Lets Put The Brakes On The Civil War Talk
The inconvenient fact behind many of these civil war/collapse narratives is that they’re an emotional reaction to what could happen, rather than what’s happening at the moment.
I came across this piece on the website The Organic Prepper concerning the topic of a Second American Civil War. It’s authored by Fabian Ommar, a Brazil native who writes extensively on the topic of collapse and decline. It’s not all that different from what I’ve said here on this blog, but I like to share thoughts of others if only to demonstrate I’m not alone in my thinking.
Ommar writes:
It’d be foolish to deny that a civil war in the U.S. is possible, and the sentiment is genuine and cannot be overlooked. But the real question is how probable, how likely – not if it’s possible or not.
Without a logical explanation of how a civil conflict would start and unfold in the real world, what form it would take in contemporary America with regards to practical aspects, nor much consideration to other factors and components surrounding it, I can’t see how this idea stands.
This is a good point. All societies, on some level, are at risk of internal conflict, if not outright civil war. We don’t think of Canada as a country where a civil war could ever occur, but a civil war was exactly what seemed was on the verge of outbreak in October 1970 in Montreal, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, even at that time. So the prospect of civil war in this country shouldn’t be anywhere near the controversial topic of discussion it is.
Still, it’s important to distinguish “could happen” from “will happen.” Too many, especially on the Right, have convinced themselves that because a civil war could happen in America, inevitably it will, and they’ll not only be around to see it happen, but they might even take up arms and engage in some shooting of their own!
Ommar then tackles the important matter of defining “civil war:”
There are tens of different definitions out there. I’ll stick to the most objective and thorough explanation I could find:
“…a politically orchestrated, widespread, protracted, physically violent battle that takes place within a nation, usually between sizable/statistically significant factions of its residents or citizens over the exclusive use of physical force within the nation… The challengers may want to unseat the rulers with the monopoly of force over the state’s remaining territory, or they may aim to secede from a portion of the original area.” [bold mine]
The definition, provided by the American Battlefield Trust, is as good a definition as you’re going to get. Domestic armed conflict alone doesn’t constitute civil war. The key ingredient is the struggle for establishing political authority over a geographic area. For example, an armed militia or criminal gang refusing to obey the law may exercise armed violence against authorities, while otherwise not attempting to challenge said authority’s political power outright or carving out a new country for themselves. This wouldn’t be considered civil war, but merely a conflict between those in charge and those who refuse to be a part of civilization.
Ommar elaborates:
Every war is a conflict, but not every conflict is a war.
This distinction is significant because it emphasizes the fundamental differences between particular phenomena. A civil war is a specific event with specific dynamics and duration.
Revolutions, riots, crime waves, and other demonstrations aren’t civil wars. Drug cartels battling each other for power and territory, or a hundred criminal gangs fighting each violently and terrorizing the population and the authorities, are not civil wars.
Some political scientists define civil war by numbers, though 1,000 yearly deaths motivated by religion or race would characterize civil war just as ones caused by politics or civil rights. Besides, everything can be politicized.
So while numbers are important – especially when talking about human lives – assigning political motives to intra-violence may not be as clear-cut in times of generalized turmoil and confusion, when everyone is at each other’s throats for a dozen or more different things.
Might as well write it on your whiteboard: Every war is a conflict, but not every conflict is a war. Digging a little deeper, the Mexican drug war is a civil war, as the cartels challenge the Mexican authorities for political authority in many areas of the country and, in some cases, have established governance. The Troubles of Northern Ireland, on the other hand, came close to becoming a civil war, but the Irish republicans weren’t using violence to take over the country or parts of it, nor directly attack British rule. Instead, they used violence to rebel against it, engaging in insurgency in what’s accurately described as a “low-intensity conflict.” I’ve stated before and will continue to insist that low-intensity conflict, not civil war, is what America’s future has in store.
Ommar doesn’t think a civil war is imminent in the U.S. either and explains why:
The American government has solid institutions and vast financial, logistical, and military resources. More importantly, it can promptly summon these resources to quell actions that could break public order, seriously disrupt infrastructure, or attempt to overthrow the central or state powers.
Is it realistic to believe that the dominant force won’t act quickly and forcefully to end any uprising or concerted intra-violence – before it turns into a full-blown civil war? Despite the official machine’s inefficiency and other flaws, we should not underestimate its capacity and determination.
