“If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,”
President Donald Trump, via Twitter, September 29th, 2019
In the above tweet, President Trump quoted Southern Baptist Minister and Fox News contributor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. Recently, Bill Maher, Real Time talk show host and satirist, also spoke about the potential for a second civil war, “We are going to have to learn to live with each other or else there will be blood,” he said in a November 15th, 2019 comment.
Why this rhetoric among quasi-intellectuals in America? Do these events resemble America before the Civil War? Well, not really. We live in an entirely different America now, and we are not divided over one issue (two, if you want to cite states rights as a secondary cause after slavery during the Civil War).
Prior to the Civil War, two events stood out as leading up to the general conflict between North and South: Bleeding Kansas during the 1850s, which was slavery and anti-slavery violence that included the likes of John Brown, and the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks in the U.S. Capitol Building in May of 1856. This History.com video with Matthew Pinsker briefly unpacks both of these events.
History does not provide a clear road map to civil war in America, unfortunately. Since the 1960s, we’ve fought a culture war over values. The divide that began with the Sexual Revolution, anti-Vietnam War protests, and the hippie movement hardened on the issues of abortion rights and LGBTQ marital rights. One could refer to these issues as the Chick-fil-a wars because how one feels about Chick-fil-a restaurants position against LGBTQ marital rights probably indicates on which side of the cultural divide one sits.
MAGA red cap-wearing Americans at pro-Trump rallies occasionally committing violence versus Social Justice Warriors on American college campuses would be another way to picture the divide. Are there enough people on the far margins who would take up arms in service of their cause? It seems that most people sit clearly on the left or the right side of the political and cultural divide, but closer to the middle, and are unlikely to resort to violence, but maybe that’s the Pollyanna version of America where I want to live and not where I actually do live anymore.
All Things Adam 