It’s rather rare for a war to start in the modern era for a number of reasons. One is, well, the United States. The other is, it’s just not as easy for a nation or political group to think a war would be worth it.
And, yet, here we are — the MAGA New Right is very frothy and very much making a major fucking miscalculation about what they might face in a Second American Civil War.
Here’s what I mean.
Talk to any MAGA New Right person on Twitter and their orthodoxy is that not only do they have the guns, but the center-Left is made up of a bunch of numale soyboys who are too limp wristed to put up much real world resistance should violence break out.
I call bullshit.
The reason I do this, we’ve had the luxury of peace and prosperity so long in the United States that we’ve grown fat and sassy to the point that we worry about our pronouns.
Even the most lip wristed soyboy is going to sit up and take notice if there is a gun pointed at their face. Gen Z, as a group, just like the Greatest Generation, will be forced to rise to their historic occasion even if they don’t really want to.
As such, should the time come starting around 2025 when I think we may have a Second American Civil War, the center-Left is going to up up a fight as good as the one they face from the bloodthirsty MAGA New Right.
Finally, after months of work on this official first draft of my first novel, I’m nearing the end of the second act and heading into the third. I’m finally writing the juicy parts that might cause my gentle readers to check their watch at 4:30 a.m. on a Wednesday and push themselves to finish the novel even if it means being late for work the next day.
That, at least, is the goal.
But I still have a lot of work ahead of me.
I have to actually finish this first draft, then pause for a month, then re-write everything for a second beta draft that I can show beta readers.
That’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it.
I’ve finally seen land on the horizon, after years of feeling lost and wondering if I had totally misjudged what I got myself into.
Barring something I can’t predict, at a minimum, I’m going to finish a novel by the time I turn 50. Then, to try to sell it.
A far smarter person than I pointed something out about my hysterical psychohistory of a Second American Civil War starting around 2025: he said it wouldn’t happen for economic reasons.
This threw me for a loop, but I’ve given this cogent critism some thought and I think my initial belief about a Second American Civil War still holds up. But my comparison to the origins of the First American Civil War require a more nuance than I originally gave it.
So, yes, as my smart friend noted, the “right” to own someone else was an economic right. While there were many, many reasons for the First Civil War, pretty much everything else hung on the economics of slavery. When Lincoln was elected, Slave Power saw his future potential anti-slavery policies as a direct threat to their economic well being.
Hence, secession.
Thus, initially, it seems my belief that there is a near one-to-one comparison between slave power fearing a loss of the “right” to own other people and the modern center-Left fearing their rights being abridged by MAGA power don’t hold as much weight as I originally thought.
But I’ve given this some thought and it seems to me that in the modern age every “right” has an economic element to it. Or, all the rights that the center-Left are worried about do.
Take, for instance, reproductive rights.
If, by 2025, Blue States face all three branches of government working actively to make any form of contraception illegal there is a definite economic element to that fear. That would be the crux of Blue States like California and New York leaving the Union in the first place — the economic freedoms of women would be highly curtailed if birth control was illegal.
The list goes on — gay marriage has a economic element to it, and so on.
My smart friend also suggested that Fortune 500 companies would have no interest in essentially destroying the gravy train that is the American economy and, as such, would put the kibosh on a Second American Civil War.
That, too, doesn’t hold much water with me upon some reflection.
We already have a move on the part of the MAGA New Right to punish “woke” corporations and it seems to me that by around Certification Day 2025 things will have gotten so bad that not even the all-powerful Industrialists would be able to stop California, then the rest of the Blue States from leaving the Union.
At the core of all of this, the thing that is eating away at the Union, making it less perfect, is Red States and Blue States are receding away from each other at an alarming rate at the same time that Red States are ascendant politically and want to force Blue States to bend a knee.
We’re still too far out for me to know if Blue States will, in fact, avoid organized political violence and “bend a knee” to the fascists of the MAGA New Right. All of that is still very much up in the air.
But gird your loins. America as we know it might destroy itself in a violent manner not seen in 160 years.
It just occurred me today why there might be a Second American Civil War starting sometime around Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025: the same reason why the First Civil War happened.
The First Civil War happened because Slave Power got so wrapped up its own paranoia that they felt that their age-old “right” to own other people would be put in jeopardy no matter what once the Republican Abraham Lincoln became POTUS.
Ok, flash forward to 2024 – 2025 and what is going on — Blue States have every right to believe that the newly re-elected Trump will actively abridge various hard-earned rights no matter what they do. Add to this how brazen Trump was in stealing the 2024 election via Bannon’s corruption of the administration of elections and you have a recipe for a Second American Civil War.
And, despite Barbara F. Walter’s insistence that it will be Reds who start a “Troubles” like civil war, it will be a Civil War based on states. If a Second American Civil War does happen, it’s likely to begin with California leaving the Union, which will spark a cascading series of events that will cause sister Blue States to leave the Union as well.
Or at least try to.
This is where things get murky in my future history — what happens with the U.S. Military?
The officer corp of the U.S. Military will be extremely empathetic to the alarm of the Blue States, but as an institution, the U.S. Military will never brook Blue States breaking the law and leaving the Union.
So, I don’t know.
Either there’s some sort of last-ditch military coup in hopes of keeping the country together long enough for a Constitutional Convention (Hello, acting President James Mattis) or we see something even more fucked up — even the U.S. Military buckles. This would involve, just like with the original Civil War, people who supported the Blue States joining the military of the Blue American Republic.
Now, there’s something to keep in the back of your mind about all of this — with the United States pre-occupied with a Second American Civil War, there would likely be a WW3.
A series of regional wars would flare up for no other reason than the United States simply couldn’t do anything about them. So, you would see the DPRK attack South Korea. India and Pakistan blow each other up. Israel and Iran blow each other up. And God only knows what Russia might think up.
