Civil war "fever:" The battles lines are being drawn.
The real news here is that the Regime now sees civil war as a very real possibility and, in word, if not deed, is preparing to take concrete steps to blunt the threat to democracy.
The mainstream media’s blitz concerning a Second American Civil War continued through the end of 2021 and into the new year. On December 31, The Globe and Mail of Canada published an op-ed warning:
By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.
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I’m a scholar of violent conflict. For more than 40 years, I’ve studied and published on the causes of war, social breakdown, revolution, ethnic violence and genocide, and for nearly two decades I led a centre on peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto.
Today, as I watch the unfolding crisis in the United States, I see a political and social landscape flashing with warning signals.
The Guardian, a British publication which expends considerable bandwidth critiquing U.S. domestic politics, thinks we’re already in a civil war:
The United States today is, once again, headed for civil war, and, once again, it cannot bear to face it. The political problems are both structural and immediate, the crisis both longstanding and accelerating. The American political system has become so overwhelmed by anger that even the most basic tasks of government are increasingly impossible.
The legal system grows less legitimate by the day. Trust in government at all levels is in freefall, or, like Congress, with approval ratings hovering around 20%, cannot fall any lower. Right now, elected sheriffs openly promote resistance to federal authority. Right now, militias train and arm themselves in preparation for the fall of the Republic. Right now, doctrines of a radical, unachievable, messianic freedom spread across the internet, on talk radio, on cable television, in the malls.
It goes on to call for something short of a full-blown revolution, lest the Right prevail in its inevitable hostile takeover of the country:
It would be entirely possible for the United States to implement a modern electoral system, to restore the legitimacy of the courts, to reform its police forces, to root out domestic terrorism, to alter its tax code to address inequality, to prepare its cities and its agriculture for the effects of climate change, to regulate and to control the mechanisms of violence. All of these futures are possible. There is one hope, however, that must be rejected outright: the hope that everything will work out by itself, that America will bumble along into better times. It won’t. Americans have believed their country is an exception, a necessary nation. If history has shown us anything it’s that the world doesn’t have any necessary nations.
The United States needs to recover its revolutionary spirit, and I don’t mean that as some kind of inspirational quote. I mean that, if it is to survive, the United States will have to recover its revolutionary spirit. The crises the United States now faces in its basic governmental functions are so profound that they require starting over. The founders understood that government is supposed to work for living people, rather than for a bunch of old ghosts. And now their ghostly constitution, worshipped like a religious document, is strangling the spirit that animated their enterprise, the idea that you mold politics to suit people, not the other way around.
The quickness with which the media has become afflicted with civil war “fever” is a teaching moment. It wasn’t long ago this sort of talk was something relegated to the more hard-line sectors of the Right and the conspiratorial fringes, but it’s now gone totally mainstream. It shows that when the leftist Regime wants people to worry about something, it can mobilize tremendous resources in doing so, commanding the public’s attention and shaping reality to the Regime’s preference.
The funny thing is, these op-eds are actually correct in the sense the system is broken and in a serious legitimacy crisis. That part is totally true. The question is, why’d it take them so long to say what many of us have been saying for years? Why’s it that when the common man says it, it’s a conspiracy theory, but we should take it totally seriously when the media or a politician, who clearly have no agenda other than providing for the best interests of the country, says it?
This is a rhetorical question, mostly. The real news here is that the Regime now sees civil war as a very real possibility and, in word, if not deed, is preparing to take concrete steps to blunt the threat to democracy. Expect a fusillade of commentary and calls to action on the one-year anniversary of the 1/6/21 riot at the U.S. Capitol and for the rhetoric to intensify the closer we get to the 2022 midterms.
The problem is, as it should be clear by now, neither the media nor the state is acting in good faith. Mike Shelby of the private intelligence firm Forward Observer explained in their intelligence brief for today:
These articles offer a one-sided point of view – that the American right wing would be the instigator of armed conflict. As I’ve documented for years, Far Left groups were at the forefront of attempts to launch a popular revolution in 2020 – some even threatening to sabotage and shut down the economy if Trump had won reelection and remained in office. Some revolutionary Far Left groups are arming and training. While news outlets ignore these facts, the headlines are generally correct: we are headed for another conflict.
