May You Live in Interesting Times
I originally posted this on the American Warrior Society webpage on 1/27/20. I reprint it here now with their permission. I am sad to say, it has aged far better than any of us hoped.
What is going on here?
“It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws”
-Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Can anyone now living in America remember a time when our society was as divided and angry as it currently seems? It is bad enough that it is not uncommon for me to hear sober, intelligent people suggest that civil war is at hand. That it is inevitable. That it is just a matter of time. Some have asked me what I think about the possibility: Is a new American civil war on the horizon? Given the way things are going these days, instead of just dismissing such a suggestion as rhetorical, I have actually put some thought into it.
The fact that conversations like this are even being had says something. It was not that long ago that the idea of another American civil war would have been unthinkable to just about everyone. Laughable even. Such an idea was the purview of the extremist verge of both white and black nationalist movements. The thought of our own citizens shooting at one another over political disagreements seemed the stuff of action movies and late-night comedians. American politics can be rough, but compared to some other very stable democracies (Israel? England?), ours has always looked rather collegial. Or it did.
The most recent analogy to our current political and national landscape that I see is the 1960’s and early 1970’s. While the public then was extremely polarized as well, governmental leaders were not nearly so, if the research is to be believed and living memory to be trusted. Rioting and left-wing terrorists were rife in those days. Long term riots are the “in” thing for some these days (seriously, riots that last MONTHS in some cases?!) but we have not seen the rise of organized, leftist domestic terrorist groups like we did in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Yet.
Our current situation begins at the top. Our national leaders are openly opposed to one another like never before in my lifetime. When candidates for president discard any semblance of interpersonal courtesy, it is a very bad sign. When they also stoop to calling those who vote for their opponent names, we should all pause. Not only does this pander to a party’s extremist fringe, it also signals the candidate’s willingness to simply abandon wholesale those who do not agree to a particular plank of their party platform. It shows a desire to win an election without seeking even a semblance of consensus. It is raw, naked vote chasing at its worst. It also flows down the chain of command, with other politicians mimicking the behavior.
Our political “leaders,” even in the tumultuous ‘60’s, have always tended to be studiously polite, even if only superficially. They may not have all liked one another, but they were at least outwardly courteous. I recall a comedian once saying that to an American politician, the phrase “My distinguished colleague” really meant “This asshole over here.” People like President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neil, who were diametrically opposed politically and fought one another tooth and nail over legislation, yet would regularly dine together and tried very hard to forge what would become a deep friendship, all due to their professional responsibilities and based on mutual respect. Such was the norm.
Now we see a sitting President refuse publicly to shake the hand of the Speaker of the House at the State of the Union address, followed by the Speaker publicly tearing up her copy of the President’s speech. Rude, nasty interpersonal behavior and name calling by political leaders, and aspiring leaders, signals to their colleagues and constituents that it is permissible to denigrate those who do not agree with their political opinion. It is a very small step from this kind of ad hominem attack to actual violence, as we have seen. Those who seek political office in this country should know better and should never lower themselves to such a level. In fact, they DO know better. They are simply choosing to do otherwise in a clear attempt to garner enough votes to get or keep their job. Doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing appears to no longer be reason enough.
The question then begs to be asked, is it working? Is running down, insulting, and tacitly approving of even worse behavior by others accomplishing these politicians’ goals? Given that the best information we have regarding the run up to the 2020 presidential election shows the candidates’ approval ratings were essentially identical at around 44% and that the election was a virtual tie in terms of both popular and electoral votes (anyone take a look at what the collective stance on repealing the electoral college is today versus six months ago?), I would say a strong argument could be made that it is not working.
But perhaps it is.
With things so evenly split, and with a full 1/3 of the eligible voters not even bothering to exercise their franchise this year, every single vote counts. In such a political environment, candidates need to get out the vote for their side as hard as they can. It becomes less about who votes for which side than it is about who stays home. The extremist fringes of each party are just not going to vote for the “other” candidate. Can you imagine a Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat into a voting booth to cast a vote for Hillary? Or vice versa? Probably not. But if these voters do not like their candidate’s rhetoric because it is too soft on a critical issue or two, they might just stay home and watch Netflix. That could easily cost an election.
