cuts are bad and taxes are good because his definition of the "Horseshoe Left" is an ever expanding list of anyone who has ever criticized any democrat from the left, but Frank also has even less knowledge about Cuomo and NY politics than he did about Warren when he was praising her for opposing M4A.

NY politics for 10 years now has been the story of Cuomo facing left pressure from the legion of leftist democrats that actually exist in NY, brutally crushing it with his power, and then moving on to the next enemy. When NY reporters ask Cuomo about his failure to provide for citizens, they aren't doing it because they really support 12 landlords who voted for Cuomo anyway, they are doing it because their entire professional career has been covering the left opposition to Cuomo seeking to increase taxes and expand benefits, and Cuomo's fighting back against them because he has a lot of billionaire friends and donors who help him continue to wield power.

[deaddmwalking]

@Mguy

There are certainly things you could say Cuomo could have done better. But he's right - if you're protesting because YOU WANT TO WORK, there are jobs you can have that are desperately looking for people. If you want to go back to working your previous job of 'owning a Subway' and bossing around minimum wage workers to make a decent living for yourself without regard to the health and safety of your workers, that's a problem.

Now, regarding the City of New York's budget, there's a major problem. The city makes money primarily from sales tax. Sales tax is added to things people buy. When people can't/won't buy things (because of a pandemic) there is no revenue for the city. If there is no revenue for the city, they can't fund programs. Unlike say, the Federal Government, they can't just print more money.

This is not just an academic conversation. It's not the first time New York has been in trouble. And the City declaring bankruptcy is a big deal, even though (unlike States, they are allowed to do so). Federal funds could really help out, but this isn't the first time the Federal Government under a Republican president has decided to let New York collapse (to own the libs, presumably).

[Kaelik]

@Mguy

There are certainly things you could say Cuomo could have done better. But he's right - if you're protesting because YOU WANT TO WORK, there are jobs you can have that are desperately looking for people. If you want to go back to working your previous job of 'owning a Subway' and bossing around minimum wage workers to make a decent living for yourself without regard to the health and safety of your workers, that's a problem.

Now, regarding the City of New York's budget, there's a major problem. The city makes money primarily from sales tax. Sales tax is added to things people buy. When people can't/won't buy things (because of a pandemic) there is no revenue for the city. If there is no revenue for the city, they can't fund programs. Unlike say, the Federal Government, they can't just print more money.

This is not just an academic conversation. It's not the first time New York has been in trouble. And the City declaring bankruptcy is a big deal, even though (unlike States, they are allowed to do so). Federal funds could really help out, but this isn't the first time the Federal Government under a Republican president has decided to let New York collapse (to own the libs, presumably).

Cuomo is not the mayor, he's the governor, and he just finished a budget battle during the coronavirus where he worked very hard to prevent income taxes on the rich.

[MGuy]

I didn't weigh in on whether or not he was correct. There are tons of things you could be correct by saying and still be mistaken for saying when you're a politician. I also don't know that he's even right. Currently, here in Indy if I lost my job I'd have a really rough time trying to get back into another unskilled labor job that pays as much as the one I have. Regardless of whether you think that business owners shouldn't want to work the businesses they own so they don't lose said business (which I don't know why you would if you're not against capitalism in general) you don't get on TV as a public official and talk down to your citizens because you represent them just as much as you represent people you agree with.

Imagine that Cuomo was being asked about overpolicing in marginalized neighborhoods and he came back with "they should stop doing so much crime". Sure people doing less crime would be ideal but think about what that makes you sound like. Being 'technically correct' isn't the end all be all in politics.

[deaddmwalking]

Imagine that Cuomo was being asked about overpolicing in marginalized neighborhoods and he came back with "they should stop doing so much crime". Sure people doing less crime would be ideal but think about what that makes you sound like. Being 'technically correct' isn't the end all be all in politics.

You're looking at it completely backward. Imagine that the question was phrased as 'not policing immigrant communities enough'. There are a lot of right answers that don't involve agreeing with the premise.

