Posted on 09/30/2025 7:15:27 AM PDT by MtnClimber
When the newly-formed Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, April 1861, they ignited the Civil War. They, at least, had a clearcut goal: to maintain an economy (and society) based on slavery. It was patently evil, but it was firmly established and it was their engine for daily life, and they didn’t want it to end.
When Charlie Kirk was murdered in 2025, Civil War 2.0 kicked off. The enemy this time are not Confederates with a coherent command structure and a goal. They are an army of nihilists like the gang in The Big Lebowski, who, for one reason or another, have failed to launch lives of meaning and purpose, and so have adopted the purpose of destroying the country they cannot thrive in. Unlike The Big Lebowski, this is not a joke. But, it’s obviously a different sort of civil war than the first one.
It appears that many of these nihilists, especially the ones amalgamated as Antifa, are straight-up mentally ill — crazed young women too untamed to find a mate, many obese and self-mutilated like tattooed savages with steel bones in their noses. . . young men, hormones afire, likewise frustrated, escaping into sexual fetish and psychotic obsessions with demons, violence, blame, enmity. They are warriors for their own deformed ids.
There is, for sure, plenty to complain about in American life as currently organized. It abounds with swindles and ruses, and much of the ill effect falls on young people who were rooked into college loans, are drowning in unpayable debt, are unable to find meaningful work in an economy dominated by cruelly gigantic companies, are unable to afford a place of their own to eat and sleep in, and whose bodies and minds are ravaged by junk food and pharma products.
Do not overlook the deleterious effects of the everyday environment we have created: the world of American suburbia. Above all, it requires a reliable car to even begin to function in, and that is beyond the reach of many newly-minted adults with no job or a shit-job. The sheer ugliness of American suburbia is punishing to human neurology. It induces anxiety and despair to a degree we can’t begin to reckon. Try walking a mile down a six-laner between the Sam’s Club and the DMV sometime.
Suburbia atomizes social relations, making everyone an isolated unit and it defeats any attempt to form real communities. Its schools function like minimum security prisons, generators of anomie and ennui. On top of all that, suburbia has entered its arc of economic failure. Even the gainfully employed middle-aged can no longer pay for it. It was built out of crappy materials that are falling apart now. A sane person would opt to not live in it, but since escape is so difficult from sea to shining sea, the other option is to go insane — especially if you’re just setting out in life.
All of this discontent gets converted, abracadabra, into political ideology. The old, reliable package of Marxism works whenever people feel cheated out of meaning, purpose, and a livelihood. And so, this anguished cohort of the young, defeated in making a life, driven mentally ill by their surroundings, hounded by the endless prompts of their beloved smartphones, wrecked by the things they put in their bodies, and broken by their demoralizing failures, become the useful idiots of their political elders.
And the Democratic Party, having become little more than a grifting machine of hustles and hoaxes, uses the young to generate ever more ill-feeling across the land over issues that self-evidently are against the interests of the young — so that the party can survive its present existential crisis.
It was not in young America’s interest to receive “Joe Biden’s” flood of illegal migrants across the border. Apart from their criminal histories, or the hidden agenda to form subversive cells for foreign enemies, the illegal migrants compete with young people in many realms of employment like the building trades, while they drive down wages generally. So why are the Antifas out there in front of the ICE facility affecting to “rescue” the deportees?
Because the mind-scrambling language of Marxian revolt has persuaded the Antifas that the illegal migrants are their “marginalized intersectional allies.” It’s bullsh[**], of course, but the mentally ill swallow it because they are desperate for meaning and filled with animus for all-and-any authority responsible for constructing and managing a system they have failed in.
Mr. Trump, the primary demon in their fantasies, and certainly the enemy of the Democratic Party’s corrupt grifting machine, attempts to restore an economy based on producing things of value, rather than financial flimflams. The catch is, he may not be able to do that using the old armature of gigantic corporate organisms operating on rollover debt. That phase of history is probably over.