But what about that vast number of people in the center? You know, the “regular” folks, the silent majority we always hear about, the ones who lean a little left on some issues and a little right on others? These days, candidates seem to be ok with taking a very cynical approach, one where they try to be just palatable enough to get their share of those voters. The stance too often seems to be one of “I may not be perfect for you, but I am easier to stomach than that jerk I am running against!”
This results in elections like we have seen in the last two runs for president. In both of those, almost every person I have spoken to has said some version of the same thing. Few, if any, it seemed, were voting for someone because of their policies and ideas so much as they were voting against someone because they really could not stand the other guy (or girl, as the case may be) and/or their platform.
I have had a couple people tell me that they voted for Hillary in 2016 because she was a woman, pure and simple. (I did not point out such an inherently sexist approach being taken in a fight against sexism was a bit paradoxical, if only to avoid getting smacked). By and large, however, most folks I have come across have had very strong feelings against one candidate or their party. That was motivating them to go to the polls. It was a hostile attitude in 2016. It seemed to be rage inducing for many in 2020.
We now have a country where only about 19% of people approve, and a whopping 77% disapprove, of the way Congress is doing their job. Congress reads these same polls and, to this point at least, their actions show them to be completely unconcerned about these numbers. In some ways, President Trump’s election can be seen as a reaction to the deep dissatisfaction much of America has with our political class. The rejection of Hillary Clinton, the ultimate “Beltway Insider,” in that same election is easy to view in the same light. Regardless, our presidential leadership is chaotic. Nobody, neither the chief of the executive branch nor our entire national legislature, can legitimately claim to have a mandate from the electorate.
The Media is Not Helping
“The people will believe what the media tells them they believe”
-George Orwell
As if that is not enough, toss in a mass media that seems to have completely given up on even the pretense of being an impartial reporter of fact. Around 60% of Americans no longer trust the media at all. And the media, like Congress, just does not seem to care. The objective apparently is not to report the news so much as it is to generate advertising dollars. The news is merely the story they tell to keep us in our seats between commercial breaks. To do that, the media needs interested eyeballs glued to their product. They have figured out anger, crisis, and tragedy does that best. So that is what they report. If a little biased sensationalism, creative editing, and poetic license helps, well then, by all means. Yellow journalism has such a rich history, after all. Walter Cronkite would starve to death as a newsman in this environment.
People do not seem to choose their preferred media outlet based on the reliability of the information provided any longer. Such is an outmoded concept. They pick it mostly based on political affiliation. Once chosen, they rarely drift about and are instead marinated in information, or propaganda, that speaks to their already held notions, with commercials to match. I would suggest that this does not often result in an informed populace so much as an inflamed populace. Regardless, it certainly produces people who consume more of what the media is pushing, generating more advertising revenue. Which, as noted, is now the driving force behind almost all of what the “news” media does.
Then there is the explosive growth of social media in the last decade. Touted as a way to increase communication and bring people together, it has clearly done so. Just not always for the betterment of mankind. These platforms have grown far faster than any kind of legislation could follow, resulting in a massive data mining, money making, influence wielding machine that is almost completely unregulated.
This gives the owners of such platforms an unprecedented capability to shape and edit public discourse and opinion. At the same time, social media is providing every outlying opinion on any topic a vastly outsized impact on the national and global stage. It serves to validate any perspective one has on pretty much any subject. No matter how bizarre your point of view, there is someone out there in the vast cyber world who agrees with you completely and is willing to tell you how right you are.
Of course, in addition to lauding the opinions and actions found agreeable, public and private media are equally quick to judge, decry, and punish those whose actions are not acceptable. “Racist” is a very popular pejorative these days, though its precise current definition has become rather fuzzy. Everyone from the current president on down gets slapped with the label of racist at the slightest provocation, which appears to be feeding into an increasingly anti-white public rhetoric (strangely, this is often led and encouraged by white people). This is often just a fast, and lazy, way to debate, debase, and marginalize a person’s actions. Doing so can easily lead us away from any kind of meaningful discussion and resultant improvement. Once a person is labeled a racist, accurate or not, the verbal, social media fueled assault begins. The “racist” is marginalized, any response they make is immediately dismissed. The original transgression, even if it had nothing to do with racism in the slightest, is forgotten and drown in the tsunami of righteous indignation and virtue signaling that follows.
