How Close Is America To Civil War?
Americans are angry: with each other, with our president, and with the political parties. We’re shredding families and friendships based on what team we’re rooting for. We’re sizing up public behaviors with each other’s perceived political worldview. There’s a big bunch of white people having this surge of anger against everyone who’s, well, not white. People of color are either a bit afraid, a bit baffled, or feeling under siege. This white rage is explosive right now.
Polls show our entrenchment is deep and wide. And one or more (bet you a trillion bucks it was) white male terrorists sent explosive devices to CNN, billionaire George Soros, the Clintons and the Obamas, among others today.
What would have happened if one of them made it into the buildings, and went off? What if someone had been maimed or even killed?
What would the response in the media? What would Congress do? The politicians would all say it was horrible, but there are millions of Americans who would be absolutely delighted. And in 2018, they’d not only say it aloud, they’d say it on Twitter. They’d say it to your face. Isn’t that jaw-dropping astonishing? The balls of these people is unbelievable.
What’s it going to take to start the war? Probably a lot more than what’s happening now. Slavery was a massive divider in our country. War-worthy. Let’s look at the 1864 presidential election. States in red went to Abraham Lincoln.
America is boorish, racist, rude, cantankerous, uncivil — but we’re a long way from war.
It’s unfortunately easy to envision a moment when some white guy shoots up a college campus or a county fair. That happens now. But it’s not too much of a stretch to see some lone white male wolves take matters into their own hands if Robert Mueller’s squad comes out with horrific findings or if the president were impeached. We are certainly headed for a time when violence breaks out with regularity for while unless something dramatic occurs which unites us — another 9/11 with foreign actors would bring us closer, for example. Isn’t it a tragedy that it might take a tragedy to again unify this fractured and frazzled nation.
It all hinges on the president’s base and how they want to behave. The anarchists will ally with the base if the shit gets real. Anything which weakens or deposes the president will be the spark which starts the fire. Media outlets will be targeted, and shots will be fired, pitting neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, family against family.
So there are most certainly going to be outbreaks of white rage which will spill over into localized violence, but full-on war? Very doubtful.
Our arguments with each other are not new at all. Take immigration. Here we go again. What’s happening how in America is simply a rehash of tried and true sins already committed.
Why?
Human desires as well as sins have been repeated forever. Something happens in the world, we react to it, forgetting what happened the last time this came up, and we’re right back to it.
Humans are unable to learn from past errors.
Nauseated by the behavior of your leaders in Washington? While their childish, uncivil behavior toward each other is truly awful, it’s good to be reminded that back in the day, our politicians of the 1830s-1850s regularly wore weapons on the House and Senate floors, and sometimes used them. On each other. Oh, and the “fake news” media was a target. Congressmen routinely beat up reporters. Beat them up!
We’ve always been angry with each other. We’re just in a bad time right now. These things are cyclical. We wax and wane. We calm down, eventually.
The events that soothe us as a nation haven’t happened yet. Let’s hope the healing and reconciliation comes sooner than later. Because what’s happening now to us really sucks.