Make no mistake - a civil war, no matter who instigates it, would be an unacceptable outcome for the country. But the media’s assessment that the Right is the singular threat to democracy and that a civil war would begin only at their hands is false. The Left has proven more than capable of exacting violence on Americans, whether they occupy positions of power or not. Nor are far left extremist groups like Antifa the only threat. Violent criminals, whether they know it or not, are foot-soldiers for the Regime, an unpaid army of sorts that wreaks havoc and terror on society, aided and enabled by authorities for political reasons and as an indirect means of maintaining total control over a populace. I explained this concept in detail in a prior post.
If civil war is a threat posed by the Right, then a state of unhinged disorder and violence is a threat posed by the Left. Likewise, if authoritarianism is what the Right is offering, then totalitarianism is what the Left has to offer. As you can see, both sides present an existential danger to the republic and victory by neither would be good for the country. But battle lines are being drawn as we speak.
So, what do we do? How do we deal with a Revolutionary Left and a Counter-Revolutionary Right on a collision course, both of whom have concluded the republic is no longer worth preserving? A roundly-scrutinized University of Maryland poll revealed over a third of Americans responded in the affirmative to the question, “Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?” A third is more than enough critical mass to plunge this country into a devastating war. Other countries have experienced devastating armed conflict with only single-digit percentages of the population as direct participants.
It’s still early in the game, however. What happens during the midterms will say a lot about just how hot the temperature actually is. Even if we escape the midterms largely unscathed, the 2024 presidential election will prove pivotal in the direction of this country. It’s of the utmost prudence that Americans recognize that we are currently embroiled in a cold civil war, whether we like it or not, and guard against complacency.
Though I regard The Guardian op-ed, authored by Stephen Marche, to be a declaration of war on the U.S. by the Regime, I absolutely agree with him on this point:
There is one hope, however, that must be rejected outright: the hope that everything will work out by itself, that America will bumble along into better times. It won’t. Americans have believed their country is an exception, a necessary nation. If history has shown us anything it’s that the world doesn’t have any necessary nations.
Things might not get better either way, but they’re definitely not going to get better on their own. It’s easy to say we wouldn’t dare align ourselves with either the Revolutionary Left or the Counter-Revolutionary Right, but, the fact is, there may come a time when avoiding the conflict may not be an option. This isn’t to say we must pick sides, but that preventing the outbreak of civil war or at least mitigating its effects requires the majority of Americans to present a united front against all radical and reactionary forces. There must be a faction loyal to the Constitution, the Founding, and the republic, but I’m not confident most Americans are sufficiently alert to the danger or motivated to organize themselves in this capacity against a Left that possesses all the levers of power in our society and a Right that increasingly insists it will not be denied. This is why I fear, rather cynically, that most Americans may end up at least tacitly aligning themselves with the Revolution or the Counter-Revolution.
But if there are “loyalists” out there, it is increasingly imperative you prepare yourselves for the tumult that’s to come in the 2020s and beyond. I still believe, in the face of all the warning signs, that a civil war will not occur, at least not this decade. Part of this is wishful thinking and a form of risk management on my part: if a civil war does happen, we’re screwed, to put it mildly.
However, I’ve also stated, repeatedly, that chaos and mass violence will become more a part of our existence. America can and will become a more unstable place without the Left and Right coming to blows, making civil war a redundant concern. As Eric Weinstein once said, “Waiting for this to be called a civil war is not smart.”
The way to prepare for the dark times ahead isn’t just about stocking up on food water, and other essentials of life. That’s certainly part of it, but it’s also about instilling resilience in your family and cultivating relationships that can become communities, veritable villages of refuge in the face of disaster. There’s no surviving this alone and atomization will make people susceptible to victimization by more powerful forces whom you may have no interest in, but may very well have interest in you.
Finally, everyone needs to decide, ahead of time, what side they’ll be on. As I said earlier, there may come a day when picking sides may not be an option. The thing to remember is that there are more than two sides. You don’t have to be a Revolutionary or a Counter-Revolutionary, but don’t think you’ll always be able to just go about your life as you’ve known it, either. You may have to stand for something, the key is to not have to stand alone.
I certainly hope that a day a reckoning won’t come. I don’t think it will, at least not in our lifetimes. Yet, I also can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is coming and that moment may be coming sooner rather than later.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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