If you’re Gen X, like me, you remember the 1980s phenomenon of action movies that were all based on the exact same plot. The premise was this:
American prisoners of war are still trapped in Vietnam, and a ruthless bad-ass is going to get them out.
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Scotland!
Yes, that’s right—Scotland!
OK, let me back up.
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All of us—me in particular and America in general—have been talking a lot about civil war lately. To describe the frayed state of our nation, we’ve even learned a fancy new word: anocracy. This indicates a floundering country that is teetering between democracy and authoritarianism. Its presence is the first indicator that a civil war may be coming.
And what is the second indicator?
Well, that would be “whether populations in these partial democracies began to organize politically, not around ideology—so not based on whether you’re a liberal or a conservative—but where the parties themselves are based almost exclusively around ethnic, religious or racial identity.”
So the fact that the Republican Party has become the white-grievance party is more than just disturbing. It is a possible harbinger of war.
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Recently, I wrote about the rise of white supremacist terrorism. As horrifying as that concept is, please note that violence is just a means to an end for America’s racists.
Sure, many homicidal bigots enjoy bashing in a black person’s head or shooting a Latino for sheer enjoyment. But most of them are not content to sucker-punch an Asian person and leave it at that. They want more.
And that more consists of civil war.
Yes, I know that the idea of internecine armed conflict was laughable during, say, the Obama administration. Well, those halcyon days (which were only mildly halcyon by the way) might as well have been centuries ago. Because here in the post-Trump world, a full-fledged civil war is a distinct possibility.
Now to be clear, a second American civil war would not look like the 1860s version, which featured dueling governments and uniformed armies and generals with wacky facial hair.
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All of this has happened before.
No, a major American political party has never attempted to overthrow the government in a violent insurrection. That’s a spectacularly unique item for our charming day and age.
But white supremacist terror, culminating in an attack on democracy itself? Yup, we’ve done that.
You see, back in 1898, the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, elected a new municipal government that consisted of both white and black citizens. Thousands of white men—furious that the election didn’t go their way—refused to accept the result and overthrew the local government. They rampaged through the streets and murdered hundreds of black citizens.
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Pick your adjective: unsustainable, unworkable, ungovernable, maybe even unsalvageable.
Any one of these words describes the floundering American empire of 2022.
Yes, we all know that studies have shown that “an empire survives, on average, a mere 250 years.” And because America recently celebrated its 246th birthday, this means you may want to reassess your hopes of chanting, “USA! USA!” into the next decade.
OK, the data on that 250 number is questionable, and some might boldly insist that America is not an empire. But what remains beyond doubt is that we can’t have a functioning government when one political party believes in science, and the other political party believes in Jewish space lasers and cyborg slaves of Satan.
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According to promoters of American Exceptionalism, the United States has long been an outlier from other nations because of its freedom, economic opportunity, and national character of God-fearin’ tenacity.
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Like all of you, I’m obsessed with the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
I’m constantly rushing up to strangers and saying, “Can you believe that motherfucking earthquake that leveled Portugal over 267 years ago?”
“I know!” they say. “Damn!”
Yes, this massive temblor was 32,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima. But it did even more than demolish Lisbon and kill 50,000 people. It also ushered in a new world.
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Here’s how sensitive those liberal snowflakes are. Some guy in California got offended over a definition in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. How absurd. They’re just words, you wimpy, tree-hugging…
Oh wait. It wasn’t a liberal. It was a right-wing white man. And he wasn’t so much “offended” as “screaming death threats.” Yes, the guy was furious over Merriam-Webster’s entry on gender, and in his transphobic zeal, he sent multiple intimidating messages to the publisher and said the dictionary’s creators “should be hunted down and shot.”
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I will be on a rare vacation and away from my computer for a little while. But I will return with regular posts soon.
In the meantime, ask yourself the following:
“The video is horrifying, and the testimony is riveting, but will the January 6 committee’s televised hearings be enough to persuade Trump’s supporters that he is a threat to America?”
Ha, trick question. There is nothing that can convince Trump’s most ardent fans that the man is anything less than God Jr.
So that’s another reason why I need a vacation.
See you soon.