It is not so much to the victor the spoils as it is to the loudest.
For example, President Trump is often called a racist by his detractors. Personally, I do not see it. I find him to be an unrepentant “America First” nationalist, sure, but not a racist. I am willing to admit I might be wrong, but I have seen scant evidence of actual racism in his words and deeds. Quite the opposite. If you are an American, of any color or background, he does not seem to have a problem with you, politics notwithstanding. If you are not an American, well, that’s a different kettle of fish entirely. Regardless, a hard right nationalist president of the United States should give us all pause. If that is what President Trump is, then that should be the focus of discussion. Finding his desire to, say, build a wall along our southern border may be easy to label as racist, but that is just intellectual sloth. Such an effort is much more clearly and precisely labeled as “nationalist,” or even xenophobic, and should then be debated in that sphere.
This kind of lazy discussion can be applied to both sides of the political divide. I merely use the president’s alleged “racism” as a foil with which to make a point. His negative characteristics receive an oversized amount of media attention, and have for the last five years, but both sides of the aisle have them. Politicians do themselves no favors by not addressing them directly and unequivocally, but if the media does not put their message out, the impact is minimal. Extending this same example, the president is accused of being racist. He largely ignores the insult. He is then accused of tacitly supporting violent racial extremist movements. He denounces them and moves on, but his denunciation is not messaged as strong enough, so it is glossed over by his detractors and ignored. His supporters see such spurious accusations, coupled with the media’s lukewarm response, as another in a never-ending stream of “anti-Trump rhetoric” and cling to him even harder. The gulf between the sides widens.
This favoritism and slanted approach by mass media is hugely impactful. Take the civil unrest that has rocked 2020. ANTIFA and BLM come out and violently riot for months on end in several major U.S. cities throughout 2020. People are hurt and killed, property damage runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars, yet prosecutions are few and far between, while the mass media soft sells these “misunderstood protesters.” Their violent actions are regularly downplayed and excused. Those state level prosecutions that are to be had, short of murder, are regularly dismissed by activist district attorneys who are clearly playing to the sympathies of the mob. Those mob sympathies are trumpeted by a media industry that at least appears complicit. Left leaning Democratic leaders, including president-elect Biden, do little or nothing to denounce and condemn anyone involved. The right then accuses the left of doing precisely what the left has accused the president of doing. It’s dizzying.
Result? Both sides of the political aisle feel disenfranchised and deeply incensed. The truth is that none of our American politicians are condemning any kind of political violence in strong enough terms. The media makes the most of the whole situation. Violence in furtherance of a political objective is the very definition of terrorism and should be a hard no from all political leaders and the media elite. Yet in some cases, local and state officials are siding with, even marching with, rioters. News outlets excuse and obfuscate. Forget condemnation. The message from those in the public eye should be clear and unmistakable, regardless of political party: violence in support of an opinion is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in a nation under the rule of law. Period.
Send in the Clowns
“Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy”
-Frank Llyod Wright
In our present environment, it is no wonder that the larger segments of the U.S. population are gravitating more towards the extremist fringes of their respective political positions. That is, those who remain involved in the process at all. Many are so disgusted with this mess they have withdrawn completely from any sort of political involvement. When elected officials make no attempt at all to listen, let alone give a voice, to half the population that disagrees with them, nor to even improve their job performance in the face of such massive disapproval numbers, is it surprising that people feel disenfranchised? Why talk when nobody is listening? Are we to be shocked that, when these same people who claim to be leaders and who will insist that they know and act with “the will of the American people” actively denigrate and insult those who did not vote for them that huge swaths of the population respond in kind? And once civility disappears from the public ranks of those holding public office, is it really a far step to see it vanish quickly from the public en mass? Or to see the numbers of those participating in our democratic processes continue to plummet?
The far left in this country seems to be chasing, from urban centers (the traditional nursery for Marxist-Leninists thought and action), the idea of utopian socialism. Knowing that “communism” is still a non-starter for a huge majority of the American population, it goes by less offensive, easier to swallow names, such as Progressivism and Socialism. Blurring the lines between these separate and distinct political theories is done by both sides, for their own reasons. It does not really matter though, since our schools make very little effort to teach people the difference.
