'The actual filmmakers were never far behind.' (Civil War/A24)
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Over the past few years, journalists and political scientists have begun competing with screenwriters to produce fictions about a second American Civil War. “Could the United States be headed for a national divorce?” asks one recent publication from Chatham House. “Imagine another American Civil War, but this time in every state,” instructed NPR, in advance of the 2022 mid-term elections. “The next US civil war is already here,” responded The Guardian.
The actual filmmakers were never far behind. This week, the movie Civil War will be released, which will show Washington, D.C. under attack by a rebel alliance of… Left-wing California and Right-wing Texas. Yes, you read that correctly.
In reality, of course, the 2022 mid-term elections came and went, leaving Congress divided between Democrats and Republicans — and without a single state seceding. But the manufactured alarm about a new civil war continues to be stoked by speculative polling. A quarter of Americans apparently support some form of secession or national division along state lines, the Washington Post reported late last year.
This talk can’t be blamed on the hysterical age of Trump — for Obama-era Democrats, there was Chuck Thompson’s Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession. But Trump certainly prompted a renewed flurry. In 2017, the New Republic published “It’s Time for a Bluexit”, making the argument — an odd one, from the point of traditional New Deal liberalism — that inter-regional transfers of wealth from rich people in Democratic states to the poor in Republican areas, transacted through programmes such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, were unfair to affluent Democratic taxpayers. In the essay, this latter group was also referred to as “the residents of what some people like to call Blue America, but which I prefer to think of as the United States of We Pay Our Own Damn Way”.
Such talk is matched on the Right these days, with Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene the most recent to suggest that states opposed to Biden’s immigration policies might secede from the Union. And there is a history of fictional fantasies pitched towards this end of the political spectrum, with militia types and survivalists on the Right. Who else would be the target audience for America’s rich tradition of trashy novels in which God-fearing patriots overthrow the secular humanist tyrants of the coastal cities? A gentler vision of American Balkanisation was provided for the hippie counterculture by Ernest Callenbach in his 1975 novel Ecotopia, which posited a utopia created in the year 1999 by the secession and merger of the north-western states of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington.
How seriously should we take this talk of a new American civil war? Not very. It is best understood as a symbolic allegory for conventional politics, in which the bullets cast by the two sides merely symbolise votes, in the same way that the giant mutant ants or alien invaders in Fifties science-fiction movies symbolised communism or corporate conformity. But even as allegory, it gets modern America dead wrong. Because though our political divides are as vicious as ever, they would not manifest themselves as a civil war between states — but instead as civil warfare within them.
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Robert D. Kaplan observed in his early 1990s-era travelogue of mostly Midwest and Western states, “Empire Wilderness,” that he saw more fracturing taking place in the U.S. than he did while reporting in the Balkans. He witnessed ever-growing swaths of regions withdrawing into exclusionary enclaves.
So it doesn’t mean Alabama (where I’m from) and New York will face each other in opposite trenches. It means that each will take less interest in the other and not see the other’s problems as its own. Under this definition, the U.S. is already in civil war and will continue along this path
I agree and already take zero interest in NYC, which I used to love and where I lived. When the trucks and trains stop bringing in the food and goods grown and manufactured outside of those places, there will be a collective shrug from “flyover country”.
When is that supposed to happen?
This is why the question of the electoral college is so important. Democrats want to do away with the electoral college and simply elect president and vice president by the national popular vote (NPV). Under that scenario, conservative rural voters lose their voice to densely-populated urban centers (Chicago, LA, NYC, etc.). Under the NPV, Alabama loses its voice in election of the executive branch.
“America’s rich tradition of trashy novels in which God-fearing patriots overthrow the secular humanist tyrants of the coastal cities”
Perfect holiday beachside reading.
This is also a trope of Islamic historiography – pure in heart and simple-living bedouin despair of the degeneracy of the cities, unite and sweep in from the desert to take over the city, set to reform the cities with the best of intentions, get corrupted by the city, and decamp again in disgust to the purity and simplicity of bedouin desert life.
Rinse and repeat.
I suppose the difference is, our novelistic patriotic survivalists and small-townsfolk don’t really give a rats about reforming the cities, they just want to beat back cultural hegemony and big government tyranny over their own lives. Don’t tread on me, the Gadsden flag, dilligaf, good fences make good neighbors, all that. Not really about ideological conquest, just overthrow of tyranny. It’s what a lot of liberals seem to get wrong.
The left has no particular quarrel with tyranny. Part of its MO is to accuse the other side of the things the left is actually doing. There are numerous examples happening in real time.
A vague insinuation. Once you provide some of your numerous examples–which I do believe exist–I bet I can respond with counterexamples that make your statement approximately as valid, and true in the same selective and limited way, by substituting the word “right” for “left”.
A good example would be when an attorney general or advocate of sanctuary City or State policies ignores clear laws but uses precise electoral timing to prosecute an adversary under an obscure law based on the notion that “Nobody is above the law.”
A good counterexample is selling yourself as the Law and Order candidate then openly foreshadowing your personal “ultimate and absolute revenge”, to be accomplished partly through (initially) a 24-hour dictatorship.
And helping to spark the Capitol Riot then watching it unfold on TV for hours before speaking up to cool it down–as he could have done right away.
So as I understand it; your position is that there are two extremes. The Intersectional Far-Left being made up of disruptive activists and the Far Right being made up of Trumpian Militants and both these groups are (roughly) equally responsible for the breakdown in civil order. Your position is then to find a center-point between the extremes. Would that be fair?
If so, do you think the Left or Right would be more pleased to return to 2012 Obama era social norms? Like if we could erase all blame, revoke all new laws, spending and the return to a mostly separated relationship between corporation and state…which side would revolt and which side would be pleased?
Certainly something between the warring extremes, but not some precise or predictably averaged-out center point.