And if things got as bad as I fear, you would have NATO nations supporting Blue States in an active way, just like the West is now supporting Ukraine.
A Second American Civil War would not be an overnight affair, either. It would likely last for the rest of the decade. And, what’s more, there would be no assurances that there would even be a nice and tidy endgame to any of it.
The United States could simply balkanize into a post-civil war hellscape, with Trumplandia’s radicalized government murdering POC in numbers not seen since WW2.
But, as I keep saying, I may be overthinking all of this.
We could, in fact, simply slip peacefully into a MAGA-themed autocracy.
I’m feeling a growing sense of frustration about how much talk there is taking place online among women upset about the impending overturning of Roe….and yet no talk of doing anything about it in the real world.
I’m realistic enough to know that no one will listen to me and if they did, they would think I’m just trying to get laid.
It would have to be a woman who organized any sort of huge protest about Roe being overturned. The infrastructure exists to do it in the guise of the Women’s March…and yet, so far….I’ve heard nothing about any sort of national protest being organized.
If American women really wanted to protect reproductive rights, they would step away from Twitter and simply not go into work for a few days. That would catch the attention of the patriarchy they keep talking about “slaying.”
But it’s simply not my place as a CIS white middle aged man to do anything about this. If there’s a mass protest, I’ll attend the one in DC. But, otherwise, I just have to watch from the sidelines and wait.
I’m not an expert, so you can actively ignore me on this one, but here are my personal thoughts on what might happen should Blue States bounce out of the Union around 2024 -2025.
The theory is, at this point, that because Republicans will be a little too aggressive in their theft of the 2024 election, Blue States, starting with California, will simply leave the Union.
But here’s the rub — this would not happen in the context of antebellum 19th century America, but, rather in 21st century America that has been a nation-state since 1865.
As such, I wonder if there’s a glaring flaw in my basic assumptions about how a Second American Civil War might play out. And that flaw is the U.S. Military. Is it possible that should we actually get to the point where Blue States are leaving the Union that the U. S. Military will step in and single-handedly hold the country together?
Given that the reason why the civil war would start would be the question of Who Is The President? it’s possible that someone like James Mattis might come in as part of a military coup. He would be president just long enough for a Constitutional Convention that would fix the structural problems the country faces at the moment.
And YET, there’s another way of looking at that — such a desperate move could simply be modern day equivalent of a last-gasp change to avoid violence like the Crittenden Resolution that happened at the beginning of the Civil War. It could be that, in the end, not even the US Military can keep the country together.
Give the MAGA New Right a few more years to marinate in their hate who knows what might happen.
The passions of the 1860 election caused a civil war, it seems that what might seem unthinkable now in 2022 could very well happen in 2024 for the same reason: civil war.
Should what we’re led to believe happen and SCOTUS overturns Roe, we will lurch towards a Second American Civil War around 2024 – 2025. All the conditions are there.
There are two major questions at this point.
One is, what will the military do should it seem the country is going to break in two and the other is, do we just slip peacefully into autocracy?
For the moment, the US Military is a real wild card whenever I try to game out a Second American Civil War. It could be that instead of what I fear — a civil war — we get a weird, hazy gray era in American politics were Acting President James Mattis holds the country together while we figure out how to hold a judicious Constitutional Convention.
Or, put another way, it’s highly unlikely that the US Military would one, sit back and watch the country collapse or two, fall apart like what happened at the beginning of the first American Civil War.
So, that, unto itself, is something of a conundrum.
And, regardless of what the US Military ultimately does, it’s possible we’ll just slip peacefully into an autocracy and that will be that. But all I do know is the moment abortion is illegal in huge swaths of America — we’re going to grow far more politically unstable than we already are.
If my Webstats are any indication, the Powers that Be believe something is up with the concept of Novorossiya. I monitor my Webstats like a hawk and, for some reason, a few people from New York City are interested in my speculation about Novorossiya.
May 9th, the big military holiday in Russia, is coming up fast and it would make a lot of sense for Putin declare “victory” in Ukraine by saying Novorossiya has been established and fuck you.
Or something like that.
Or, he might declare formal war on Ukraine by saying Novorossiya is going to be officially established that way.
Let me be clear — I’m not really all that interested in Tinx’s fate. But given how “cancel culture” is such a big deal, it is worth talking about how Tinx has flamed out so suddenly.
So, as I understand it, Tinx — who was once called “the Internet’s older sister” is now persona non grata within the Tik-Tok community for being “fat phobic” and being a Republican.
But, that’s not really what’s going on — what’s really going on is she had apparently really aggravated Tik-Tok people by coming out of nowhere and rising too fast in the public eye.
She didn’t really pay her dues, in other words.
She was seen as too ambitious and fake and so some people took it upon themselves to kneecap her career. So, rather than some New Era where everyone is being canceled for 15 minutes, this is a far older story of ambition gone bad.
Anyway, it’s still possible that this will blow over and she will come roaring back. We’ll see.
I’m just now entering the latter stages of the second act of this novel. And, hopefully, I will zoom through to the ending by the end of the month. Then I plan on taking a break for a few weeks (maybe a month.)
Pray.
During that pause, I will work on the second book in the project as well as a second creative track novel.
I still have a lot of work to do.
I honestly don’t know how I’m going to afford a good beta reader. But, hopefully, something will work out.
It’s tough finding someone to read your novel who isn’t a fucking stalker or who doesn’t have some sort of twisted ulterior motive. I just need someone to read over the second draft and tell me how to improve it.
But I will need a pretty fast turn-around, which is, unto itself, another pain in the butt.
And, yet, here I am. This project is turning out to be exactly what I wanted when I started it a few years ago. Now, to lock things down and finish it so I can turn around and try to get a literary agent.
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