Posted on 11/18/2019 4:47:55 AM PST by Kaslin
Next to a nuclear strike, foreign invasion, or global pandemic, it’s hard to imagine something as bone-chillingly terrifying as a second hot Civil War. The first one was bad enough, what with the endless carnage and the deaths of over 620,000 soldiers in a time when the U.S. was sparsely populated and wartime technology was in its relative infancy, at least compared to today. Even if the military withheld its most destructive weapons, a modern hot civil war would be disastrous on a scale that’s barely imaginable.
It’s a prospect no sane person wants, even on the fringes of the right or the left. Yet, in today’s polarized age, most people now genuinely believe civil war to be a very real possibility. An October Georgetown Institute poll found that the average American believes we are “two-thirds of the way to the edge of a civil war,” while a solid majority believes that “political, racial, and class divisions are getting worse.”
From where I’m sitting, it sure seems that way, and it’s a topic that’s getting an increasing amount of coverage in the media from both conservative and liberal perspectives.
The Atlantic devoted its entire December issue to the topic of “How To Stop A Civil War.” Interestingly, it includes an article relating how marriage counseling techniques can help bring some sense of mutual understanding to people on both sides of the political spectrum. Because in truth, the kind of ‘contempt’ that research says ends marriages for good, the kind that left and right clearly have for each other these days, could very well end our nation.
In an article for The American Conservative titled, “Civil War Begins When The Constitutional Order Breaks Down,” Michael Vlahos writes of a “daily torrent of unfiltered evidence” that suggests that “our constitutional order is fissuring before our eyes.”
Leftist author Joseph Natoli, writing for CounterPunch about the “Looming Shadow of Civil War,” sardonically but accurately described how conservatives see the ideological opposition: “Liberals retain the old tax and spend/baby killing on demand profile, taking from working Americans and giving to lazy shirkers and on the way killing babies. The profile grows darker: gay marriage, gender choice, LGBTQ rights, amnesty to illegal aliens, open borders, confiscation of guns, cars, cattle, Jesus, Robert E. Lee and white privilege. The ‘extreme Left’ and Progressives have a thinner profile: Communists.”
The left, then, according to Natoli, sees Trump supporters as being motivated by “ignorance and stupidity at the top of the list, followed by racist, bigoted, misogynist and homophobic. In brief, if you voted for Trump, you were a troglodyte with a gun.”
Now, which of those characterizations appears more accurate and which are just a personal attack? Does the left not favor abortion, tax and spend, gun confiscation, and open borders? Don’t they, for example, incessantly yammer on about the ridiculous, nonexistent concept of “white privilege?" The only thing slightly offensive to some might be the “Communist” label, but many on the more extreme left likely only publicly eschew that label for fear of turning people off.
Trump supporters, of course, don’t cotton to the idea of being labeled as “racist, bigoted, misogynist and homophobic,” not to mention "ignorant" and "stupid," by condescending, virtue signaling leftists full of their own self-defined "morality." Yet, at least for now, we are all in the same boat, as HBO host Bill Maher pointed out in a somewhat-joking, mostly-serious “Real Time with Bill Maher” segment on Friday night. To Maher, the “single shining truth about democracy” is “sharing the country with assholes you can’t stand” in the same way families don’t typically choose their Thanksgiving dinner guests. (Sure, we all know who he’s talking about when it comes to “assholes,” but that doesn’t negate the overall point).
“You don’t get to choose the guests, because those freaks are your family,” Maher joked. “Think about that the next time you think you can own someone politically. Think about how you can see politics so differently from people who share your very blood.” The HBO host lamented the desire, on both sides, to “own” the opposition - a tactic that never actually changes minds - before grimly observing that, while a second civil war may sound “impossible,” it is actually “is not.”
Then the comedian, like Natoli, juxtaposed how both sides see each other: “We all talk about Trump as an existential threat, but his side sees Democratic control of government the exact same way. And when both sides believe the other guy taking over means the end of the world, yes, you can have a civil war.”
“We are going to have to learn to live with each other or there will be blood,” Maher soberingly concluded.
