Tag: Second American Civil War

A Second American Civil War & The Lesson Of Ensign Pulver


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I spend way too much time these days thinking about the possibility of a looming Second American Civil War and I keep thinking about a few things. One is, I simply can’t find any logic for the Right wanting a civil war. It makes no sense. None.

On a political level, they’re in a position to get everything they want. Even if Trump lose, the gradual trend in American politics is rightward. The center-Left is weak and divided. The center-Left is so weak and divided that it’s very possible that all this angst over a second civil war is a whole lot of nothing because Trump is simply going to consolidate power after stealing the 2020 election. That’s a very real possibility. It will all happen on a political level, no violence needed.

And, yet, here we are.

A number of far Right militias are full speed ahead in their belief that we’re already in a civil war.

The other thing that I keep thinking about is the character Ensign Pulver from the World War 2 movie Mr. Roberts. All during the movie, Ensign Pulver — played by Jack Lemon — is a lazy cad. He is the movie’s comic relief. At the very end of the movie, however, he has Mr. Roberts’ job and he is shown as a hero. He’s risen to the occasion because he had to.

As such, I would suggest to Neo-Confederates and other political scoundrels to slow your roll with talk of civil war. Just because you have a very low opinion of Blue State people, doesn’t mean that when politics finally fails us and the issues of the day become far more existential in nature that they won’t be up to the task.

It’s easy to imagine a situation where once we have some sense of where things stand — and what each side’s agenda is — that Blue State citizens shock everyone — including maybe even themselves — by really putting a hurting on Red State folks.

One thing I will note is there are a lot of variables that simply don’t fit the second civil war porn of Neo-Confederates. One is how modern American women are not going to sit idly by if defeating Trump is no longer a political question but a war aim. That’s an entire untapped source of mindskill and potential soldiers.

Also, and I can not stress this enough — what the fuck does the far Right think is going to happen with African Americans. If they literally turn most of Dixie into white racist ethno states, then there’s a good chance that many African Americans will revolt against that situation.

So, I dunno. Apparently the civil war is already here.

I still think it’s an extremely dumb idea for the Right to advocate.

‘We Don’t Need Your Civil War…’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m seeing with a great deal of alarm growing chatter on Twitter that the extreme Right believes that a Second American Civil War has already begun. This is very disturbing for a number of reasons.

But one thing we have to accept, as I’ve said before, is no matter what happens as part of the 2020 election, we’re in a new era.

And, yet, let’s go down the dark rabbit hole of a Second American Civil War. Let’s think about this seriously for a moment. It seems to me that the key thing we have to think about is there are likely to be a number of last-ditch efforts to avoid a civil war. Threats of secession, constitutional amendments and conventions and God only knows what else.

Sadly, it’s possible that they will all be for naught.

There’s a lot of talk about California leaving the Union if an actual civil war begins and the more I think about it, the more dubious that seems. MAGA-Qanon are seriously conflating what they’ve managed to get as part of their destruction of the American political system with what they think they might get by running around murdering people.

Yes, it’s very well possible that MAGA-Qanon, with the help of House Trump could strike a knockout blow against Blue States simply because they take the idea of an actual civil war far, far more seriously than most “coastal elites.” But as the opening days of the original civil war indicate, history doesn’t go in a straight line.

As such, once Blue States understood the gravity of the situation, there’s a decent chance that they won’t leave the Union, but fight for its soul. And key to winning that fight would be California staying in the Union. It’s easy to imagine a large military force from California swooping across the Great Plains and linking up with their compatriots in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

That would make the Blue States contiguous on a geographic level and then they could begin to strike east and south towards the heart of the old Confederacy.

But that’s all really very speculative at this point. It could be that while there will be significant political violence — no matter what happens in the fall — that Trump will simply use Barr to steal the whole thing in a “legal” fashion and he’ll consolidate power and that will be that.

Remember, it’s extremely likely that the Russians are going to hack directly into our election systems so Trump “wins” on election night. In fact, as of right now, that seems the most logical outcome to all of this. The Republic will die a political, not military death.

Going back to the tragedy of civil war again, if American really does implode, you have to think about the macro geopolitical consequences. Who gets the US Military? What happens if the DPRK attacks South Korea? Or Russia does a major military strike again, say, the Baltics? What are we going to do? Anything?

The whole thing is tragic and needless.

And, yet, I keep getting pings from different directions that definitely indicate something akin to a civil war might happen. MAGA-Qanon is really fucking bloodthirsty right now and in their craven quest for absolute power over the Blue States, they might get a lot more than they bargained for.