Whatever title this effort goes by, it amounts to the same thing in modern usage. A massive and growing “nanny state” federal government, one that controls more and more of both our lives and our livelihoods. Because the government can do it better, you understand. An end of the private ownership of those means of production classified as “necessities.” Of course, the party, er government, leadership will then get to define what constitutes a “necessity.” All for your own good, as defined by those who feel they know what is best for you better than you do.
Socialism, in the end, is also far more loyal to the idea of socialism than to a place for it to occur. International socialism, and the worldwide spread of its ideals, has been a hallmark of the movement since its inception, national borders and identities be damned. In what I suppose is an attempt at marketing, you can often hear people in this camp tout the Scandinavian nations as shining examples of successful socialist countries that the U.S. should immediately emulate. Forget the fact that none of them are true socialist countries. Ignore the fact that, combined, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark have a population of around 27 million (smaller than Texas) and combined defense expenditures of about $20 billion USD in 2020 (the state of Georgia has a 2021 budget of $25.9 billion). To use them as an example of how the U.S. should operate is juvenile and completely ignores the geopolitical realities of the world we live in, not to mention basic math.
Naturally, to gain all of these wonderous benefits inherent in a socialist utopia here in the U.S., some freedoms and profits will have to be given up to the state, but we are told this is all for the “greater good.” All this free-market stuff is just being misused and abused by greedy racist profiteers anyhow, right? You want things to be fair, right? Socialism, we are told, will allow the government to do it all better. Our public education system largely seems to support this idea across the country, resulting in people in their 20’s who honestly believe that socialism is a better way than capitalism, having never been taught (let alone experienced) the abject horrors that true socialism results in.
The left also seems to equate equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. Government should certainly try to create a level playing field, where opportunities are not denied to particular classes or groups of people. No argument there. It is distinctly American to give everyone a shot. However, providing everyone with the same outcome? That’s a real stretch. Human variability alone is going to prevent that. I can simply not think of any field of endeavor, from gardening to building a Fortune 100 company from scratch and everything in between, where one person is not going to excel compared to another. To tell them both that they are going to now grow world class orchids or found the next social media juggernaut because “it’s only fair” is ludicrous.
But let’s not let the far right off the hook. Oh, no, no.
To the extreme right, this all appears to be an effort to destroy our traditional way of life here in America. It is an approach that they refuse to reconcile with their own realities. From their perspective, America may have issues, but they can be corrected without the wholesale destruction of American culture and way of life. They see no need to throw out the baby with the bath water. The idea of having a large, inevitably intrusive, federal government taking control of huge portions of their lives is an idea that, to their way of thinking, must be crushed. Especially if it is championed by riotous criminals. The government, to their way of thinking, is already way too big.
The right places a high value on personal independence, responsibility, and the ability to make their own choices, without seeking governmental approval. Growing the government, in any form, and the resulting dependence on that government, is at the heart of their disagreement with socialism. Any attempt at a massive push for additional government involvement and control of their lives is maddening for them. For example, they already see taxation at current rates as a necessary evil, bordering on theft. The idea that the rate could double to fund all of the programs touted by socialists puts many over the edge.
Nationalism is traditionally much more geographically centered, focusing almost exclusively on the “homeland” and the people who inhabit it. It is not the same thing as patriotism and national identity. Historically when these things are taken to an extreme, however, we have seen the rise of truly fascist, totalitarian nation-states and that has never worked out well. In the last hundred years, we have seen extreme nationalism couple with racism in the Italian fascists, the German National Socialists, and the Japanese empire to name but a few. The havoc those nations were able to create in a relatively short period is truly stunning.
An obviously racist, nationalistic federal government is harder to do in the U.S. these days, due to a largely heterogenous population and the laws enacted over the last 50 years or so, not to mention modern American sentiments surrounding racism. This despite what the popular media might have been screaming for the last four years. We must, however, still guard against a “hyper-patriotic,” nationalist sense of superiority. Given America’s position on the world stage, even if we did not fall into a totalitarian government willing to resurrect the Monroe Doctrine worldwide, a simple movement back to our isolationist past would have a catastrophic impact on the world as we know it.