There exists a tendency, mostly on the Right, to conflate state incompetence with total state failure. As we’ve seen throughout history and, even at this moment, throughout the world, governments range mostly between incompetent (bad at their job) to impotent (incapable of doing their job), but the one thing they all seem to manage to do on some level is maintain order, at least when their viability is at risk. A state couldn’t exist, otherwise, if it cannot put its foot down.
The idea the U.S. government would stand idly by or simply fold in the face of insurrection or some other challenge to its authority is a form of wishful thinking. If the state’s going to take action on anything, what would it be if not a direct assault on its authority? Governments aren’t people, but they still take it very personally when anyone tries to seize even one iota of power from them. The U.S. passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 for that very reason: to empower the government to use all available means, if necessary, to maintain order!
Granted, as I’ve explained previously, the U.S. government is likely to be highly discretionary concerning the conditions under which it’d actually invoke the Insurrection Act, as we saw in June 2020, during the worst of the George Floyd riots. Politics will play a major role in the decision and ideological alignments between those engaging in rebellion and those in charge will influence any deliberations in whether to bring down the hammer or not. The point is that there’s only so much rebellion and unrest the state can tolerate before it’s own legitimacy and, by extension, its existence, is put in jeopardy. The U.S., like most countries, doesn’t have enough cops nor troops to put down a major uprising even if it were to occur only in a handful of metropolitan areas. However, it’d be damned if it didn’t try. Without leadership, resources, and coordination, most rebellions tend to fizzle out after a while, anyway, despite whatever horrendous damage they inflict in the process. Things often return to an orderly state because the momentum fueling an uprising cannot be sustained or, like a wildfire, it simply runs out of dry tinder to burn.
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Legendary investor Charlie Munger wisely said, “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.” When searching and analyzing potential incentives for Americans to go to war with each other or against the government, now or soon, I see more questions than answers.
Is life in the U.S. objectively that bad right now? What civil rights have been lost? Would liberals and conservatives fight each other to the death – again, without the swift intervention of state and federal forces? If Americans are so divided, could they unite against the government?
I’m not saying everything is fine because it’s not – far from it. But anger, confusion, and revolt aren’t incentives. These things fluctuate even in healthy societies—division and polarization rise and drop. Things will come to blows in some places eventually. But are they reaching a tipping point nationally at the moment?
The purpose of this blog is to inform readers all isn’t well in the place we call home. I’m not sure I would’ve started this blog if I were say, back in the ‘90s. At least, I’d be writing about something else entirely. Just a few years ago, the topic of civil war and collapse was something barely on my radar.
At the same time, understanding what’s happening to us demands a deference to reality. It’s far too easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole and start believing anything and everything just because it comports with the worldview you’ve created for yourself. As previously noted, if you harbor anti-government views, it’s easy to think the government would also fail instantly when placed under tremendous stress, even as history and real-world events tend to demonstrate the stubborn resiliency of the state, while at the same time thinking the government is capable of executing conspiracies of a highly sophisticated nature, with no room for error.
The inconvenient fact behind many of these civil war/collapse narratives is that they’re an emotional reaction to what could happen, rather than what’s happening at the moment. Yes, things are getting bad, but things aren’t anywhere near as bad as they could be, certainly not enough to where taking up arms and exercising violence against your neighbors or the state becomes the better option. At this point, violence is more of a sentiment, an unfortunate one, but better it remains that way.
Things in America are certain to get worse, a fair amount of destabilization will occur, and I see a major political crisis occurring in the next generation. But until these things actually happen, declaring civil war imminent is both premature and irresponsible, given that these things happen all the time throughout the world without a concurrent civil war.
Never trust anyone who says they’d drop everything right now, take up arms, and join a revolt. They’re either lying or possess self-destructive tendencies.
What about all the guns and the millions of Americans, some of whom are part of militias? Couldn’t they wage war against the state?
Now to more physical matters: even if most (or all) other conditions are present, we should consider whether or not there is sufficient funding, coordination, direction, leadership, and logistics for a high-intensity, sustained, widespread combat, regardless of the shape a civil war would take in the U.S.
Americans have access to more than enough weapons and ammunition to wreak significant harm, that’s for sure. Can the U.S. become a 1990s Serbia or a 1970s Lebanon based on that? Again, in theory, it can. However, firearms alone don’t make a war.
Additionally, if Americans somehow decide to unite and attempt to overthrow the government, would that be sufficient to fight off the police, military, and all other special forces?