I think the typical avid Trump supporter may be more anti-corporate than the typical avid progressive or “wokester”, but it’s a close call between those camps, and also at both outer fringes, which include Right-wing anarchists and outright Marxist revolutionaries. If you extend the question to so-called Elites of every stripe, including culture and academia, there’s far more resentment on the populist Right.
Both parties are pretty sold out to corporate interests, but Democrats as a whole are slightly more willing to curtail the political influence of corporations and deep private pockets–at least in what they say. I think the old-guard or institutional conservatives that remain in the Republican party are more tied to big money and big oil than standard issue Democrats. The MAGA crowd in Congress is more about grandstanding and allegiance to Trump, while the Democrats have a smaller number of mirror-image progressive squad members or wokesters that exaggerate America’s problems along different lines than the Trumpsters.
I think you need to judge individual members of either party, though leaning hard one way or the another in the aggregate may be hard to escape in this climate.
I don’t see an unbroken through-line between moderates like Biden or Romney–or even sensible hard-liners like Cheney or Sanders–and the chaos agents on the outer fringes of the Left or Right.
To indulge your question: the far-Lefties would of course be happier than the far-Righties with a rollback to 2012. But both would still be very angry–that’s central to extremism. As to the people inside the inner fringes of the Right and Left: Why even ask?
See and what I’m arguing is that the Center-Line has shifted dramatically Left in the past 10 years. There’s been a transformation and renormalization of values. The underlying ethos of American society went from Excess Flash and a hard working core to Protest Chic with some handout culture.
I consider myself Right-Center not “Center-Right). Always have. Guys like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers were always out-there Lefties to me. John McWhorter, Andrew Sullivan were the thinkers of the Liberal order. Now these guys are considered “Conservatives.” I could give lots more examples.
When you say Biden and Romney are moderates, I disagree with that descriptor. They’re consummate politicians. Whatever is the Establishment status quo, that’s what they will be. That’s fine if the underlying ethos of your society is grounded. When the Ethos is tipped towards an excessive welfare state and pushing absurd agendas, being “Establishment” is just aiding the destructive force of mismanagement.
There’s a reason people are flooding out of California and NY to Florida and Texas and it’s at least partly due to the stability and courage their two governors have displayed…despite taking relentless criticism. For those governors to be “Bipartisan” and “not divisive” in this political environment since 2020 wouldn’t have served their constituents.
Well I’m not someone who is strongly identified with a single point on the sociopolitical spectrum–not even my current self-designation as an engaged or “extreme” moderate– and my approximate self-perceived place on the (again, broken) continuum has changed several times. As a 19-year old I was some version of a conservative, partly in contrarian response to my ex-hippie parents and the culture around me in 1990 Silicon Valley. When I returned to college in my early 40s about a decade ago, I was briefly semi-radicalized by the new “youth politics”, though I always resisted much of it. Now I tend a bit left, with a centrist outlook, and semi-traditional personal values (non-committal enough?).
I’ve grown firmly opposed to any identity politics and I try to resist making assumptions about individuals based on demographics or superficial characteristics. I’m not blind or completely naive, so I will have a level of baseline assumption about someone in a MAGA hat or F— The Police t-shirt, or someone who looks and sounds, for example, very dumb or very smart. But I don’t believe in my own opinions at a fixed core level, and my mind can be quite readily changed. I know that’s pretty common, but for me it’s progress (though not typical of Progressivism). Because I have been too judgmental, and remain so to some extent.
I think the trio you name are indeed a bit out there, but they have drifted right (at least Musk and Rogan–don’t know where Rodgers used to be). I disagree with your claim that Romney and Biden are mere political weathervanes. Certainly they are career politicians, but with some core values. Biden has a blue-collar, pro-union orientation and is a practicing Catholic whose worldview is informed by his faith. Romney is a social conservative (of a genteel sort) whose whole outlook is shaped by his religion. They have not radicalized despite the current turbulent winds on the left and right, so I don’t see your dismissive take as fully warranted, though I think I get what you mean. McWhorter and Sullivan are centrist/Classical liberals and many still know that–they are not labelled Conservative in some general way.
I perceive that American politics and culture have been simultaneously radicalized to the Left and Right. While mass culture has indeed shifted leftward–from an already leftie place– there’s growing audience for hardline conservatives like Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager, and formerly-fringe figures like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller enjoy major prominence, largely thanks to Trump. Violence-ready ideologues like the Oath Keepers (and Antifa) and upstart rogues like Nick Fuentes (invited to dinner at Mar-a-Lago) attract many more followers, as well as “curious” observers and secret admirers.
I don’t think Trump has extreme values himself, or much of any non-selfish belief in anything, but he has a massive, unstable ego and he emboldens very volatile extremists. To me he is the ultimate sociopolitical weathervane, who lurched Right when he saw a way to become yoogely popular by pretending to be anti-establishment. P.T. Barnum with a real estate empire and a long red tie.
Beyond the extremism in our politics, our style of communication has deteriorated and there is a rampant lack of intellectual charity and good-faith argument. We can all fall victim to bubble-thinking and “remote connectedness”. The Left thinks the far-Right is emboldened, the Right sees a photo negative of that. Both sides are way too quick to minimize or excuse the extremes of Their Side.
Not to label and dismiss you and if you’re unwilling to respond I’ll let it go, but: About how old are you and around where do you come from/live?
The Disinformation Governance Board, Trans Day of Visibility declared on Easter Sunday, Equity Throughout the Federal Government, using OSHA to impose National Vaccine Mandates, Mass waivers of student loan debt, Using the Inflation Reduction Act as a Climate Bill, revoking permits for the Keystone Pipeline on Day 1, promising to cut fossil fuel use by 50% by 2030, imposing extreme emissions standards on the auto industry that forces them to reimagine their entire business model and effectively everybody else to move toward electric vehicles that they don’t want. I haven’t even touched on Immigration.