Here in America, we have made it over two hundred years, based on a national identity and set of agreed upon rules put down by some impressively intelligent (if clearly imperfect) men. (Yes, Karen, men. The fact that we have moved on does not change history.) Men who truly understood government and the excesses it could lead to if unchecked and unconstrained. From them we have inherited a set of founding principles that have stood the test of time, thus far, and that have shone as a beacon for people around the world. The idea of individual rights, liberty, and natural law. A limited government constrained by an immutable set of checks and balances. One that recognizes the positive impact of religion, without enshrining any one over the other. Popular rule, without a “folkstadt” government run by any one class or creed. This has provided us with a civil society with a variety of public and private institutions designed to temper our republic, preventing a fall into the excesses and extremes complete freedom can bring. We have even been able to self-correct when we have gone astray, which is practically unheard of historically.
Of course, most of this is either no longer taught in schools or is largely done so ineffectively. The collective concentration seems to be teaching students what to think instead of how to think.
Taken as a whole, the two political viewpoints, socialism and nationalism, are incompatible. They are also the foundation of uncounted street battles and riots around the world in the 20th century, not to mention many of the large scale hot and cold wars we have been plagued with for the last 100 years.
Likewise, our current politicians seem equally intractable. The two sides of our increasingly opposed political landscape see no reason to compromise and work towards a common solution or goal. Forget the fact that it is their job and their responsibility. Nobody else can fix this problem they have created. Neither side of this political coin recognizes any common leadership that might be able to broker such agreements that might reverse this trend. There are, however, plenty of leaders on the outer periphery of both parties who will cultivate disaffected followers. The national race to pander to the political fringe of each party is on.
We have these two competing, incompatible political viewpoints growing and running into one another in America now. It seems likely the media is playing with the precise numbers, making things look more horrendous than they actually are in some cases, much less significant in others. Regardless of the reality, the perception is that things are bad and getting worse. It is not the first time these perspectives have come into conflict here in America, just the first time they have been this bad in 50 years. It is amazing to me how quickly we forget such things. We forget, or were never taught, how devastating political violence can be.
The idea often gets floated that ANITIFA/BLM work at the direction of left-wing political leaders and that the right-wing extremist groups like the Proud Boys work for right wing politicians. I doubt that this is the case. I do not see Nancy Pelosi meeting with Patrisse Cullors in some underground parking garage to coordinate their efforts, nor was Enrique Tarrio being shuttled in the service entrance of the Trump White House late at night. The risks are just too great for the politicians to be directly associated and they know it.
But if the violence and outrage work to further the designs of the politicians, well, isn’t that just a happy coincidence? It is an idea that both the politicians and the group organizers can certainly come to on their own. We have seen many public statements of tacit and direct support of these organizations and their violent actions by sitting political leaders in the past several years. Those statements make it difficult to avoid concluding some level of cooperation, or at least a common set of goals, exists between some of these groups.
After all, extreme political movements have a long, effective tradition of association with “active” (read: violent) movements with similar aims. The IRA and Sinn Fein, the Nazis and the Freikorps (later the Sturmabteilung), Italian Fascists and their Blackshirts, these are just in the last century. Mao Tse Tung said, “While military action and political affairs are not identical, it is impossible to isolate one from the other.” It’s difficult to argue that he did not know what he was talking about on the subject.
In a nation torn by violent strife, it is easier for the political party not in power to say, “Do you see what a mess these other guys have made? This kind of thing wouldn’t happen if WE were in charge!” In a very real way, chaos helps those on the political “outs.” It is a powerful political tool if one can control it. Once the “outs” are in power, violence can be then be tamped down or ramped up, as need be, in order to support political maneuverings. If a violent, extra-governmental group supports the party in power, it can act on a leader’s desires while providing plausible deniability. “I condemn this violence and we are trying to stop it, but they are not government actors. They are just regular folks fed up with the other side’s excesses!”