We need a new armature, but one based on voluntary exchange, which is to say economic liberty, not top-town communist-type centralized planning. Everywhere that has been tried, it failed and blew up. Euro-style Socialism Lite is not a workable choice anymore, either, because we are leaving behind the cheap energy economy and the geopolitical deals that made six-week vacations, retirement at 60, and free medicine possible.
Neither the Democratic Party nor their Antifa foot-soldiers have a sane and coherent approach to this set of problems. The remaining option for them is to stay insane, to fight for crazy things like men in the women’s swim lane, and to act out their inchoate rage. If they keep escalating, the remaining sane sixty-percent or so of America will opt to put them down briskly and harshly, and it looks like that is about to happen.
Although when your labor force is essentially free, it’s easier to be prosperous.
I get tired of both sides of this. Those that say slavery was the sole reason, and those that say economics and state rights were the reasons, with slavery not even a part of it.
Maintaining slavery was definitely one of the motivations for the South because it played a central role in the economic paradigm, as well as “states rights” - but it wasn’t the sole reason.
“The Occasional Acid Flashback!”
.
The Reality Check.
The academy joins with popular culture to inculcate anger, resentment, hatred for America and Western culture, and a victim mentality among young people, particularly among young women.
P.S.: The FR website has become sluggish.
I had to look up the definition. Now I’ll finish the article. Thanks for the ping.
anomie
Social instability caused by erosion of standards and values.
Alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals.
Bkmk
I don’t care about Fort Sumter, but he absolutely nails it in the rest of the article. Red Badger, don’t let YOUR opinions become facts.
Movies and television shows have been designed as propaganda to demoralize, degrade and indoctrinate people for a long time.
Thankfully I have had a TV only about 6 months in my adult life, and have watched fewer movies than anyone except the Amish.
I don’t think Kunstler means all young people; he’s describing the ones attracted to Antifa and like orgs. There are plenty of decent and sane young people.
Sure dude, bleeding Kansas was about tariffs and not the expansion of slavery...
The South started the civil war to form their own country to protect and expand Slavery.
If they had won they would have ended up like a giant version of Hatti or South Africa.
So does that mean today’s Trantifas are as legitimate as the Jefferson Confederates?
Parts of our south are like Caribbean and South Africa.
There are no “acid flashbacks”.
“he’s describing the ones attracted to Antifa and like orgs”
Makes sense. Thanks.
“When the newly-formed Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, April 1861, they ignited the Civil War.”
“they ignited...”
Sloppy writing and incorrect history.
It is widely known that Beauregard ordered the attack on his own hook. Even Wikipedia gets it right:
“Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard was an American military officer known for being the Confederate general who started the American Civil War at the battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.”
Tell The Dude That!
Ha!
“Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard was an American military officer known for being the Confederate general who started the American Civil War at the battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.”
Are we sure he did not have the backing of the political leadership of the Confederacy?
It is widely known that Beauregard ordered the attack on his own hook. Even Wikipedia gets it right:
“Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard was an American military officer known for being the Confederate general who started the American Civil War at the battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.”
He was not relieved of his command, and continued in service through the end of the war between the states (civil war).
https://64parishes.org/entry/p-g-t-beauregard-adaptation
That source is wrong. He was not sent there to party, certainly, but he was not ordered by the Confederate government to fire on Ft. Sumter. The Confederacy at the time had sent reps to Lincoln to talk peace. Lincoln loved the attack. He got his war.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that Southern Democrats started a war to solve a political problem because they lost an election. It’s appears to be still in the Team Blue playbook.
That source is wrong. He was not sent there to party, certainly, but he was not ordered by the Confederate government to fire on Ft. Sumter. The Confederacy at the time had sent reps to Lincoln to talk peace. Lincoln loved the attack. He got his war.
However, he was treated as a hero, not as someone who disrupted the government’s plans.
It is difficult to believe the Confederate government had a strong dislike for his actions.
At the time, the Confederates were sure they could win a war with the North. They also believed England would come in on their side.
Both assumptions proved to be mistaken.
A common cause of war is when one or both sides believe they can easily win.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.