I don’t understand how any of this is “Moderate.” This idea that we define someone’s spot on the political spectrum by how “divisive” or conciliatory that their rhetoric is, seems to be a false dichotomy that distorts reality.
Do you recall the 2012 election when Biden said about Romney that “He’s going to put ya’ll back in chains.” Think about the magnitude of what’s actually being said there about a mild-mannered Republican. But Romney was a Republican that claimed “47% of Americans don’t pay income taxes.” That seems like an awful inflammatory thing to say about nearly HALF of the population.
The positions of Romney and McCain were untenable to win elections and that’s why these were acceptable candidates to the Democratic Establishment. There’s a reason that the Democrats Media Alliance and PAC’s actively tried to knock mild-mannered, Ron DeSantis out of the race which put Trump in poll position. Because the Establishment-Left’s disdain for personalities on the Right is 100% tied to whether that person on the Right can win elections. There can be no Conservative that is acceptable to the Left Establishment if they’re capable of winning and then governing from the Right. Whoever the candidate is will be treated exactly like Trump…which is why many of us begrudgingly tolerate him. Because he points out the intolerance that the established order has for his voters.
I’m a little bit younger than you and I moved South during the Covid insanity.
Ok thanks. Until some recent clues, I thought you were English, based on details you mentioned concerning UK politics and your frequent use of British spelling, I think.
I actually see merit in much of what you say here. I hated that “put ya’ll back in chains” worse than cheap shot and it angered me at the time. You’re right about the way many, maybe most of the left vilifies any Republican who can actually win–although I don’t recall that being so much the case with McCain, whose decency was hard to deny and whom I planned to vote for over Gore in 2000 if he’d won the GOP nod. I hated the raving demonization of Bush Jr., whom I thought was too dumb to be president but not an idiot and not a bad man (like Biden in that way). The Trans Visibility Day coinciding with Easter is another pointless misstep.
I do see much of it as mere theatre, less of an immediate danger than the crowds Trump dog whistles and cozies up to. I guess I’d use a version of the argument people use to normalize Trump to defend Biden’s fundamental moderateness: look at what the actual policies are, foreign and domestic not the rhetoric and woke-feeling ceremonies. Is Biden all in with the Squad and vice versa, like MAGA minions in Congress are with Trump? I don’t like AOC or Ilhan Omar but people like Jim Jordan and MTG seem like bad apples too.
The border is a mess but it was under Trump too, and the current debacle is, in major part, the deliberate doing of the obstructionist Republicans who won’t give Biden a partial win under any circumstances, country be damned. That said, Mayorkas is a feckless fool and should be fired.
Covid was mishandled by both presidents, but I think Trump handled it worse: quite dismissive until he almost died of it. With this major caveat: One of the few things I’m willing to give Trump personal credit for is how fast the vaccine was produced under his administration; if they announced it a few weeks earlier I believe he would have won re-re-election, which to me would have been a disastrous result.
Even with our respective strains of independent thinking, I’m not sure either of us can discount the influence of where we live: me the Left Coast, you the South. Or the fact that you kinda like Trump, despite his wild temper and circus tactics (fair?) and I kinda like Biden, despite his career-long mediocrity. I’m to the center or culturally old-fashioned side of the majority of my California relatives–though not my fundamentalist uncle– and a bit to the Left of the majority on my Alberta side, though not my own father (who lives in California now). But some of the most stridently Progressive members of my extended family are actually quite conventional, with nuclear families and regular, Christian church attendance and such. A lot of divergence between what people say and what they do.
Nice to chat with you again, T Bone.
*I do think that the difference between the resort to divisive or unifying language matters a lot in a World Leader.
I think maybe a month ago you said to me that when discussing politics, I appeared to be speaking from a position of certitude; implying that I believed my side had already won the battle of ideas. You contrasted that with your non-partisan, centrist approach which attempts to hold both right/left poles accountable. I took that to mean that I took a more biased approach to political analysis than you did.
I actually agree that if we assume the current paradigm of what constitutes the “Center” than you are correct about this. But from my observational experience of speaking with intelligent pragmatists or those claiming the Center; the group is overwhelmingly made up of people that have voted Democrat for their entire life paired with Never-Trump Republicans. It appears to something of a political worldview resembling the perspective of CNN’s headline talent. So the question becomes, is the current “Centrist paradigm” being portrayed accurately in an unbiased manner?
I don’t think you have any malicious tyrant in you. In other words, I don’t question your motivations or your rationalism for that matter. But I do question if some of your political opinions are informed by sufficient information. In the example above you paired two Squad members with JJ and MTG as examples of polar extremes. MTG is closer in temperament so I get that analogy. But if you actually analyze how the Squad wants to use policy vs how MTG wants to use policy, I think you’ll find that she poses substantially less threat to your ability to speak freely than the Squad. To me, she’s an unruly PTA mom. In an optimal world, she wouldn’t be in a power position but where the cultural balance has tipped so emphatically toward cultural progressivism, she does provide some balance.
I think JJ is a different story. I think he’s a highly intelligent and competent actor and has been unfairly treated by the Press. He’s been caricatured in a way that’s so inaccurate that it’s almost mind-blowing. But because of the way he’s caricatured, he’s been lumped in as an example of “extremism.” Just the fact that he’s considered an “extremist” tells me that we’re dealing with an unreliable Media environment that’s biased toward one side of the aisle.
