Ross Douthat recently published a piece questioning the concerns and speculations regarding a second Civil War in the United States. Basically, his piece suggests that those claiming such are by those very claims making it a reality — the magic of language. That said, he is right to question such claims. Is it really the case that things are that bad? Are we that far along?
What is the difference between what we have today and 1995 when we had the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing? What is the difference between what we see today and 1993 when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) engaged in a siege of a compound belonging to a religious sect outside of Waco TX? A siege that ultimately lasted 51 days, and resulted in 76 deaths and the destruction of the compound itself.
Another example could be the devastation of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District in 1921. America just has a history of such violence. You could probably point to the Whiskey Rebellion, which Washington responded to with federal troops as yet another example. Considering such events, the assault on the capital last January and all that surrounds it could actually be seen as perhaps ‘mild’.
Not only do we often enough have such violent events, America or at least parts of it are simply violent-dangerous. New York in the 1980s and 1990s was crazy. More recently there is New Orleans, and Detroit. And today there are fears that New York and other cities are returning too such. If you look at the murder rate statistics internationally, the US may be in the middle of the pack, but that is per 100,000, and the list includes countries such as Haiti and Iraq. When one just compares the number of murders we have, it is incredible, but again, we are a big country. And again, we just have a violent streak. The US is a big country and we can at times be violent.
So why are some today claiming that we are on the verge of a civil war? It cannot simply be a surge in violence. Likewise, Douthat points out that it cannot just be the extreme polarization that we have today. He makes the valid point that what people often say is often not acted upon. In short people say and believe all kinds of things. That does not mean they are going to act upon such. It is just the case that what people say and think is often different from what they do.
So extremely polarized or not, violent or not, Douthat is rightfully skeptical that such will lead to civil war in America. Add to this that much of the polarization takes place online. We are largely talking Facebook and Twitter here. Again, the question becomes how much of that translates into offline behavior and actions and how much of it is simply verbiage? And the answer is that some does translate into action. We saw that on the sites and web pages that successfully recruited for ISIS, which encouraged and even convinced some American citizens to give up their lives in the US and go to Syria. Others were simply inspired to plan their own one-man or woman terror campaigns wherever they happened to be, proceeding in the name of ISIS.
And we have seen Americans initiate shooting sprees, and prior to them they have on occasion left behind manifestos on the web. Here, however, we often see these individuals as demented, as driven by personal demons as opposed to being motivated by political or religious ideals. Such shooters and bombers are often seen as delusional as opposed to fanatical. And again, this can be seen as a historical phenomenon and could range from Charles Manson, to anarchists such as Sacco and Vanzetti, to the Unabomber — Theodore Kaczynski, to the various shooters we routinely have today.
So again why embrace such terms as “Civil War”, which will on their own instigate and inflame? Perhaps because the writers advocating such are pointing to something more than internet chatter and violence. Douthat himself points to one item that he sees as somehow refuting the claim. He points out again and again that it is not only the right that engages in internet chatter and political violence, (Though the right does embrace far more conspiracy theories or perhaps that is my own biases coming to the fore).
In short, he is right, both the right and left do engage in internet chatter and political violence. The political protests and the related violence that were inspired by the murder of George Floyd in 2020 resulted in far more deaths and property damage than what occurred on January 6th. Unlike Douthat, I, however see what he points to as only further substantiating the claim. I agree, all are polarized, partisan, and ultimately engaged in political violence. Both sides have to some degree now engaged.
On the one side, you have a protest regarding our 2020 election that entailed an attempted coup, and an assault on our capital. And it was a coup, an attempt to disrupt and basically halt our democratic and constitutional proceedings that day. On the other you have a summer consumed by civil protests demanding justice for a man that was ultimately determined by a court and jury to have been murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. Many of those protests after dark devolved into riots, violence, vandalism, looting. Both had begun with legitimate grievances, but devolved.