War is an organized, purposeful application of violence. Otherwise, it just becomes an exercise in nihilism, one which eventually fizzles out as it loses steam or gets extinguished by more powerful actors. More specifically, most Americans are a peaceful, law-abiding people, who own guns not to revolt, but to protect their families, homes, and communities from criminals and tyrants. The actual number of Americans primed for civil war is much smaller than you think, their voices amplified by social media.
Even militias, which the Regime has been hyping up as a serious national security threat since last year, are less ubiquitous than claimed, geographically dispersed, and even where they’re concentrated, such as in the Pacific Northwest, they don’t present any kind of organized, united force capable of imposing governance. If the authorities, federal and state on down, really needed to, they could marshal tremendous resources to combat militias and whatever threat posed would be dealt with relative amount of expeditiousness. Unlike the way they’re portrayed in popular media, militias aren’t like terrorist groups. Many of their members are quite open about their membership and activities because they believe to be merely exercising their constitutional rights as Americans, along with defending their families, homes, and communities, not picking fights with the “feds.” At the same time, militias try to maintain a low profile, even as they remain visible, to not run afoul of the authorities. Historically, right-wing violence has tended to be disorganized and the act of lone wolves - the media attempted to link Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to the militia movement, but no such link was ever established, probably because none existed.
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Before these events, experts, analysts, politicians, and media outlets asserted the United States would enter a civil war “whether things go one way or another.” There’s been a lot of violence, some of which was motivated by politics. Yet, no visible, significant mobilizations from any organized part of society toward a protracted civil conflict.
Political violence in the U.S. isn’t rare, but it does tend to follow a cycle. Since January 6, 2021, the U.S. hasn’t seen a major riot. Even the mid-term elections came and went rather quietly. Maybe too quiet. But a few years ago, it seemed like there was no end to the riots. You couldn’t blame anyone for thinking a civil war was a real possibility at the time.
But the fires eventually went out. I doubt many of the protesters and rioters who took to the streets in summer 2020 have participated in another protest or riot since. It takes a lot of energy to generate the critical mass necessary for such activities, even more for sustained violence. Will we see more protests and riots, eventually? Absolutely - after all, these things work on a cycle - and it’s likely to be worse than last time. But like last time, the unrest will eventually burn itself out and people will try going back to normal. Society will be just a tad more destabilized, but the lesson is that a civil war requires the ability to engage in violence for a sustained period of time. Mass unrest and uprisings may look like civil wars and may be, rhetorically speaking, such a thing, but they aren’t, not in anything meaningful sense of the term.
But if it happened before, couldn’t it happen again?
The fact that it has happened before is often used as justification for the possibility of a civil war in the United States. What does that mean for the future? Not much. It’s possible because everything is possible, not because it has happened before. It could happen for the first time.
I’m trying to argue that for some events to occur, a long and complicated list of preconditions and predecessors must be present simultaneously. Civil war is not a fire waiting for a spark to happen. Even in a banana republic or during a severe crisis, it’s no trivial matter. Other than the sentiment, there’s not much indicating it’s imminent.
I couldn’t have said it any better. Even the unrest of 2020 was caused by a confluence of events which happened to converge at the exact same point in time and space. It can and will happen again, but civil war demands something more than just a lot of anger and discontent. As you must be understanding by the time you read this paragraph, people may have the energy to assault, burn, kill, and loot today, but that energy doesn’t last forever, nor will the authorities stand on the sidelines, not forever.
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American society may be angered, confused by everything happening, and even hopeless about the future. However, the fact that the United States is still the world’s top superpower is unaffected by the general mood.
Many people may feel that way, but this impression is false. I’m not downplaying the hardship; just pointing out the difference between the U.S., a developing nation, and a shithole country. Thirdworldization is real, and it’s no small SHTF. People are pissed with the decline in living standards and the loss of privileges. But, no actual, broad disruptions have materialized (not yet).
It would be quite a leap for wealthy and stable nations (and even some emerging ones) to get from their actual position to a coup d’etat or widespread, organized civil conflict and chaos on the scale of Haiti or Sri Lanka. Besides, the U.S. is no exception: the current crisis is global (my apologies to the sensitive and entitled).
About the U.S. still being the top superpower: by now, you know I believe this stage of America’s history will come to a crashing halt sooner than we know it. It’s an assessment shared by academics and geopolitical analysts, including one Peter Zeihan, arguably the most notable figure in his area of expertise today. When the superpower does collapse, America will start to become a different place and it won’t be quite as nice as it used to be, or still is, today.