The same goes for Republicans like Chip Roy or Rand Paul. These are not a malicious actors looking to silence you. When I judge people, I try not to judge them by whether they’re always right or even if they have a bias (we all do) but whether they’re trying to get things right. In other words, intent should matter. The ideology of Critical Theory which I believe now governs the Left globally (See South America) is a worldview that negates intention. I have no objection to a Climate Activist or Vaccine Mandate supporter that engages with their opponents. I actually think they could contribute meaningfully to discussion. But those that blindly throw out terms like “Conspiracy Theorist” “Denier” or “Misinformation” are not engaging. Engagement requires addressing claims and meticulously refuting them.
Btw- I agree with your last point. But I don’t think either 45 or 46 speaks in remotely unifying rhetoric.
Ok. This time I’ll mostly just take in more of what you say, since this has been a long exchange already and most of what you’ve said strikes me as reasonable.
With the following exceptions:
“But I do question if some of your political opinions are informed by sufficient information” Back at you T-Bone. I think you’re more immersed in politics than I am, but I sharply question the breadth (not volume) and openmindedeness of your attention and exposure to ideas. To me, someone who avows a lifelong affiliation with the Right over the Center is quite ideologically motivated or at least fixed in place to some extent. Is that inherited in part from your perhaps conservative parents? I admit that I’m likelier to turn to the NYT, CNN, or to NPR (way too cheap-shot-woke nowadays) for my news than to UnHerd, Fox News, or National Review, but I check all of them pretty regularly. How about you? I while I’m quite contrarian and not an easy sell, I am open to persuasion on most things. I have been moved rightward on a few issues due to my (over) participation in this website, notable on Covid policy and climate extremism (was already against that, now more firmly so). I don’t think you are genuinely open to adopting any view that you perceive as emerging from the Left. You are intelligent and somewhat independent-minded, but you are more “thought-tribe-identified” than me, in my own (of course biased) assessment of your collective comments here. Still, even to the (I’m sure limited) extent my assessment is accurate, I like to engage with you because you are mostly moderate, civil, and insightful, and able to challenge my assumptions and blind spots without hurting my easily hurt little liberal feelings, most of the time.
I guess we’ll have to disagree on Jim Jordan more than we do on Trump. I think he is a very dishonest, meanspirited person who is only serious about his own notoriety and ambition. I’ve watched hours of his act during several different Congressional hearings and some interviews with him too; I see nothing to admire him for, except sheer nerve.
Lifelong Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans form a pretty huge combined swath of the electorate. I think there are some real independent and non-political people out there too, but that crowd is certainly shrinking. I think you’re correct to suggest that the true character and size of the Centrist bloc (if you will) has been misrepresented, and probably misunderstood by the MSM.
Fair point about both 45 and 46 being no strangers to divisive rhetoric, though you won’t be surprised that I think 45 is far worse. His American Carnage Inaugural was among the all-time worst speeches by an electronic-media-era U.S. president.
I don’t agree that Critical Theory rules the global Left. It’s in vogue in academia and among a subset of Western youth. The pendulum is swinging back toward sanity and many will age out of their woke hysteria. Let’s check back 18 months from now to see how my prediction has fared, ok?
Well I went on for a long time after all…imagine that!
Cheers man.
If I have a tribe, you’re in it. I want to live in a place that values the free exchange of ideas. The political censorship apparatus mostly affects Conservatives now but that won’t always be the case. I frequently read the NYT, Daily Beast, WaPo and other Left-Wing publications. I don’t see Unherd as a Right-Wing Source. The comment section has turned Right-Wing but I think that’s more a result of it’s openness to permit both sides of the debate to flourish. If I could identify the most “Centrist” person in Journalism it would be Michael Shellenberger. He is by all means a Liberal but he’s followed the facts and his reporting now tends to be more critical of the Left. I would urge you to listen to his recent interview about Brazil with Glenn Greenwald, who is by all accounts a social progressive.
When I say that I’ve always considered myself Right-Center, I mean two things. I believe in an extremely limited Federal Government. I see very little need for it to be so involved in daily life. I see their primary purpose as National defense and mediating interstate disputes. The need for mediation is one reason many government agencies like the EPA do serve a necessary function especially because water and air pollution in one State can easily have clear effects on another. But the Federal Government is so filled with Bureacratic Bloat now that it’s been effectively captured by compliant midwits that suppress Democracy. What’s the point of elections if the same people run day to day operations regardless of who wins? The Administrative State is an unelected Fourth Branch of Government. As it stands, one Party is in favor of this arrangement and the other is not. If that flips, so will I.
The Second is that I believe strongly that America is the greatest country to ever exist and I want it to remain that way. I believe in the US tradition as flawed but superior to virtually all others. So I believe strongly in the concept of the Nation State. What you will find with a substantial portion of the Progressive Left and Neocons is a belief in Global Democracy. The Progressive Left believes in Global Citizenship. The idea that borders themselves are oppressive because they disproportionately condense wealth. The Neocons believe in borders but believe that America’s role is to foster Democracy throughout the world. That is why this temporary alliance with Progressives now exists. To root out the isolationists. Both sides are using the other to achieve short term power objectives. But alliances generally fail. Friendships not as easily.
I don’t consider myself an isolationist but I don’t believe that we’re choosing our battles well. I believe the international conflicts that we choose should be clear-sighted, open, transparent and consider the will of our people.
Thanks man. I consider you part of the home team or broader good-guy tribe too.
I’m glad to be American and glad to live here, because of and despite everything. I do reject what’s called American Exceptionalism, since I don’t know why we have to make ourselves uniquely good or special, and I think it invites what I call “reverse exceptionalism”: making us out to be uniquely bad or low.
I respect your varied media diet and I’ll listen to the interview you recommended soon. I listen to a lot of the conversations between Glen Loury and John McWhorter. And though he’s far to the left of me overall I respect and enjoy Ezra Klein’s podcast–he can have a substantive, good faith exchange with anyone anywhere on the political or cultural spectrum. A sharp and fair guy.