I point to both sides engaging in such as proof of us being a step closer to civil war. Further, we are today not just polarized but now have factions. We today not only vent our opinions online but now vent them to our faction, to our group. We now go back to and congregate in our respective corners. In 2016 that was not the way it was. In 2016 I enjoyed the political debates I routinely encountered on Facebook as silly as they often were. Slowly, however, people de-friended me due to my political positions. We went from having extreme positions to belonging to groups that share these positions. Identity politics and factions go hand in hand. Our de-friending which I still hear about and witness online goes hand in hand with the ‘cancel culture’ attributed to the left, but I suggest it is not limited to one group or side.
The result is references to things like coastal elites versus flyover country, liberals versus Americans. Ultimately you end up with Antifa and BLM versus the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. And I do not want to debate whether these various groups are in fact actual threats. Rather, I am simply making the point that they are perceived as here. They are in our culture. They are referenced and used by others to document a problem. These groups, these factions are seen as a threat. Regardless of which side you are on today you can find a group that you can perceive as a threat, and you can blame that group for the challenges you are facing, regardless of the truth or falsity of those claims. In these factions and groups you begin to see an equivalence between QAnon, CNN and the like.
So it is out of this that many arrive at exhaustion, frustration. Many on both sides today simply see America as not working. Many arrive at resignation. What we see, what we have today, is just the way it is. We arrive at apathy. We stay in our corners and generally at best tolerate the other, and that is despite the discomfort they cause.
The optimism typically used to describe the American spirit is missing from this picture. There is in this picture no hope. The perception by many today is that things are not getting better. Further, it is today perceived that the only way things can improve is if we stay in power, we retain power, or take power, whoever we is. Otherwise, it will be the death of us, and I do not exaggerate here. Republicans today simply assert that there is no negotiating with socialists. Likewise, Democrats suggest that unless we are able to overcome Republican challenges to voting rights, we are done. Again, I do not want to get into the merits of each. I simply point to the fact that these things are routinely heard. They are routinely said and each of them involves a claim that the problem is with the other.
So far, in challenging Douthat, I have pointed to the fact that what was polarization is today more involving clear cut factions defined by cultural and political identity. And number two is that these factions routinely see the other side as the problem. Things would be good if of not for them-the other. Lastly, as they are the cause of problems, we must retain power. Otherwise we are at risk of being harmed. At what point does violence become acceptable in such circumstances? It seems considering the summer of 2020 and January 6th, 2021, that for some the answer to that question is now.
Lastly, I look at a larger point. I turn to where this began, or at least one of the places. I point to Barbara Walter and her book, How Civil Wars Start, which is one of the texts that is driving this debate. This book is where Douthat begins. The book points out that her and her fellow political scientists today have arrived at methods of determining when a nation is approaching such events. These political scientists have studied civil wars and nation states in the midst of such for the past thirty years. They have looked at nations in various stages of development, some that were established, and likewise others that were nascent. Each unique and yet sharing certain similarities.
It is out of such studies that she warns of the threat of factions defined by political and cultural identities. My reference to apathy and resignation, of having people feeling powerless, are things she points to in her text, and these are things I see in our culture today. What I offered above is largely derived from and based upon her book which is based upon years of research by her and a range of other political scientists. Sadly, Douthat does not touch upon that at all. That point is ignored.
For me on the other hand, it is the very fact that a handful of people who have spent their life examining and thinking about such political events, such political systems and processes are now offering up such a methodology that allows one to see certain trends in American culture. With such data and likewise a set of theories one can see that America has entered into something different. It is with such research and theories that one may see the potential for civil war in the United States.
To ignore this work, and to ignore the framework these political scientists have constructed to determine when a nation is at risk of civil war, seems to preclude one from even potentially grasping the problem. And that is exactly where Douthat arrives at. He does not see a problem, but rather an attempt to make one. He ignores the research, the framework they have built, or perhaps he simply sees this political science as simply part of the fiction he is challenging, and as such not even worth mentioning. The problem, however, is that until he addresses the political science, his response itself is flawed. What exactly is he responding to? To what is he pointing to?
