by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I saw a headline somewhere — I think it was Politico– which implied that the current cold civil war America is going through is about “nothing.” I totally disagree.
The reason Americans hate each other, at it’s core, is about a dearth of white babies. (I hope that doesn’t come across as racist. I just find it midly amusing to say “white babies” in this context. Also, do think that at its core, the reason Americans hate each other is Traditionalists, on a systemic basis, are afraid of losing power to POC.) America is a nation of immigrants and, as such, wave after wave of new types of people have refreshed the idea of what it means to be American over the years. Remember, Italians were not considered “white” until some point around the end of WW2.
Anyway, back to the white babies thing.
The writing on the wall is clear — white people are going to be in the minority within a few decades and that is freaking white Christian Traditionalists the fuck out. Throw in the huge, gaping differences in social views between urban and rural areas and the United States is ripe for collapse.
But the thing that is putting huge pressure on our political system is white Christian Traditionalists feeling a huge amount of insecurity about their place in American society. Ezra Klein’s book, “Why We’re Polarized” was a real eye opener about the origins of the current clusterfuck we find ourselves in.
So, far from being about “nothing” our cold civil war is definitely about something — power. This struggle over who has power in American politics because of the systemic racism of white Christian Traditionalists is bending our politics to a breaking point.
And, really, the Second American Republic is imploding so fast politically at the moment that I sometimes wonder if we’re going to even make it to the 2024 – 2025 timeframe. I believe America is an idea, not the autocratic concept of blood and soil. Yet people I know who should know better take it as gospel that the United States is not a democracy, but a “Constitutional Republic,” and, as such, fuck you lib.
Should Peter Navarro’s non-violent coup work in 2024, that really will be the moment our cold civil war may turn hot. When half the electorate thinks the United States is a democracy and half thinks its a Constitutional Republic and Trump becomes president via some of the more obscure elements of the Constitution, that’s a recipe for a hot civil war.
Or not. It could be that we slip peacefully into autocracy and that will be that. People like me will, inevitably, cross the autocrat and simply vanish. THEN the white Christian Traditionalists in my family will sit up and take notice because things will be personal for them.
But, by then, it will be too late for me.