I agree this website isn’t uniformly to the right, let alone right-wing (I read wing as a synonym for “far” with politics) but they publish some pretty far-right stuff I’d likely not be exposed to otherwise, because I stopped being able to take much of what’s at places like Breitbart and The Federalist, especially the poisonous comments (much of ’em far worse than nearly all of my least favorites here). I hadn’t really considered how this place may be a refuge for those who can’t find original and varied but right-leaning material with the high quality they offer here, on average.
I think I may check back in on Reason.com soon to see what’s there these days.
I’m beyond sick of America playing the World Police in such a far-flung and often, as you say, ill-chosen way. However, I’m worried about who will fill the void if we withdraw all the way into ourselves.
BTW- Same thing happened to my post. 🙂
*My reply, polite and much in agreement, has been quarantined, again. (Not that my latest is post is groundbreaking or something, but seriously: Editor bots and follow-up moderators–c’mon!)*20:27 GMT: posted briefly then zapped again
If a country is to go to war, then the wealthiest need to suffer the highest death rate. In the Vietnam War many wealthy avoided their duty to fight for the country . To make it worse, affluent Democrats called poor combatants ” Baby Killers “.
There are good reasons for the USA not have been involved in Vietnam; namely the Vichy French capitulation to Japan and the corruption of the South Vietnamese made any Western intervention absurd. Also the Northern Vietnamese were anti Chinese ( have been for three thousand years ).
The decline of Rome can be seen when the Equites and Patrician classes are not prepared to die on the frontiers which occurs from the mid 4th century.
The welfare state and concentration on entertainment is similar to bread and circuses of Rome. The massive estates where slave labour was used made the small farms run by the Plebians uneconomic, who became indebted and migrated to cities. The Plebians provided the mainstay of the Roman infantry. Barbarians came to be defenders of the Empire, namely the Goths. Fear of attack by The Huns caused the Goths to invade the Roman Empire.
Where the wealthy love Mammon, are not willing to fight to defend themselves, treat the poor countrymen with contempt, reducing them to debt bondage, feeding them with the dole, entertaining them, allowing foreigners into the country to their detriment, collapse will occur.
Human nature has not changed much in 3000 years.
Worth reading Major General Sir John Glubb. He says Empires last about 250 years looking at Europe and the Middle east since 900 BC.
Fate of Empires (uncw.edu)
Interesting claims and linked lessons I will study up on at a later time (I need to start assigning a few to you too).
It certainly seems like a VERY long time since the noble or “elite” classes sacrificed and suffered the most during war. It’s hard for me to imagine that was ever the norm, though you provide examples of times and instances when it was.
Even if peasants weren’t made or “allowed” to fight in battles, wouldn’t they have often been subject to plunder, ravishment, and enslavement when the nobles or kings went to war with one another?
In the UK, it is still traditional for gentry and upper classes to join the Armed Forces
Roland Walker – Wikipedia
Served 11 years with the SAS.
Stirling , a Scottish aristocrat founded the SAS, Lord Lovat was a commando and Earl Jellicoe led the SBS
George Jellicoe, 2nd Earl Jellicoe – Wikipedia
Viscount de Lisle and Dudley won the VC
William Sidney, 1st Viscount De L’Isle – Wikipedia
English history is different to Continental Europe. The Anglo Saxon Monarch ruled through consulatation and consent and all men were armed. The very strict feudalism existed from 1066 to 1100 and then relaxed allowing the resurgence of a land owning middle class and merchants in The City of London. In 1182 a law was saying very household must own at least a spear. There is good justification for the American Constitutional right to bear arms goes back to this law.
The Founding fathers knew their Greek and Roman history. The American Constitution combines concepts from The Bible, Greek and Roman History ( Republic ) Magna Carta of 1215 and The Bill of Rights of 1689.
Therefore conditions in the in the last century or so of the Western Roman Empire are relevant to the USA.
“Where the wealthy love Mammon, are not willing to fight to defend themselves, treat the poor countrymen with contempt, reducing them to debt bondage, feeding them with the dole, entertaining them, allowing foreigners into the country to their detriment, collapse will occur.
Human nature has not changed much in 3000 years.”
Amen to that! I’d add that many among the wealthy or “elite traditionalists” decry spongers among the poor but seem fine with weaseling tax breaks for themselves and even for corporations, at least here in the States.
The great advantage of the rulers having wealth based on land is that they cannot offshore or hide it. Rulers growing up bare knuckle boxing against the local boys and then playing cricket with them is that it breaks down barriers. When the local landowner is expected to lead in battle one soon knows whether he is cowardly or courageous.
In Britain, the traditionalists tend to be the landowners which is often the case in Continental Europe. Many of the royal and aristocratic families arebstill wealthy and influential. If one looks at the 1920s and 1930s many of them tried to thwart the rise of fascism and nazism, Colonel Claus von stauffenberg being an example.
Claus von Stauffenberg – Wikipedia
What we see running much of the West is not an elite but a plutocracy who uses an oligarchic bureaucracy to keep control. Create rules which only they can afford to keep and fine /imprison those who break them. Create a bureaucracy employing vast numbers of people but only the top 1 to 3 layers being well paid.
“[T]hen openly foreshadowing your personal ‘ultimate and absolute revenge.'”
He also said repeatedly, when campaigning against Mrs Clinton, that he was going to “lock her up”. Did he?
The Left cries “Disinformation!” while the whole time they’re cooking the numbers to show that the polar bears are “all dying”, for instance, or that hurricanes are bigger and more dangerous than “ever before!” or that widfires are burning-up “unprecedented” acreage…
The skeptics make their case and show their proofs but we haven’t really gotten any traction. The cry of “misinformation” is somehow irrefutable, like accusing someone of being a witch once was.
That tide will turn one day.
Well I don’t disagree with you there. Also: “We must Follow the Science in the name of all that remains sacred”.