In this specific case, the premise is 'business owners have a right to open their businesses regardless of the threat to public health'. Every version of a correct response is to reject the premise. Public safety trumps 'economic rights'. Nobody should be at risk of starving - food distribution is available. Nobody should be at risk of eviction - evictions are not permitted. Food and shelter are not 'problems' with an immediacy that requires allowing someone to go back to work at the dog grooming salon - with the $600/extra in Unemployment wage workers are not the ones 'agitating for a right to work'.

If you want to claim that you have a right to work because you believe in the transcendental value of honest work, there's nothing stopping you from working. There are lots of ways you can volunteer to improve your community (or take a job providing an essential service). But let's be honest - the people advocating for a 'right to work' are not talking about themselves - they're talking about making their EMPLOYEES work.

As a society we benefit from social distancing. As a society, we're absorbing the cost of that by a major increase in the safety network where most people are getting 100% of their 'work pay' on 'unemployment'. If you're one of the people that's at less than 100% of your pay with the extra $600/week, you weren't doing badly before you lost your job. Keep in mind, that's in addition to the 'base unemployment' you're eligible for (usually 50% your regular work job, but sometimes more). $1200/week is equivalent to $62,400 per year. I feel bad for the people who were earning $70k and are now earning $62k and I hope they can go back to work soon, but not enough to risk EVERYONE'S lives unnecessarily.

[MGuy]

I'd say you're looking at it backward. He's using his authority to keep business closed and is being asked about withdrawing that authority. He isn't being asked to use more of it which matches up with my example.

That said I was pretty clear about what I wanted him to claim. I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about 'believe in the transcendental value of honest work' or 'economic rights' when I actually put into text what the most correct response was. I'm going to guess that you just wanted to spend three paragraphs not actually engaging with the point I made in order to make your own argument against someone who isn't here. Because what I said he should have said was:

"we have bodies piling up and I'd rather help my citizens through economic hardship than watch them die"

Or some other form of 'that' since you get the point across without sounding like you're completely dismissing the concerns of the populous. I have a really hard time getting into this mindset where you think that all you need to be is 'right' so you don't have to worry about how to deliver an effective message.

Not saying you're even right because I'm not sure of anything that's going on in New York so this is even assuming that things aren't really 'that bad' which is what you seem to think (and I high key doubt is the truth).

[Hicks]

The states are financially buckling under the socialism demanded by coronavirus. This is why I said congress and the federal government have to do the socialism; congress has the power of the purse, and states do not.

The illusion of democracy is on the final precipice of failing in America.

Why Mitch McConnell Wants States to Go Bankrupt

[Username17]

The states are financially buckling under the socialism demanded by coronavirus. This is why I said congress and the federal government have to do the socialism; congress has the power of the purse, and states do not.

The illusion of democracy is on the final precipice of failing in America.

Why Mitch McConnell Wants States to Go Bankrupt

I think you'd be surprised at how much money the RAC and Western States Pact can borrow on the assumption that the Federal Government will eventually have to pay out for the cost of the pandemic response. In an immediate sense, McConnell is correct that he can simply refuse to bring the house bills up for a vote in the senate and starve the state and local governments of cash. But while there is no existing mechanism for the states to perform a multi-trillion dollar pandemic response without congressional cooperation, it's not implausible or unconstitutional for the various state consortiums to build one.

The revolution can't and won't happen immediately, but McConnell is playing with some serious fucking fire. If it comes to that, the Western States Pact and the RAC and the Midwestern Partnership can issue hundreds of billions of dollars of bonds - with the understanding that the United States Federal Government will pick up the tab by the time those bonds come due in five to ten years. The fact that the states couldn't possibly pay those bonds back without congressional cooperation is beside the point: those bonds will sell because enough investors will assume that some future congress will choose to pick up the tab rather than allow the United States to collapse into regional governments.

Which basically leaves a bunch of shitty red states hanging in the wind. I don't think Arkansas has quite the implied leverage over the bond market that the Western States Pact does. But it does mean that we have until the re-election of Biden to find a senate majority leader that will sign the magna carta.