What We Can Learn From The 1st American Civil War As We Lurch Towards The 2nd (Maybe)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I generally think anyone — regardless of political stripe — is being a bloodthirsty moron to be giddy at the prospect of a “Second American Civil War.” War is hell. It sucks. I don’t want it.

But it definitely seems as though should Trump not win election outright on Election Night even though the Russians lived up to their end of the bargain after Trump pulled 1/3 of our troops out of Germany, that the more difficult it is for him to “win” the more thuggish and ham-handed he will become. As such, Barr’s post-election ratfucking can only go so far.

There might come a point when the Blue States and Red States are actually at each other’s throats on a military level.

The beginning of the ACW1 indicates that after the shock wears off, the dynamics of history are not something anyone can easily predict. The thing that idiot MAGA-Qanon people are so delusional about is they seem to think that just because they have Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk on their side that somehow they’re going to win outright the moment such political violence begins to happen.

What’s more likely to happen is after some desperate last-ditch efforts to prevent it all, there will be significant consolidation in the respective parts of the country. Once it sinks in to the average American that they have to pick a side, no matter what, then some pretty fucking surreal things may happen. People you wouldn’t expect finally jump ship from the MAGA-Qanon personality cult might actually do it.

Or, put another way, the opening days of any civil war are going to be full of confusion. Both sides are going to wait for the other to make the first move. Lincoln, of course, was a genius at this and forced the South to officially start the war when he attempt to re-enforce Fort Sumter. The specifics will be completely different because, well, Trump is a high-functioning moron who will thrash about on Twitter as everything finally collapses.

One crucial issue is what the goals of each side would be as the civil war began. A lot of people think the Blue States would simply want to bounce, but I have some serious doubts. It makes a lot more sense that any civil war would be a pitched battle for the soul of the country.

Another interesting thing is Trump has a solid 38% of the electorate. That’s it. About 38% of the electorate is bloodthirsty enough, enough in the personality death cult that they would lunge at the opportunity to make “Q’s” dream of a liberal free America a reality.

But there are a shit-ton of Americans who simply want to live a peaceful life in a free country. And, as such, it’s reasonable to believe that Blue States (once they get their shit together and start taking things seriously) have a lot going for them.

One issue is, while I can generally game out things to Election Day, after that, I lose any ability to predict what might happen. So, yeah, we have postal service ratfucking. We have the bullshit Durham Investigation. We have Russians hacking direction into our election systems. All those things are a given.

But if somehow all those things fail to throw the election to House Trump, I honestly don’t know what is going to happen. It’s all up in the air. Remember, when you’re actually living through history, there’s no narrative or value. We GIVE it a narrative and value after the fact. We do so in hindsight so we — and future generations — can grasp what happened and why.

I will note that the first few years of ACW1 were years in which it was very touch and go for the Union. It wasn’t until Lincoln decided to make the war a war of liberation that the dynamic of the war changed significantly. So, I would tell Neo-Confederates whose political thought is nothing more than a “South Will Rise Again” grunt that history — especially in times of existential crisis — doesn’t go in a straight line.

But what do I know. The dystopian hellscape is already here. I just want to finish my novel.

Thinking The Unthinkable: Second American Civil War Prep


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ugh. The idea of America having any sort of major political violence is a gut punch. It’s just something I don’t want. Though, obviously, a lot of good old boys in the heart of Dixie are frantically searching the Internet about this revanchist fever dream — that’s why I have a little bit of an uptick in visits to this otherwise anonymous site.

I’m very content to keep working on my novel even as the country I love implodes. But there are a few things that make me uneasy about my own, personal fate, should the worst happen.

One is where I live. I live in Virginia, which should the absolute worst happen, is probably going to implode. Not only are there major historical sites in the state connected to the first American Civil War, but the Right is already screaming at the top of their lungs about how horrible it is to live in a state with a functioning democracy. So, it’s easy to imagine a situation where should the absolute worst happen nationally, that Virginia is among the states where the first actual bloodshed occurs.

Another issue is, well, me. I’m not someone to sit idly by as the country collapses. Though he’s not some sort of personal hero or anything — I’m well aware of what a bloodthirsty tyrant he was — the person I can identify with as bolts pop off the Republic and water begins to rush in, is Trotsky. Something about how, as I understand it, he was hanging out in Vienna drinking coffee when the Revolution started seems like something that would happen to me. I also find it interesting that when he was in a power struggle with Stalin, he just choked. He just didn’t show up to really, really important meetings.