Yet there are places the Science must never go, for they are heretical–or “on the wrong side of History”
The Red Dean of Canterbury
Hewlett Johnson – Wikipedia
and GB Shaw saying he saw no famine in the USSR.
Malcom Muggeridge reporting on the famine from Ukraine and being sacked by The Guardian.
Sartre supporting Mao. Criticism for A Solzhenitsyn for telling the truth.
Now you’re citing follies that are nearly a century old and lumping them into a present tense indictment of what the Left actively does? That could be countered with a lot of f a s c i s t complicity on the Right in the 1930s and to some extent the 40s, though not on same widespread scale.
How about fan-boy softball interviews with Putin and Orban?
I would be more concerned how Germany allowed it’s military to fall apart in the last 30 years when it had very good tank units up to 1990 and became dependent on Russian gas.
Also how Barroso and Merkel, former communists, became leaders of countries and Red Army Faction and other terrorists took over The German Green Party.
I did not predict the Russian invasion of Ukraine or know about how German defence spending had declined to 1.2% of GDP and had beeen at this level for years if not decades and Schroder, ex German SDP Chancellor became Head of Gazprom and friend of Putin.
Perhaps I’m mistaken but you don’t seem to believe that there are true former communists.
The truth telling of Orwell and Solzhenitsyn are widely admired on the Left. Would that be as true of a whistleblower on the Right, like Liz Cheney or John Bolton?
As you know, I regard myself as near the center overall, with a varied perspective that can tilt to he Left or Right depending on the issue or stakes involved.
I’m pretty conservative, for example, about the Constitution–don’t change it lightly, but don’t treat it as scripture–but do not agree with Founding Generation Originalism, where one is permitted to think only as someone might have in about 1775-1815. Or with the massively expanded interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, originally intended for a “well-regulated militia” specifically, into near-unrestrained access for individuals.
Noble tradition of your upper crust continuing to serve in war more often than here. Biden’s son Beau served in Iraq.
The Left has not read or ignored Orwell’s essays l and and the same was for Solzhenitsyn.
Orwell said one of the best guarantees of freedom was the rifle hanging above the mantlepiece in a workers cottage. Orwell said pre 1917 one could walk into enter hardware shop and buy a fire arm. There were no mass shootings or criminal shootings in Britain in 1917, why?
Just not true. A grotesque generalisation, at best, about The Left–something you tend to indulge in with facile freedom.
Both authors are admired and widely read among genuine Liberals, like me.
Britain has VERY few mass shootings to this day; the US has a plague of them, despite the omnipresence of guns.
If not to stricter gun laws, what do you attribute that to?
We now have stabbings by emotionally immature males mainly in the age bracket of 15 to 25 years. It is the lack of self control, toughness leading to inadequacy. Most of these young males have no older male role models. The day when boys left school at fourteen and went to work and there were plenty of boxing clubs and in the industrial areas, rugby clubs, meant even if there was no Father perhaps due to death, tough emotionally mature older men took on the responsibility of bringing up useful members of society. Most young men join gangs for protection; with the presence of drugs and absence of Police leads to trouble.
Yes, unlike the “I mind my own business, you mind your own business” libertarian right, the busybody woke left feels the need to impose their views on everyone. Hence their need to build, by fair means or foul, an authoritarian government.
Edit: oh, and yes, they project that deep felt need for ideological hegemony as an accusation onto everyone else, because their saviour complex means they just can’t compute people living by a “mind your own business” ethos. And of course they don’t see their own impulses as tyrannical, because of course everyone should be like them, unless they’re deplorable.
Interesting piece in the Atlantic right now, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/white-rural-rage-criticism/677967/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email, which distinguishes between being subjectively rural and actually residing in hardcore rural areas. Lots of “rural” America is already urbanized in significant ways (starting with being only a interstate stretch away from an actual city, to being involved in various networks).
“The Pendulum Swing Theory of Islam.” I do miss Ernest Gellner.
In reality there’s not enough testosterone left in the US to have a proper shooting war. (I suppose if the women were all in they could do it themselves, but you can definately count me out.)
*withdrawn.
Where can I obtain these novels? They sound great. (And I’m British.)
I think of it as the class who shipped all the old manufacturing jobs off to China are the ones supporting the divisive cultural radicalism that Mao would approve of. So the old factory/production working-class are insurgent and voting for the populists.
Still, this remains a discursive war while the same old neo-Fascist militias linger under the surface. While Biden’s Dems use ‘domestic terrorist’ to refer to the newly Republican-voting working or lower-middle class, his federal agencies are still thinking of the militias.
I have to say, regretfully as it will impact on the American side of my family, that I no longer really care. I read about Trump’s latest outrage and Biden’s vacillating with a baffled shake of the head. It would appear that Republican gerrymandering / denialism and Democrat wokery / complacency mean the USA is a basket case as a functioning democracy.
Not that the UK is any better, with Tory and Labour two cheeks of the same a**e and no one I can vote for.
I think (hope) you might find that statement incorrect sometime with the next 9 month.s
I appreciate your honesty and all-too-accurate characterization of the two-party political landscape. But I hope you’ll spare a few tender thoughts, if not waves of tears and prayers, for your “American cousins”.
The robber barons of times gone by were a minority, and therefore vulnerable. We are finding out now what happens when the owners of capital are in the majority and cannot be defeated through the democratic process.
Western Society has changed. When wealth depended on land, the owners were knights and had to justify their positions by leading people into battle. The could not be cowards. When Industry developed in Britain from late 17th century , the Industrialists were tough craftsmen who even when owned factories and mines , lived next to their workers. Since the late 19th, the rise of financiers and now computer software wealthy live an effete urban or suburban existence away from dirt, danger and tough violent men.