“We are going to have to learn to live with each other or there will be blood,” Maher soberingly concluded.
Is he right? It’s a bit lengthy, but I highly recommend read this article titled “How America Ends.” In it, Atlantic senior editor Yoni Appelbaum acknowledges both the demographic plight faced by the political majority in America – something “no rich and stable democracy has ever experienced” – along with the fact that democracy is imperiled when one or the other side feels hopeless at the prospects for future electoral victory. A 2020 Trump defeat, writes Appelbaum, would “only deepen the despair that fueled his rise, confirming his supporters’ fear that the demographic tide has turned against them.”
“When a group that has traditionally exercised power comes to believe that its eclipse is inevitable, and that the destruction of all it holds dear will follow, it will fight to preserve what it has—whatever the cost,” he continued. Appelbaum’s ‘solution,’ as it were, is for the rise of a center-right party that embraces immigrants and minorities in the same way the Democratic Party expanded its tent in the 30’s.
The article truthfully lays out the landscape in a way that few liberal publications have acknowledged, but the ‘solution’ it offers is simply more of the same. Can America survive when its elites are, against the will of a majority of Americans, importing millions of immigrants from cultures that have little to nothing whatsoever in common with that of the current citizenry? To Maher’s analogy, we may not “choose” our family any more than we “choose” our country-mates, but imagine the tension at Thanksgiving if said “family” included different members every year brought in at random with absolutely nothing culturally in common with the original members. At what point does the concept of assimilation, something that predictably isn’t mentioned in the article but has always been the key to a stable country, become impossible? Still, just turn some into right-of-center conservatives, Appelbaum smugly advises, and all will be well.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for recruiting minorities of any stripe into the conservative tent. Hispanics and African Americans who are courageous enough to outwardly support President Trump, despite the pushback they get from their own communities, have my unending respect and gratitude. However, when has ANY conservative leaning party been able to recruit even Hispanics, the group with which they have arguably forged the greatest inroads, at a level that could equal electoral victory in a Hispanic-dominated state? Even George W. Bush, for all his pandering, only managed to win 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Most political analysts concede that even Texas will go blue by 2024, if not sooner. What chance will Republicans have on a national scale then?
Thus, the apocalyptic concerns of Michael Anton mentioned in the Atlantic article, laid out in his seminal 2016 essay “The Flight 93 Election,” are even more concerning now than ever. And contrary to Appelbaum’s contention, it is in fact Trump and his supporters who are trying to save America from collapse by curbing immigration to manageable levels. Because as daunting as the prospect of a civil war may be, many conservatives would choose that and all that goes with it – if some form of extreme federalism or non-violent secession doesn’t work – any day of the week over the even more disturbing prospect of being dominated by the political left for the foreseeable future.
I don’t believe a civil war is at all likely. There’s no getting from this point to that point.
War entails warring governments or at least the pretense of a separate government on the part of the rebels. Nobody with any credibility is going to step forward to play Jeff Davis for the leftists, and if there were any such person he’d either be too radical or he’d soon be replaced by one as the rebels got overheated. And then he’d get his butt arrested.
A civil war would also entail a weak federal government and that we surely don’t have. The US government has a million times more power than is necessary to resist an organized rebel government and any number of supporters. In no time at all they’d have no food, no weapons and nowhere to hide.
A civil war also entails fighting. The left has plenty of people ready to riot, but rioting is not fighting. It’s tantrums, it’s leaderless chaos and burns itself out — by winter or on EBT day.
Nor do conservatives, moderates, productive people, normal Americans — have any stomach for fighting such rebels (i.e., suppressing tantrums) as would arise, except in limited instances where the militia might be called or where police are scarce.
Therefore, when someone says civil war is coming, they cannot be taken seriously.
This talked-up civil war is no different from talk of “war” on poverty or drugs. It’s a metaphor.
Finally, the left doesn’t need to make war or secede formally. They’re doing just fine with the termite approach, gradually eating away the foundations of America.
And demographics. That’s going in their favor.
PS: As for the alternative scenario in which we, on the right, are the rebels: that’s beyond absurd. The right has surrendered every day for at least a hundred years.
