I have been writing about the dangerous state of affairs that exist within the current political climate in the United States of America. The extremes on both the right and the left have seemingly thrown caution to the wind and have embraced a scorched earth approach to ensuring the triumph of their side. In short, the long simmering culture war is threatening to turn into a full-fledged civil war. Moreover, I'm not the only one who thinks that this is a real possibility.
Salon just published a piece by Chauncey DeVega entitled Disunited States: Could a second Civil War...really happen? The article is based on a new book by Richard Kreitner entitled Break It Up. The piece opens by pointing out how the current occupant of the Oval Office thinks in terms of red and blue states, and how he feels absolutely no obligation to assist blue states. The article then moves on to point out how Trump and Barr have threatened to use the Insurrection Act and charge people with sedition who choose to oppose his "victory" in November.
DeVega relates how Kreitner views the "Age of Trump" as "one of several moments in the country's history where it almost collapsed into a state of civil war and widespread political violence." He continues: "What we are learning as a people in the Age of Trump is that what holds the United States and the constitutional order together is a matter of habit and practice. I would perhaps go so far as to say inertia. The United States has really not been able to agree on institutional arrangements that would make for a stable and unified nation."
As the article makes clear, this unsettled nature of "institutional arrangements" goes all the way back to the founding of the nation. The compromises that the Founding Fathers fashioned in terms of state vs federal power, and popular governance on the federal level vs state control (giving smaller states a larger voice in the Senate), are wearing thin. We are also reminded how righteous extremists provoked the Civil War of 1861-1865, and how the rebels were accommodated and appeased as they were ushered back into the union. In short, there has always been a substantial part of our citizenry who have resisted any diminution of white supremacy within this nation. In other words, some of the same issues that haunted our ancestors are still with us today - never having been entirely resolved by those earlier conflicts.
Finally, when DeVega asked Kreitner about a possible scenario for how the nation might disintegrate into civil war, he pointed to our current circumstances. He concluded: "There is an election that is existential, one of the most important in American history. There are many millions of guns in the United States and lots of discussions by the right wing about using them. The issues that led to the first civil war remain in many ways unresolved. There is a massive reckoning over the country's own history that has been long postponed. Resolving such matters is rarely peaceful. There are also foreign adversaries and other forces who are interfering in the election. All the elements for the story are present right now in America."
The stakes couldn't be higher. Both sides are playing for keeps. The margins for compromise have grown smaller and smaller with each day. The sides have already been chosen. The fuse has been lit; and, unfortunately, I don't see anyone on the scene who is willing and able to defuse it!