In the USA wealth is concentrated in shares, not land. A book showed that four family trusts were worth a combined $500M in the 1930s, by 2000 they were worth $17B.
In Britain aristocrats such as Lord Shaftesbury said as we have free slaves , now it is time to improve conditions in the slums. The Liberal Government was developing Welfare from 1905, partly because of the poor health of many volunteers from the slums for the Boer war. In WW1 wealthy aristocrats lived, fought and died in the trenches. It was this shared experience with men from slums which increased measures to reduce poverty and removed most class conflict. There was little hatred from wealthy Conservatives towards The Labour Government which did not support class war. Consequently, there was very little political violence causing deaths in the 1920s and 1930s. Compare with people killed in strikes and demonstartions in the USA, Germany, France, Spain, Italy.
When WW2 came along, aristocrats and landowners were to the fore in volunteering for combat. When the Labour Party won in 1945, many young aristocrats who came back from war supported their aims. Willie Whitelaw mentioned how he discussed life when resting alongside his men.
There is likely to be massive wealth variations in a country but where the wealthy are cowardly weaklings, who are not willing to die to defend the country; who treat with contempt the culture of the country and poorer members who are willing to die for the country with contempt, collapse is likely to occur. The wealthy in The West have taken on most of the characteristics of the Left Wing Intellectual Middle Class as described by George Orwell in the 1930s and 1940s. This is because they have little contact with the harsher physical realities of life and lack the resilience, robustness, fortitude and resolution to cope, let alone flourish in these situations.
William Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw – Wikipedia
A totalizing and in some degree ludicrous idealization of the past. Of course they COULD be cowards–and many were. Or the military history of Europe would have been at once less ignoble and less bloody.
Never said it was idealised. I have decribed the change in the nature of those who had power and wealth and where it came from. British history is different to others. J Bronowski said The Industrial Revolution was Britain’s Elightenement; it allowed Newcomen, Brindley,Arkwright, Wedgewood, various quaker merchants to become bankers, often people born in poverty for example George Stephenson etc.
I have also explained how in Britain with land owning came wealth and responsibility, for example The Poor Laws and raising the yeomanry.
The slums which arose from the 1800s were horrific and it was because of people such as Lord Shaftesbury and The Factory Acts which prevented revolution in the 1840s. The Chartist Demonstrations took place without loss of life; compare with other countries.
Factories Act 1847 – Wikipedia
Orwell said social change has occurred in Britain with far less violence than other countries. The reason why Karl Marx came to the UK.
“the residents of what some people like to call Blue America, but which I prefer to think of as the United States of We Pay Our Own Damn Way.”
Since Norman Lear’s cynically titled People for the American Way pushing literally America-averse philosophies while waving the American flag, the Left’s claims are invariably and exactly 180 degrees from accurate. Imagine areas specializing in enabling every sort of life-destroying form of addiction and inertia claiming to be about “Paying our own damn way.”
In the modern world, individual rights and freedoms only really exist to the extent they’re supported by a blend of family, community and public, i e. state, institutions. If you start setting these different contexts of support against each other, no one will have any security, rights and freedoms worth having.
French geographers have been noting.a similar polarisation there for a generation before the revolt of Gilet Jaunes wrote it on every roundabout. There’s a cultural dimension, too. The culture of metropolitan areas is focused on individual choice and opportunity facilitated by state social programmes whereas that of the exurban areas is increasingly family orientated because that’s where exurban people find security and solidarity.
You saved me making this point. On a map French cities are surrounded by a halo of white working class people who have fled the city. City centre ex working class areas have been taken over by bobos (bourgeois bohemians) while the banlieus are dominated by immigrants.
France is largely run by people from the 14 major Lycees and the Grand Ecoles which means one basically has to come from an upper middle class well educated family to pass the exams. It would be interesting to know whether how many of these people come from the old gentry/aristocracy. People may live in Paris but when they talk about the family home it tends to be a large strcuture, not former peasants hovel.
As Andrew Breitbart said, politics is downstream of culture. While civil war fantasies are currently in vogue, years ago we had a string of dystopian futuristic films that pointed a central authority controlling every aspect of behavior. Was art that far off from real life? We practically have a living version of Minority Report and its pre-crime division that policed thoughts in place today. There have been films where viruses caused death and mass freakouts. Who knows how the current genre of futurism will play out, but it’s not based on nothing.
This, however, cannot stand: “that inter-regional transfers of wealth from rich people in Democratic states to the poor in Republican areas, transacted through programmes such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, were unfair to affluent Democratic taxpayers.” Those are not welfare programs; those are things every American is forced to pay into with the vague promise of some benefit years down the road. Participation is not a choice; just try refusing and see how fast the men with guns arrive.
Also, the “pay our own damn way” claim is BS. Until the Trump years, the high-tax blue states enjoyed a deduction that allowed them to count a large portion of state and local taxes against their federal bill. In that scenario, who is subsidizing whom? A California resident’s state taxes are not the concern of a Floridian. That SALT deduction was capped and blue staters predictably lost their minds.
Your first paragraph, and the films you allude to there, are indeed eerily close to the truth, although the concept of wrongthink as a crime of course predates Minority Report.
While there is some nuance and two-sidedness to it, I don’t think you can correctly deny that poorer Southern and Midwestern states receive benefits, infrastructure funding, and disaster relief that is in some real if indirect way funded by the tax dollars of coastal states, East and West.
And both are downstream from technology.
Lind is certainly correct in the claim that the war will mainly be within states, not between. However, he should not so quickly dismiss the possibility of conflict between the Federal Government (representing the elites/Democrats) and one or more states.
One scenario that could trigger the conflict: Should Democrats win the White House and Congress, it is likely that a bill similar to Nancy Pelosi’s 2021 HR1, or worse, will become law. That proposed law which passed the House with only Democrat votes, was designed to make elections even easier to rig via such techniques as banning States from requiring voter IDs, banning states from cleaning up registries of eligible voters, forcing states to have mail-in voting, vote harvesting, etc.