It would be folly to think that politicians and violent activists on both sides of the political aisle here in America do not know this and have for generations. Unlike in years past, however, we now have activist prosecutors, mayors, governors, and police chiefs/sheriffs gaining these positions, taking sides, and providing overt support for their “team.” Not all of them are on the side of law and order. Some are so enamored with the power of their current or future political office that they are willing to ignore, encourage, and even support political violence. They are often ignoring their own sworn duties, not to mention making a mockery of state and federal law, in the process. There is a movement towards the real Balkanization of our legal system by such people, where some behaviors are allowed in one jurisdiction while being aggressively prosecuted in others. All in support of political ideas and opinions.
That’s bad. Really bad.
Where is this all going?
“I cannot get any sense of an enemy – only of a disaster”
-D.H. Lawrence
We are already seeing wildly different enforcement with laws surrounding immigration, drugs, and guns around the nation. You can literally get in your car with a gun or a joint or your Mexican cousin and be fine in your driveway yet be a felon as soon as you pull into traffic, let alone drive to an adjoining state. Where does it stop? How is a lay person to be expected to know the nuances of every law they may run afoul of in such an environment? How do they catalog the eccentricities of every prosecutor or city council whose crosshairs they may find themselves in, regardless of what the law says?
It is now developing with the treatment of police officers and convicted criminals. Attacking police officers and their agencies is the same kind of ignorant that led people in the 1960’s to attack returning veterans from Vietnam. Worse than merely stupid and insulting, it is a path that quite literally puts us all in danger. If you do not like what the police are doing in your community, or anything else for that matter, an intelligent response is what is called for. Violence, emptying jails wholesale, vilifying dedicated police professionals, and enacting radical budget cuts with no plan beyond “sticking it to the man” is not just ignorant, it results in an immediately predictable skyrocketing of crime rates.
This kind of misguided action drives people not only out of the police department that employed them, but out of the profession completely. All while putting the entire community, particularly those with lower income, at increased risk for criminal victimization. How are the cities and states that are actively hostile to law enforcement officers going recruit for and police their jurisdictions? Certainly you can always find people who will wear a badge and a gun. The question becomes, are they always the people you want to have that authority? The risk of creating the precise situation they claim to want to cure is massive and unavoidable.
The overall effect of this mess is to begin to sunder our national unity by confusing and frustrating pretty much everyone. It undermines public confidence in our most important institutions. People start thinking of themselves less as Americans and more as members of subgroups, like Democrats, Republicans, racial and ethnic groups, etc. Even within these groups, people are polarizing from moderates to extremists. This has further encouraged politicians to cater to vocal fringe elements and the cycle continues to deepen. We become less and less “Americans” and more and more a collection of hostile cliques of people who live in America. The “us versus them” dynamic bubbles closer and closer to the surface, making hostility and violence towards one another easier and easier. We are seeing it and its corrosive impact play out all over the country.
By eroding the confidence in our institutions and the dependable rule of law, we risk destroying the social contract that holds our nation together peacefully. We are currently policed by consent, with the majority of the population happy to let the government and the rule of law dispense justice on their behalf. What, I wonder, happens when the government institutions and political leadership stop holding up their end of that bargain? When their shameless pandering for votes lead them to completely ignore the precepts of justice, but only when convenient for them and their personal agendas? When they abandon their obligation to provide the citizenry with a safe environment to live and work? When they refuse to recognize the legitimate need for punishment of criminal transgressions owed to both victims and society as a whole? If the government will not provide this service, I feel certain that the vacuum will be filled by someone. Frustration will inevitably lead to still more anger.
Let’s not forget this also opens the door more widely for other nation-state actors to influence the internal workings of the United States. The U.S. has a long history of working to destabilize other nations. There is no reason to suppose that other nations would not try the same thing in reverse. They need not try this route to destroy the U.S., of course. Merely fostering civil unrest keeps the country focused on its own internal problems, leaving less band width and national will to meddle in the activities of others. Lessening the American presence on the world stage is a good thing for some countries. Funding some American dissidents (on both sides, since the goal is chaos more than anything else) is a cheap and easy way to help that along.