Regardless, I think I’m being extremely delusional. What’s more likely to happen is I’ll either be shot dead in the opening days of any political violence or I’ll try to help save the Union, but for various reasons I’ll just be what I am now — a nobody.

But I did learn something interesting from a parts of a YouTube talk by Jared Yates Sexton. He pretty much said we need to start treating an impending Second American Civil War the way we did the days before COVID19 struck the United States in a major way. That’s definitely something to take to heart. We don’t really think about when your country implodes that you might not be able to find food, have reliable communication or even electricity.

That, in itself, is rather deep.

And, really, I have serious doubts that there will be a civil war for the simple reason that autocrats always win. We’re just going to slink into an autocratic managed democracy and gradually, on a political level, become identical to Russia.

Honestly, it seems to me that the only reason we should be concerned about a civil war of any sort is the cold, hard fact that Trump is a fucking self-own artist. He’s a moron. That the fate of the Union rests on Trump self-owning doesn’t give me a lot of self-confidence.

In general, I think things are going to stay peaceful. The Russians will hack directly into our election systems as part of a quid pro quo for Trump removing 1/3 of our troops from Germany and that will be that. It will all be something of a dud.

The Fate of FOX News HQ In NYC Is The Canary In The Coal Mine


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really, really don’t want a civil war of any sort in the United States, but I can’t help myself when it comes to wargaming how it might occur. A key issue is what people aren’t ready for is when Red States believe Trump is president and Blue States think Biden is president and, on a state level, those governments begin to act accordingly.

Now, I know the U.S. Military has said that they won’t do anything to determine who the president is if there is some question — and there will be — but they didn’t say anything about putting down a rebellion of the people who absolutely don’t think Trump (or Biden) is president.

Here’s one possible sequence of events.

Trump “wins” reasonably late in the post-election process, probably with a favorable decision from the Supreme Court. The whole thing is so ham-handed and poorly executed on the part of House Trump that on a pure optics level, it will seem to Blue States that Trump stole the election (which he did.) The populations of Blue States — mostly in cities — will grow so enraged by this theft that they will begin to take it upon themselves to make their anger clear.

It makes a lot of sense that one place where this might happen is NYC. That’s the center of media in the United States and both FOX News and the WSJ are located there. It’s very easy to imagine a situation where the population of the city grows so angry that they loot both headquarters (or worse) and the journalists there are forced to decamp to a Red State.

That would be the pretext for a House Trump crackdown on the Blue States. House Trump would assume they could do a knockout blow — and maybe they could — but it’s also possible that a la the beginnings of the original civil war the first round of victories on the part of Trumplandia will only happen because the Blue States are struggling to get their act together. As the crisis deepens, Blue State leaders with a clear vision as to what to do will bubble up to the surface and things grow far more complicated for everyone involved.

These leaders could come from any area of society. Once politics dies, then everything is throw up in the air and it’s not a matter of who you are, it’s matter of what you can do.

One last note — House Trump is going to shut down the media altogether soon after any major political violence begins. That could go as far as shutting down the Internet itself until they can purge people they don’t like.

While, yes, this will definitely give House Trump a “first mover advantage,” if they make it more difficult for people to look at online porn, the average person might sit up and take notice that their lives are demonstrably different.

I think I’m deluding myself, though.

Seems like there’s just too much momentum on the side of tyranny. The bad guys have won. Not until I see Twitter liberals begin to make plans for some pretty fucked up things in real life will I think there may be any hope. We’re fucked. It’s over.

Leave the country if you can.

Blue States Are In A Better Position Than You Think Should A Second Civil War Occur


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really, really don’t want a civil war. I will note that while this blog gets about 100 views a day, I’m getting a minor uptick from Red States of people obviously stroking to the idea of a civil war.

This is surreal to me.

The reason is, if you look at the state of play in the country on opening day of any prospective civil war, Blue States are in a lot better strategic situation than you might think. A lot depends on what the goals of any such civil war might be. Remember, Trump is likely to have the military and first mover advantage, so he could very well serve Blue States a knock out blow before they could figure out what they wanted.

But let’s suppose the war aims of Blue States were not to leave the Union, but to unite the country under their banner a la the First American Civil War. While there might be a lot of talk about Blue States leaving the Union, I find that as a war aim is dubious.

The first thing I see when I see a realpolitik map of the United States is how weak the Red States are. That’s why it’s so dumb that Red State people are so eager to start killing people in the name of the Dear Leader. They are playing a really weak hand well because American politics is broken and the moment we’re not talking about politics but war, then the dynamic is totally different.