Many Red States would resist such a power grab. But if Democrats were to fulfill their threat to pack the Supreme Court such a law might somehow get past a SCOTUS rejection.
The movie version of this scenario should have Ron DeSantis leading the Free States to victory! I expect 1% of the gross revenues.
Can’t wait for the true-to-life scene where DeSantis, wearing high white lady boots, gets distracted by picking a losing fight with a corporate mouse.
Check the news! Disney just caved and settled. They are staying out of FL politics and announced new expansion plans for FL – not that we need it
What an important victory! Nah, fair enough pushback.
Good for Loud DeSantis Mouse.
If one opens election to fraud, then one ignores one of the reasons why WW2 was fought, namely for democracy. If one reduces free speech one reduces freedom.
I would like to hear those who wish to make elections more susceptible to fraud and reduce our freedoms, to justify it to those who endured torture and combat in WW2.
It was only after their deaths that I was told that two close family friends were tortured by the SS for weeks. Why did they endure torture, never break so people could corrupt democracy ?
I don’t understand the specific import of your comment or how it relates to any of my comments, unless you are continuing to treat me as some embodiment and defender of all THE LEFT has ever done, which you’ve sometimes done in the past.
Just to play along: Do you have a problem with gerrymandering too? How about “rotten boroughs”. How about backing up one’s unproven accusations of fraud with a menacing mob?
I’m against very stupid and painfully uninformed people voting. Not to make a law against it, but let’s not encourage it. That makes me an elitist in a way I’m not even proud or–but I’ve felt that way since I was a teenager.
I have a preliminary opinion but right now I’m not sure whether cancelling the stupid and ignorant vote would hurt Republican or Democratic, Whig or Tory candidates more–close call.
Republicans don’t want mail-in ballots? Fine. All those elderly and disabled Republicans can’t vote. That should go over well in Florida.
Mail in ballots for those who have a legitimate reason for not voting in person – GOOD.
Mailing ballots to every person/address ever given a drivers license (Nevada), and then turning off security measures (signature validation) – BAD
Too late, mate John Carpenter and Kurt Russell already got there fifty years ago.
It is absolutely urban vs. rural here. And both have valid points.
The rural areas of the US are neglected in terms of healthcare, jobs, infrastructure, poverty, transportation…but the interesting thing is the graying of the suburbs is happening at a faster rate than the urban or rural areas. And the suburbs nearly always vote red.
But a civil war? To be honest I think the whole damn country is too weary of it all to gather up the stamina or outrage for any kind of civil war.
Pretty good look – except for the sentiment, so often found in the meta-analyses of America’s shifting electorate, that “In its constituencies, if not its policies,” the GOP has the electorate which once supported FDR and LBJ; whereas, the Democrats have the electorate which once were Eisenhower and Rockefeller Republicans. Seems like this policy shift among demographic groups needs a lot more explanation.
Wish you had found a photo depicting someone with actual firearms training rather than a clueless model. Only an idiot completely unschooled in firearms safety would have his finger on the trigger as the model in this posed picture does.
Maybe its Michael Lind 30 years ago?
He could be a guest at an Arab wedding.
I have one conspiracy theory to add. That is, millions of military age men have come into the USA illegally. Maybe millions have been given a free cell phone. The phones used to be called Obama phones. Who ever has their number has control of a large rag tag army and rather than a civil war it will be a take over.
I’ve read on this thread, some think the January 6th demonstration was equal to the Antifa and BLM burning/killing riots in the months preceding the Biden/Trump election. Those who think the people are similar don’t know what happened. The tea party and Trump supporter don’t wear masks. These people on the Right are different and law abiding to the greatest extent. There is evidence of FBI complicity in the minor lawlessness of January 6th. (Trespass?)The Biden administration with the media and Democratic party are hiding something and good people are suffering.
I fear the illegal immigrants will disrupt the election and combined with Antifa and BLM again will cause untold damage to the country especially if Trump wins. America can only hope Law Enforcement people who love America can withstand not only Leftist insurrectionists and illegals but the Gay and Trans upper eschelon of the United States military who may jump in fighting for their woke interests and who might be ignorant enough to include a destructive Islamic agenda as icing on an insane cake.
I’ve been saying for years now that the thing that will signal the crack-up of the USA is when one state starts the ball rolling, by categorically rejecting what another state is doing and acts to prevent any commerce or reciprocity to take place on its soil; even after the courts have ruled that to be unconstitutional. The supreme court has no enforcement mechanisms for its pronouncements. Once defiance of the law is seen to be working, then mayhem may well follow.
I have to disagree with a premise in this article. Up through the 1970s there was a Democratic Party and a Republican Party, absolutely true. But, the people in each party were not ideologically uniform in their support of their respective party platforms. Indeed, Southern Democrats were often more conservative than Northern Republicans, for example. Many political observers overseas declared the United States political scene was not a two party system at all. Instead, both parties participated in largely consensual government, with Conservative Democrats and Republicans opting for various policies, and Liberal Democrats and Republicans supporting others. Whoever managed to collect a majority from both parties saw their legislation become law.
In fact, many surveys showed that, whatever the affiliation a voter might have with one party or the other, his (her) beliefs about their party’s platform coincided with their own beliefs even when the two were in complete disagreement.
In 1970 30% of the electorate were Independents, and that number’s grown to 43% in 2023. The change has as much to do with people learning more about the two major parties’ positions–and finding both odious–as anything else.
It’s most likely that any Civil War in America that does occur will take place when Independent-minded Americans finally wake up, and realize it’s time to overthrow the ridiculous Two Party Hegemony that’s wrecking the country while enriching those doing the wrecking.