However, it also won’t devolve into a hellscape of anarchy, nor will it resemble Russia of the 1990s. To say so suggests the U.S. is actually a weak country, but whatever you think of America, it’s not the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Our institutions, compromised and corrupted as they may be, are stronger than that of most other countries. Whether it’s Anglo-American culture or something else, the U.S. proves resilient like few other countries. I can’t ask you to love America, but please, don’t ever call this country a “banana republic.”
I’ve shared most of Ommar’s essay, but I still recommend you read it in its entirety to receive his whole argument. I did want to share this one final bit from him, because it speaks to a point I’ve made time and again:
It’s ironic because I draw a lot of criticism when I make this argument. For some reason, the idea of a civil war not happening soon in the U.S. doesn’t sit well in some circles or with some people. There’s a lot of pent-up energy and tension-building out there, and that must find an escape valve somehow – real or imaginary.
Civil war/collapse discourse serves a therapeutic purpose. For many on the Right, they’ve become so discontented and disillusioned by what’s happened to their country, they feel a civil war or collapse would serve as an opportunity to “start over” or even mete out righteous justice against those who defiled our beloved land. In the real world, that’s not exactly how it goes down. And many of those who choose to take up arms and march onto the battlefield end up dying and never seeing what becomes of their country under the new order. Remember: the Civil War remains America’s deadliest conflict.
Some of us just need to feel like a civil war or collapse is just around the corner, because it gives them something to live for. Ironically, a civil war or collapse, at least the way it unfolds in their minds, would result in a lot of deaths, so they’re living to achieve… what, exactly? Watch lots of people die or maybe die early themselves? It doesn’t make sense, but again, people have never made sense 100% of the time. For others, talk of civil war and collapse is a means to an end. There are many commentators out there who have staked their money and reputation on the imminence of civil war/collapse. I have to wonder what’s going to become of them in 10 years when America is still standing, if in a hobbled state, and the civil war they kept insisting was just around the corner in 2022 remains just around the corner. It’ll be interesting to see.
This blog is intended to serve as a warning against both complacency and doomerism. Civilization is a gift that rests on a knife’s edge and can be undone at any time. The only reason it hasn’t been undone yet is because there are always enough people who care and are invested in it to keep it up and running, even as others are trying to tear it down. At the same time, just because things are going badly doesn’t mean they’re going that bad, nor does it mean the only other option is collapse. It’s not so much that I have faith in the system, it’s just that I believe most of us, regardless of our politics, would rather not see our civilization march off the cliff. We all have invested too much in it for that to happen.
Perhaps this represents the biggest change in my thinking since the unpleasantness of 2020. I’m fairly confident the next 20 years will be among the most crisis-ridden and difficult days this country has seen in its history. But I’m more resolved than ever before to face the coming storm with confidence and courage. This may mean the end of one chapter of the American story, but it doesn’t have to mean the end of the American story entirely. I intend to survive, along with my family, come what may, and talking about all this serves no purpose if, in the end, we merely destroy the country or let the national disintegrationists and their savages have it. Like many, I have my moments when I’m angry at what this country has become. But I channel that anger not towards fantasies of cities burning down and the sinful dying en masse, but towards resolve: One day, we’ll not only save this country, but we’ll make it right.
The voices of Fabian Ommar and Fernando Aguirre help me greatly in channeling those emotions, because unlike us, they’ve lived it. They’ve lived through frequent riots, economic collapse, hyperinflation, and a level of dysfunction most Americans can’t relate to. For people like them, civil war and collapse aren’t release valves, as Ommar puts it. It was day-to-day reality and they didn’t spend their days yelling, “Let’s f**king go!” or “War!” Instead, they wondered when things would go back to normal or, worse, whether they’d live to see the sun rise the following morning. They’re here to tell us their stories today because they didn’t give into anger, despair, nor nihilism. They’re survivors and survival is what we ought to aspire to.
If you, reader, are someone for whom a civil war not happening soon in the U.S. doesn’t sits well with you, ask yourself: If a civil war doesn’t happen soon, would my life still have meaning? Would I give into anger and despair, or would I just keep on living?
Your answers to those questions will say more about you than it ever will about the world we live in. Give it some thought.
Max Remington is a defense, military, and foreign policy writer. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentLoyalist.
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