Traditionally, one political party’s members shout, scream, and riot when upset. The other party sucks it up and keeps their cool.
The question becomes “How much crap will the Republicans put up with?”
I fully expect that the limit will be when the riots move from the cities to the burbs. If they can be reserved to the cities and allow the good civil people to exit, the cancellation of food shipments to the cities will be the explosion point.
External to the metro areas, the biggest frustration will be the breakdown in communication.
“The country is too divided. There is no way to recover, at this point. The Left cannot be convinced otherwise. Anyone that thinks otherwise, IMHO, is fooling themselves.”
I made my friend (a liberal/dem white male) pause and think for a moment when I mentioned that when the civil war comes, he’ll be thrown in the same gulag as me, simply because he’s a white male, like me.
I added the civil war based on Identity (gender/race) will be much more frustrating him and other liberal whites than it will be for me.
It didn’t change his mind, but it sure did give him pause.
We are a republic you ignorant leftist commie
“I seriously challenge your assumption that gangs of the Northeast and Left Coast could put together even a semblance of guerrilla war that would challenge the good old boys that we have in just one Alabama county....”
Lol, that’s an excellent point!
Problems with a CW2:
1. Disengagement. Not everyone that lives in the city is a liberal and not everyone that doesn’t is a conservative. How do you tell? How do you separate?
2. Weapons of mass destruction. Who controls planes, tanks, Naval ships and nuclear weapons. All must remain neutral.
3. Foreign Interference. How do we keep foreign powers from taking advantage and interfere on one side or another.
4. Economy. It will be a shambles. Paper money worthless. Inflation, bank failures, disruption o supply network.
And that’s just for starters.
He should straighten his bowtie.
Proximity + Diversity = war.
The current demographic disaster was conceived, designed, and implemented by the left to destroy Christianity and America.
Disarming the agitprop leftist media must be mission number one. After that, CWII will likely never happen.
You assume the military will be cohesive and on the side of tyranny. My guess is that the military would cease to function very rapidly (as would the supply chain to the cities).
If we are, it can be avoided by ENFORCING existing laws regarding TREASON and SEDITION. Removal of a few key people will stop it in it's tracks.
Yep, the reality.
We know the military is highly lefty-led and full of minorities and LGBTQ — they’re gonna side with straight white male patriots?
We know that many union cops do not side with patriots or conservatives.
We know our MSM (which has created our great cultural divisions) will side with the left.
We have semi-auto rifles and various gear. They have choppers and armored vehicles with night vision and 50 cal guns.
The fact the left is refusing to peacefully transfer power from their electoral losses does put the nation on a path that could get there, but I think when they get crushed at the ballot box again next fall, that tensions will lessen..
We shall see... I don’t think this nation is near an open civil war... however, if this path continues...and eventually one party or another openly refuses to allow it, it will eventually lead to it... but we are NOT anywhere near that point yet....
But if CW2 starts, the Left can't ever come into these hills, because they wil disappear. It's like the "roach motel". Roaches can check in but they can't check out.
“This is war and the righteous are AWOL.”
Oh, shadddup. You only say this because your head is firmly up the backside of Leftist media and propaganda. Yeah, the righteous are AWOL there.
Something happened between the late 1950s and 2019...
Compromised Christians allowed Marxists, humanists, and the depraved gain control of the public education and universities.
Compromised Christians voted for evil legislators instead of righteous candidates.
Compromised Christians allowed this abominable system by our inaction, and for this, the Church will be held accountable.
I find it insulting that some of these mamby pamby progressives say that we have to learn to get along with each other.
They mean that in order for us normal people to get along with the people who want to kill us we must be subservient. Then everything will be copacetic again. Kumbaya my friends.
The military has been the victim of all the Social Engineering that the left can impose on them. Military training now is total indoctrination by the Deep State to Hate real traditional American Values. A military cut off from its Judea-Christian values is a potential Wehrmacht that can be trained to turn on its fellow citizens and slaughter them. All that is needed is a new Fuhrer. He is waiting in the wings.
The war is so suble....and without guns. Conservatives are the frogs in water and the Leftists are the heat.
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.