But expect several weeks of very tense and frustrating negotiations, because I think a lot of Republican senators haven't even thought about the fact that blue states have an alternate funding pathway, let alone what the ramifications of that might be. Remember: if you owe the bank half a million dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank two hundred billion dollars, the bank has a problem. And if the various regional consortiums secure their own funding, a lot of banks are going to have problems, and they will definitely lean on future congresses to make sure those problems get resolved.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/ ... ted-fp.pdf

The 10.1 Billion in spending reduction from the levels proposed in the Executive Budget include an 8.2 Billion reduction in "aid to localities" a broad spending category that includes funding for health care, K-12 schools, and higher education as well as support for local governments, public transit systems, and the State's not-for-profit partners who deliver critical services.

This is what happens when you let Cuomo get his way and block taxes on billionaires and give him unilateral authority to cut the budget to make sure the state doesn't take on any SPOOKY debt.

It doesn't matter what you can borrow if you have a republican governor who believes that austerity is a good into itself and will take advantage of a pandemic to enforce it on the state.

[RadiantPhoenix]

https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/ ... ted-fp.pdf

The 10.1 Billion in spending reduction from the levels proposed in the Executive Budget include an 8.2 Billion reduction in "aid to localities" a broad spending category that includes funding for health care, K-12 schools, and higher education as well as support for local governments, public transit systems, and the State's not-for-profit partners who deliver critical services.

This is what happens when you let Cuomo get his way and block taxes on billionaires and give him unilateral authority to cut the budget to make sure the state doesn't take on any SPOOKY debt.

It doesn't matter what you can borrow if you have a republican governor who believes that austerity is a good into itself and will take advantage of a pandemic to enforce it on the state.

"Unilateral authority" implies that he has the choice to not cut spending to match revenue.

Given that New York has a Balanced Budget requirement in the state constitution, and has had it for... I don't know how long, but the requirement on the legislature says it's been there for four years longer than Cuomo has been governor, I think it may not be entirely fair to blame Cuomo for the debt-avoidance thing, just the billionaires thing.

[Kaelik]

https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/ ... ted-fp.pdf

The 10.1 Billion in spending reduction from the levels proposed in the Executive Budget include an 8.2 Billion reduction in "aid to localities" a broad spending category that includes funding for health care, K-12 schools, and higher education as well as support for local governments, public transit systems, and the State's not-for-profit partners who deliver critical services.

This is what happens when you let Cuomo get his way and block taxes on billionaires and give him unilateral authority to cut the budget to make sure the state doesn't take on any SPOOKY debt.

It doesn't matter what you can borrow if you have a republican governor who believes that austerity is a good into itself and will take advantage of a pandemic to enforce it on the state.

"Unilateral authority" implies that he has the choice to not cut spending to match revenue.

Given that New York has a Balanced Budget requirement in the state constitution, and has had it for... I don't know how long, but the requirement on the legislature says it's been there for four years longer than Cuomo has been governor, I think it may not be entirely fair to blame Cuomo for the debt-avoidance thing, just the billionaires thing.

I'm glad you couldn't find even a single thing worth nitpicking about claims that the US will break apart into regional blocks so you decided to try to whine about the things you think words imply.

But it turns out, that actually, in most states even ones with balanced budget amendments, the governor doesn't have the unilateral power to cut whatever they want. Because budgeting is a legislative function, so it's the legislature decision.

In fact, a year ago, Cuomo didn't have this power, which is why I referred to it as "give him unilateral authority" because the recent budget expressly gave him the power to cut whatever parts of the budget he wants by whatever he wants where normally such decisions about what gets cut and by how much are passed through the legislature.

That is what "Unilateral" means in political contexts, that the executive can make that decision without the legislature.

So now that you have been corrected on this very tiny niggling implication you felt was so important to address you can go back to cosigning sweeping statements about the countries that will form when the US splits.