It’s easy to see how much of the country is Red and simply assume Red States could easily overwhelm the smaller (in geographic terms) the Blue States. The problem with this thinking is Red State people are conflating their political edge with an edge on the battlefield.

In real terms, it’s easy to imagine Blue forces from the West blitzkrieging across, say, Montana and linking up with other Blue forces in the Mid-West. While states like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan are “Purple” state politically, I seriously doubt if things became life-or-death that they would go Red. There would likely be a lot of political violence in the process of throwing their lot with the Blue states, but it would happen.

Anyway, I could imagine through sheer brute force Blue forces taking the entire Great Plains and Rocky Mountain areas pretty quick.

Now, this when you might say — but what about the South?

That’s a very curious situation. On one hand, the old CSA has a regional memory of rebellion, and, yet, there are two factors that make that not as clear cut as you might think.

One, is race. During the First American Civil War, if you weren’t a freed slave fighting for the Union, you were pretty docile on a macro level. But I seriously doubt a replay of that. The moment Southern Whites using the current political dominance to begin implementing their MAGAQ agenda, something akin to a race war might break out. That, in itself, would greatly weaken the ability of what is otherwise a pretty densely populated part of the country from being easily defended.

Another issue for the old CSA states — especially Texas and portions of Florida — is once things grew existential, there are a lot of moderate people there that would be aghast at the prospect of essentially American Nazis taking over their states. This is a dynamic that would lead a number of old CSA states to implode.

Speaking of imploding states, I suspect within days of any Second American Civil War erupting, Virginia would implode rather dramatically. Virginia is two states — one Red, one Blue — and they hate each other. So, it’s easy to imagine the state becoming completely ungovernable on a political level because the rural parts of the state would rebel against the urban, progressive portions of the state. Things would grow more murky, as well, because of the historical connection Virginia has to the CSA. I could see a lot of Red militants wanting to control cultural touchstones like Richmond and Danville so they could have a link to the past.

One area where Red States (MAGAQ) would have a serious advantage at the beginning of any such civil war is leadership. Add to this MAGAQ being a personality death cult and they would, at first, likely appear to consolidate their power quite quickly. But it’s human nature that even your fey latte swilling hipsters would rise to the occasion if they were staring death in the face. Some basic aspects of human behavior have not changed, no matter how much MAGAQ think they have a monopoly on such things.

But I doubt things would be this clear cut, especially in the beginning. As I said, Trump would have control of the military and a rabid, bloodthirsty 38% of the electorate to turn to. So, it’s possible there would be a knockout blow and there would just be simmering political resentment as Trump turned America into Russia on a political level.

And, yet, Trump is such a fucking moron, that it’s equally easy to see him somehow bungling a sure thing to dramatically that the necessary political and military moves needed for Blue States to engage in a pitched battle with Red States could take place.

But the above is really the absolute worst case scenario.

More likely, everything will be wrapped up on Election Night and we’ll just gradually, in fits and starts, turn ourselves into Russia. Or, put another way, the harder it is for Trump to win, the more radical he will become and the chances of an actual civil war breaking out increase.

Autocrats never lose.

The Coming Second American Civil War



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Editor’s Note: If you found this because you HOPE there’s a Second American Civil War, you’re a piece of shit. Fuck you.

Let me be clear — I don’t think there’s really going to be a “civil war” in the sense that states leave the Union. But I do think the conditions are there for there not to be a peaceful transfer of power. Trump cares so little about America other than how much money he can rob from it, that he’s going to burn the whole thing to the ground to stay in power.

I can’t predict the future, but there is something of a spectrum for us to mull. One one end of the spectrum, Trump is able to use ratfucking the postal service and the bullshit Durham investigation to influence votes enough that he “wins” pretty early in the process.

On the other end of the spectrum, well, all hell breaks loose.

Here’s why I think this. Trump is a complete moron. He’s also very incompetent. So if he “wins” reasonably early in the election process, then our general drift towards an authoritarian “managed democracy” will continue in fits and starts leading up to a Constitutional Convention.

But if Trump has to press the issue, if he has to force the U.S. Military to make a decision, then he’s far more likely to do some pretty radical things out of desperation. This would cause a lot of Americans who otherwise “don’t have time for politics” to sit up and take notice. Once you start fucking with the average American’s self-perception of what it means to be American, some pretty astonishing things may happen.