With the changing of residents at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, much of the political violence will drop off. While the violent actors are still out there and organized, a big chunk of their funding is going to dry up. With no need to create violent disruptions in order to weaken the incumbent, wallets on big money, politically motivated donors are going to snap shut. Less funding makes it difficult to maintain the support train of long-term, national protests and riots like we saw throughout 2020. Less money means less bail available for arrested protesters. Fewer high-priced lawyers for their defense. No money for signs, transportation, food, water, and all the other things needed to keep an army of rioters in the field for months on end. Logistics is a harsh mistress.
When taken as a whole, the rise of such extreme positions should give us all, regardless of political affiliation and especially those of us in the middle, a great deal of concern. Because in those extreme positions lie true existential threats to our nation. Seeds of a full-on civil war? Possibly, though I doubt it. If it did come to pass, it most certainly would not resemble the “War of Northern Aggression,” as my southern neighbors refer to the cataclysm of 1861-1865. The genesis of a limited, urban guerilla war? This is the more likely result. If there is to be a second civil war, it will be a low intensity guerilla war. A civil war implies a battle of insurrection against the government, though by strict definition it is a war between citizens of the same country. A guerilla war might involve the government, as it is a viable way for small, fast moving forces to fight superior military and police. In our case, it might just be two small warring factions and a feckless government in the middle.
No, if there is to be any kind of a shooting “war” in our country, as things stand now, it will be a limited scale guerilla war, fought largely in urban and sub-urban areas. Increased civil unrest, riots, street brawls, bombings, and arson. Perhaps various right- and left-wing lone wolf terrorists or the occasional “death squad,” like those that seem to flourish in Central and South America. Think Weather Underground in the 1970’s or The Order in the 1980’s. Raids on rural farms, like the criminal depredations so popular in South Africa, would be very unlikely.
The reality is that Americans are comfortable, and our law enforcement agencies are, for now at least, very good at what they do. Nobody is starving, by and large. The economy is, despite hiccups, humming along and rebounding from the recent unpleasantness quite well. And, unlike much of the rest of the world, our populace is armed and are (mostly) allowed to defend themselves from violent attack in their homes. As long as people remain armed, comfortable, and their children are not going to bed hungry, the extremists are going to have a very difficult time getting enough people to put down their beer and get up off of the couch to throw their war.
Instead, we will see a continuation of the current course, though with a drop off in raw numbers for the short term. We will have explosions of protests, riots, looting, and violence in various cities because some have gotten a taste for it and the personal repercussions have been shockingly small. We will see an increase in organized counter-responses, where those who are politically opposed will come together to combat one another. Some members of these violent groups may find things are moving too slowly, which might result in the occasional spike in the intensity of the violence by individuals and small sub-groups.
The impacted cities are largely predictable, based on past political and law enforcement response. We know where it will happen later because it is happening in these cities now. Where such actions are tolerated, they will continue. These “autonomous zones” will pop up where they are allowed and the local citizenry, who largely just want to live their lives in peace, will have to endure the violence, filth, and disruption such actions incur. Other cities, the ones who crack down on violent, lawless behavior, may see rare and brief incidents, but will not be inundated with this kind of criminal activity like the more permissive cities are.
For those of us who default to hoping for the best but preparing for the worst, just wanting to be left alone, it will be an interesting time. As for me, I will be avoiding any place where large numbers of people gather. My vehicle stays in good condition with never less than half a tank of gas. I never drive away from home without considering the possibility that I might have to walk a few miles from my car, so I dress and pack accordingly. I have trained my entire life to defend myself from others and ensure I am always properly equipped to do so. I try very hard to maintain a general posture of low visibility coupled with a high state of alertness and readiness. You might consider something similar going forward, to better ensure your own safety and well-being in these interesting times.
I have not gone so far as to buy a dedicated rifle and ballistic vest with SAPI plates for my car, but I can certainly understand that thinking of those who have. A large canister of bear spray in my car fills the space between surrender and deadly force, should I stumble into a riot or roadblock. I hit the gym regularly and keep my self-defense skills sharp. The consistent level of civil unrest in America these days is historic and worrisome, but a very far cry from an all-out civil war. A reasonable level of awareness and preparation can go a long way towards avoiding problems or dealing with them if it comes to that.
The wise will prepare and conduct themselves accordingly. After all, I might be wrong and things could be worse tomorrow.