[Maj]

Theoretically, if we all social distance really hard, could the coronavirus die out on its own?

[Whatever]

Theoretically, if we all social distance really hard, could the coronavirus die out on its own?

Sure. If there's no contact between any two people, then the virus has no chance to infect anyone new. Once the active cases resolve (that is, once some people get better and the rest die), then you have no new cases and the virus is gone.

Actually cutting off all contact between all persons is not possible, but the closer we get, the fewer new cases we have.

[phlapjackage]

If you're one of the people that's at less than 100% of your pay with the extra $600/week, you weren't doing badly before you lost your job. Keep in mind, that's in addition to the 'base unemployment' you're eligible for (usually 50% your regular work job, but sometimes more). $1200/week is equivalent to $62,400 per year. I feel bad for the people who were earning $70k and are now earning $62k and I hope they can go back to work soon, but not enough to risk EVERYONE'S lives unnecessarily.

That's even if you can apply for and actually receive unemployment benefits

https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronaviru ... us-layoffs

[Dogbert]

I called it. The message is getting out.

Now if only there were people to listen...

The people is hungry and have access to guns, but even if there was a warlord to lead them (I won't say "people's hero" since revolutionary leaders are never heroes), the masses are too domesticated already. If people didn't raise up in arms after Fergusson, then after Charlottesville, then after being sent to their deaths now, then they won't raise up in arms ever. There won't be a revolution, period.

Welcome to the rest of your lives.

[Maj]

I've been saying since the start of this that coronavirus is the revolution we won't throw for ourselves. It remains to be seen if it succeeds because America doesn't seem like it's gonna help much.

[Chamomile]

Ever seen a video of ISIS lining up a bunch of Shia to be shot? There's almost never any restraints involved. A bunch of ISIS psychopaths with assault rifles tell them to march to where they're going to be shot, and they just do it. ISIS start murdering them one by one, tossing bodies into the river, and the others just sit there and wait their turn.

Psychopaths with guns can walk up to people who outnumber them ten to one, say "we are going to murder all of you," then proceed to begin murdering all of them, and the targets will mostly just be sad about it. The smart move to make here is very clearly to try and rush the guards. Sure, the most likely result is that you get shot and die, but barring miraculous black swan events that is the guaranteed result if you don't do that, so why not go for it? I don't know what the answer to that question is, but I know that people consistently line up to be shot rather than charge the guards and pray for victory.

If facing a virtually 100% chance of death doesn't prompt a ubiquitous reaction of "fuck it, we may as well try to fight them," I don't see why a 1% or 5% or 10% death rate from corona would.

On the other hand, food riots are a thing. Just not a thing that results in 100% of the adult population of a region being mobilized against whatever's causing the famine, even when the famine is artificial. So what can a revolution instigated by food riots accomplish in the current situation?

Revolution is a spectrum. Let's ignore the peaceful end of it for now and divide violent revolutions into roughly three categories:

-Partisan ops
-Insurgency
-Civil war

Partisan operations include mainly things that are going to get labeled "terrorism" in the news, but I'm using this weird but more neutral term to cover the possibility of a partisan effort to assassinate key enemy figures simply to disrupt their ability to operate by punching holes in their command structure, and likewise to demolish certain key transportation infrastructures with the goal of simply preventing troop movements, rather than with the goal of terrorizing a population into submission. Partisan ops are usually terrorist actions, but they don't have to be.

Insurgency and civil war are more intuitive. An insurgency is a large but underequipped military using guerilla tactics to fight against a far better equipped enemy who is weighed down by the need to take and hold territory to prevent the insurgency from growing. In a civil war, the revolution is itself taking and holding territory, which makes it easier for them to recruit, to manufacture weapons, and is also the ultimate goal of a revolution: To take territory away from an existing government and give it to a new and hopefully better government.

