by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I really enjoyed Barbara F. Walter’s “How Civil Wars Start…And How To Stop Them.” I recommend it. It’s extremely well written and thought out. But, sad to say, it’s severely flawed as well. Not that you shouldn’t buy it, you should, but you should go into it knowing that it’s fighting battles that either don’t exist or are impossible to solve.
The first problem is her exclusive focus on the notion that the MAGA New Right will not only be the origin of any second civil war in the United States, but that any such civil war won’t be a “civil war” in the traditional sense, but rather something akin closer to The Troubles of Northern Ireland. I take issue with this because, lulz, the MAGA New Right is running around, yelling at the top of its lungs how it plans to seize control of the United States without firing a shot. They are ascendant, they have no reason to start any hot civil war.
But you know who will in 2024 – 2025?
Blue States, starting probably with California. The Bear State Republic attempting to leave the Union would cause a cascading series of events which would leave us with a pitched battle between Blue America and Trumplandia. Either the U.S. Military collapses as Blues leave it to establish the armed forces of Blue America, or we endup with some sort of military junta that tries to put the country back together long enough for, say, a Constitutional Convention to be held.
The other severe flaw with the book is the solutions she proposes. All of them are bullshit. Not one of them will ever be implemented. We’re not South Africa. We don’t have any leadership with the ability to put the needs of the nation first. And, besides, we have a winner-take-all system of government and Senate. The MAGA New Right will never, ever for any reason allow any of the reforms she suggests will help us avoid a civil war.
There are only two possible solutions to the massive clusterfuck we find ourselves in — civil war or autocracy. And if we do have a civil war, we will bomb ourselves into the Stone Age in the context of WW3 taking place. The globe will be wracked with a conflagration far worse than WW2.
We are completely, totally fucked in the extreme. Lincoln’s Second American Republic is fucking doomed one way or another. The thing that Traditionalists believe will happen — that they will get all the goodies of white Christian minority rule without the downside of autocracy — simply isn’t going to happen.
In the end, loudmouth cranks like me are going to have our heads bashed in by ICE at the direction of the autocrat or we’re going to become one of millions of domestic political refugees who find succor in a Blue State or in, I dunno, Canada.
You have until about 2024 to get your affairs in order. I suggest you do so.