So, it is easy to imagine a situation where Trump is given by Barr a very thin cover for being president and he simply refuses to leave office. Once you have one half of the country thinking Trump “won” and one half thinking he didn’t, then there’s likely to be unprecedented violence and the U.S. Military is going to be force to do something about it.

I could maybe see some sort of “Unity Government” being established to punt the problem down the road for two years until the mid-terms. But even that might be pushing it.

The issue for me is the American center-Left is so completely ineffectual that by the time people start to figure out what Trump’s done, it will be too late. He will have finally purged the media and the Little Green Men seen in Portland will be taken nation-wide. We won’t know how many people are “vanished” by the government because there won’t be an independent press anymore.

And, really, macro trends in the United States indicate that the Republican Party is all-in on fascism so if somehow we managed to physically remove Trump from office it will just be a pause. Soon enough, a President Tom Cotton or President Mike Pomepo will finish the job that Mad King Trump started.

As I keep saying, I have no idea what to do about any of this. But we have to accept the new normal and realize that some basic freedoms that Americans have come to accept will no longer be there when we need them.

More on this Subject.

We have to get some things out of the way before we talk about this — Republicans have no shame and MAGA longs for a Russian-style autocracy. And in the eyes of MAGA — by definition the only legitimate election victory is one where Trump supporters win.

Another thing we have to appricate is — something about Obama’s second term drove Republicans insane. They completely left reality. This happened probably because it sank in that America is changing and they would rather destroy democracy than allow those changes to effect changes in our power structure. Add to this the growing economic power of women and the associated sexual agency and, well, lulz, they want an autocracy.

So, let’s talk about a second American civil war.

The first issue is Trump blew it when he didn’t strike before the election was called by the media. And, so, that’s the real crux of the issue — if Trump was the autocrat I thought he was, then the civil war we all think is going to happen would have already have happened. Trump would have driven Blue States out of the Union, used the Insurrection Act and then re-organized them under some sort of MAGA Reconstruction.

But because Trump isn’t an autocrat but an idiot ding-dong, we are now careening towards an extremely surreal situation where what shouldn’t be happening — Trump leaving office — is actually going to happen. So many Republicans have invested their entire life, career and identity into The Thousand Year Trump the fact that Trump is leaving office is going to causing them significant existential angst.

Let’s get to the point — how could a civil war break out NOW? All I got is Trump goes completely fucking insane and, as such, goes transactional on Twitter. For an actual civil war to happen, Trump would have to demand Red States to attempt to leave the Union. That’s all I got. Then we see if MAGA Republicans really are willing to jump off the cliff at the direction of the Dear Leader.

I have no idea if this is actually possible. But it is a real possibility. As such, that would be the civil war. That would be the opportunity for Good Old Boys in the Patriot Party to murder liberals in cold blood. Yet, because it would be Red States not Blue States leaving the Union, the issue of race would come to the fore. Blacks simply are not going to do nothing if there is an effort to leave the Union by whites in the South.

So, instead of any sort of Trumplandia being established, you’ll just get a fucking race war.

All in all, it’s tragic and sad that so many people would actually WANT a fucking civil war. What is wrong with you fucking cocksuckers?

More on This Subject.

Ok, I get it, on an abstract level, Good Old Boys want to join the Patriot Party and murder “libtards” in cold blood because they fear their lives will be ruined when they are “canceled” simply for being conservative.

But let’s break this down.

The thing we have to see is what’s really going on is MAGA people want an autocracy. They want to live in an Americanized version of Putin’s Russia. That’s their dream. Their goal. The irony is that Trump is an avatar for the extensive rot in the American political system and that’s why he’s so fucking lazy. He doesn’t have to do anything other than just be himself.

So, what’s going on right now is there is a crucial element of our fate that isn’t happening — Trump isn’t the autocrat that MAGA wants, he’s just a ding-dong. As such, all my predictions that Trump “wouldn’t lose” were right but for one thing: Trump isn’t an autocrat. He’s an idiot.

All the conditions were there for Trump to destroy American democracy in one fell swoop in any number of ways — and he didn’t do it. The conditions for autocracy continue to exist — the longing for autocracy by MAGA continue to exist — so we are careening towards a surreal situation where what should be happening, isn’t happening.

We should be an autocracy now, but we’re not because the person who otherwise with the means, motive and opportunity to do so — Trump — simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull it off.

If Trump was the autocrat I thought he was, he would have struck in some sort of autocratic fashion right before or right after the election in such a way that would have driven the Blue States out of the Union. But he didn’t, so now even if he struck at some point between now and Jan 20th, it would likely happen only because Trump went fucking bonkers.