You don't have to go through these three stages in sequence or anything. Sometimes an exhausted imperial occupation force will leave a region, and the insurgents skip to victory without ever fighting a civil war where they confront the enemy army directly. Sometimes things skip from "angry letters to the editor" straight to "civil war." In fact, the French Revolution skipped the civil war and went from riots straight to the government surrendering to a new regime. Every major battle of the French Revolution was actually between the victorious revolutionary government commanding the official military and people who were revolting against them. In order to get that kind of instant victory, though, the military has to just step aside and let it happen, either because the government lacks confidence in the military's ability to win against the revolutionaries and orders them to stand down so they can negotiate with the rebels, or else because the military ignores the government's orders to put down the revolution, steps aside, and lets the rebels storm the palace. Neither of these seem like a very likely outcome if there's a communist revolution in America, so let's move on to possibility #2: There is a revolution that is sufficiently widespread to immediately take and hold territory, resulting in an immediate civil war.

If you're going to do this, you had better have at least some of the military on board, otherwise what usually happens is the rebels overcome local garrisons, and then military forces with proper armor, artillery, and air superiority get mobilized and the rebels with their muskets or AR-15s just have no answer at all for that. There were a couple of rebellions like this against Soviet regimes in eastern Europe, where local forces were defeated and the government of a city or even a whole nation (bearing in mind that eastern European nations are kind of small) was successfully overthrown, and then the tanks showed up and it was over a week later. If there's a civil war in America, either parts of the military are going to defect or the revolution will be very short.

Indeed, a revolutionary movement with the ability to take a city from the paramilitary units enforcing the government now should seriously consider the wisdom of actually doing so. Taking territory gives the bombers clear targets. Do you have AA? How confident are you that people with AA (or air superiority fighters) are going to take your side? For the most part, what matters is how many O3 to O6-ish ranks are going to take your side, because those are the guys who run a full company. If a lieutenant or a sergeant tries to take their platoon or their squad to the other side, they have to convince their troops to kill people they share a mess hall with as one of their very first acts of rebellion. This is going to be a hard sell. A captain or major has to convince the troops in their company to shoot people they may dimly recognize as being part of the same regiment, but not anyone they could actually name. Once you're looking at a colonel bringing their entire regiment over to the revolution, we're now talking about asking soldiers to kill people who are wearing the same uniform, but whom they have never even seen before. The alternative is desertion or mutiny, if not against the entire military, then at the very least in the eyes of whatever unit they are actually a part of. When a company or regiment commander defects, you can expect them to bring their troops with them, regardless of whether or not there's any generals on board. And the military gets less conservative as you go down the ranks, so the fact that we don't have to convince any top brass is a big bonus.

All that being said, the Republicans are as pro-military as they are apathetic to veterans, and the military usually returns the love. Although I would expect at least as many as a quarter and perhaps as many as half of the O3-O6 officers we're looking for to be sympathetic, I would not expect that many to actually defect. Probably "their grievances are legitimate, but their methods cannot be tolerated" will be a common sentiment amongst those people. The more of them actually defect to the revolution, the more of them will see defection as a legitimate means of expressing their political allegiance, but this cuts both ways. No one is going to want to be the first guy to defect and brings his unit over for fear that nobody else will follow, because being the second guy is also pretty terrifying. Who exactly are we expecting to get that ball rolling?

For reference, about one-third of military votes were for Hillary in 2016. Additionally, being that red-leaning people are more likely to be sociopaths in general, red members of units with blue commanders are very probably more likely to murder their fellow troops than vice-versa. The American left has been singing the praises of non-violent resistance for four decades and then started saying "oh, actually, maybe not" for four years. There's a lot more time left in the glass for American democracy - at least in the sense of not being openly fascist - than I had feared in 2016, but it remains to be seen whether that's actually enough time for the idea of "violent revolution is actually a good thing" to percolate to the parts of the left that join the military.

So the immediate civil war route is probably a bad idea. If the revolution comes into enough followers to be able to defeat SWAT teams, it is nevertheless probably a good idea not to try and hold the city in the aftermath. Go guerilla, hide out in the wilderness or in plain sight in the city. Lots of people have guns so yours won't necessarily brand you as a rebel immediately, unless of course you're black, in which case there's decent odds you'll be branded as a rebel regardless of what you've done, how many weapons you own, who you vote for, or who you associate with.

The long term goal of an insurgency is one of two things, though:

1) Make the government bleed to dispel their aura of invincibility and rally the people, and
2) Exhaust the government until they give up, write the region of rebellion off, and leave.

The first goal is going to be severely hindered by the fact that the American government and corporations have total control over narrative channels. In order to rally the people, you also have to make yourselves out to be the good guys, which is pretty damn hard when the enemy controls Facebook. The second goal is severely hindered by the fact that the revolution is contesting core territory. Maybe you could try and break the Western States Pact off of the rest of America, but that would require the Western States Pact to be on board with your revolution. I doubt the governor of California's down with a revolution when it could easily mean he ends up deposed. He wouldn't actually be a revolutionary leader, after all, since he's sure as Hell not starting it himself. So probably you've got to lean on that first one, but that first one means you ultimately want to progress to the civil war stage, not skip it and go straight to victory like you can with option two, which means you need to somehow fight an insurgency in such a way that it makes the military more likely to defect. There have been historical situations where this has made sense, situations where the military's loyalty to the government was largely mercenary and they started finking out and/or defecting when the war started to look never-ending, but this moment in time is probably not one of those situations.

So what can we do with partisan ops? We need violent revolution to be a fairly mainstream left-wing idea to convince parts of the military to defect in order to wage civil war, but we only need it to have taken hold amongst the most partisan leftists in order to have partisan ops. That's where the name comes from and all. So on the one hand, it's definitely plausible that there's enough left-wing anger for an effective partisan ops movement to materialize. On the other hand, Weatherman thought the same thing and look how that turned out. Most people haven't even heard of Weatherman these days, despite the fact that they're still in living memory.

If you're doing partisan ops, your goal (if you're not just expelling rage in the form of bombs) is either to terrorize the government into doing what you want or else to expose the government's weakness and thus inspire the people to rise up. If you accomplish the latter, you've gotten into either insurgency or civil war territory, which we have already covered. If you're doing the former, then you face essentially zero odds of the government ever being scared into granting you amnesty or making peace with you. You are forever going to be a fugitive, having sacrificed whatever civilian life you could've had for the cause. Most partisans are not actually willing to do this. They join the revolution with the understanding that the revolution is going to win, not merely scare the government into backing off for fear of causing the revolution to spread. I mentioned Weatherman earlier, and they were actually able to mostly get away with it because the FBI had broken the law in multiple different ways while hunting them down, and this led to all the serious charges against Weatherman being dropped. I do not anticipate that this will happen in today's political climate.

So having examined the options, what are the most plausible paths to victory for a revolution? Well, small scale partisan ops could plausibly intimidate the government into making sure things don't get any worse, with the implicit threat that if a handful of people are attempting assassinations or demolitions now, they might have a much worse problem on their hands if things continue to deteriorate. A revolutionary insurgency formed out of food rioters could maintain constant pressure on the current regime and wait for another crisis to weaken the government to the point where it splits or crumbles. If they stick around long enough, like, twenty years long enough, they may eventually accrue enough legitimacy through sheer exposure effect to begin expanding support amongst people who dislike the current government, although these are exactly the kind of people who do not become O3-O6 military officers, so I'm not sure how much that will help. An immediate revolution that takes and holds land could probably expect to see at least one-quarter and maybe as much as one-half of the military defecting to their side if they can somehow normalize the concept of defecting to a leftist revolution at all.

But the most likely outcome is that people will go back to work and some number of them will die pointless deaths from coronavirus, or else that there will be a bunch of riots that provoke the government into acting with the barest minimum of humanity for a few months without causing any long term regime change, or something else with an ultimately minimal effect on the course of history. To the extent that coronavirus might end up having some positive after effects, it's that seeing Trump bungle the response might convince more people to instead vote for...Biden. Yaaaaay.