As such, what’s likely to happen is we’re going to punt this particular problem down the road. It could be something in the 2023-2025 timeframe. This would give the Proud Boys and the Patriot Party time to organize and a “Man on a Horse” to bubble up to the service who would do what Trump wasn’t able to — turn the United States into an autocracy.

I must note that the funniest part of all of this is the Good Old Boys who come to this site obviously thinking there’s going to be a MAGA “revolution.” I find this hilarious because the logic of a “MAGA revolution” is both dubious and tenuously connected to reality. And that feeling of a need for a “MAGA revolution” is also an example of the yearning for a Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo to at some point take “total control” in a way that Trump simply wasn’t capable of doing.

A civil war may come, but I struggle to imagine it happening anytime soon because Trump is a ding-dong, not an autocrat.

A Second American Civil War Is Coming…

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The conditions are right for second American Civil War. I am thinking it’s going to happen between now and 2025. I say this because to me it seems pretty obvious that Donald Trump as president may be the firebreak between us and this event. What I mean by this is not that Trump is some sort of great leader holding the country together — I think he’s a shit leader — no, it’s that the insane, surreal Right is itching for a fight and only because they have one of their own as president that they don’t act.

So, once Trump is replaced by a center-Left president, it seems obvious to me that the call for secession will grow unbearable. But unlikely 1860-1861, it is more likely to be states in the West that bolt first, not the South. I say this in large part because of race. It just can’t see African Americans voting en masse for secession in South Carolina or Alabama. I can, however, see the residents of, say, Texas or Montana do it.

Of course, there is the opposite possible scenario. It is possible that center-Left states may be the ones, in fact, to leave the Union simply because they don’t feel they’re being listened to. In a way this makes a lot more sense given historical trends, but we’ll just have to see.

One issue is how messy a secessionist movement would be. Would the central government even care, or would it pull a “wayward sisters, part in peace” move and the country would split peacefully a la the USSR in 1991. It pretty much depends on leadership. If there is leadership that demands the nation stay together, then things could get bloody and messy pretty quickly. But if there isn’t the leadership, then the nation is so divided that it’s very possible that the split will pretty much be peaceful.

One interesting issue is what would the respective nations look like post-split. There is the very real possibility that because the center-Left states wouldn’t be contiguous that they would form sort of union with Canada in an effort to fix that problem. Meanwhile, the center-Right states would likely go completely bonkers and push through every insane policy that they’ve wanted to initiate the last 30 odd years. But like I said, only in states like Montana would the split be clean. In the Deep South, any attempt for the state to hold a Secessionist Convention would cause blood to run in the streets.

Should there be a real movement to impeach and convict Trump, should such a move get traction, then that might be the tipping point that causes states to begin to leave the union. So it might not be 2020-2021 or 2024-2025 when all of this happens but 2018-2019. It’s possible. Not probable, but possible.

I think we risk a second American Civil War in part because the views of the insane, surreal Right drift down to the “normal” Right gradually over a few years and so it makes sense that by no later than 2025 what seems insane will be taken as normal by the Right.

All of this doesn’t even take into account a very troubling thing that I don’t really know enough about — Donald Trump is cramming the judiciary with young, insanely conservative judges. So, that’s another thing that might placate the Right and postpone or eliminate the need for them to press secession from their point of view, but make the center-Left feel emboldened to do just that. We may look back on this present era much like the late 1850s, where in hindsight it is obvious that the country is tearing itself apart, it’s just matter of how exactly it’s going to happen.

Adding more fuel to these flames are titanic shifts in our economy. The process of AI, automation and other aspects of the drifting march towards the technological Singularity that we’re now experiencing will bring enormous changes to our society in ways that probably will only hasten or division. Throw in the growing sophistication of AR and VR into the mix and things grow really interesting really quick.

This is the point when I’m supposed to offer up some solutions. Alas, I honestly can’t think of any. That’s why it seems pretty inevitable — at least at this point — that there will be again be Civil War bloodshed shed in the United States within, say, 10 years. I could propose, maybe a “Twitter killer” that might force us to interact with each other in longer than 140 characters, but no one listens to me and I don’t have the skill to design such a service myself, so that’s kind of pointless.

It’s all very sad. I wish there was an easy answer to it all, but there isn’t. We need to engage each other more, need to talk to people we disagree with. But that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. So, as of right now, it seems as though all trends point towards us being doomed.

Shelton Bumgarner is the editor and publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.