We Are In a New Civil War

 We have wondered many times on this blog how close we might be to a Civil War here in America.  Those on the Right, most of whom would have voted for Trump, believe that the folks on the Left are so stupid and delusional that they don't want to even share space with them.  Those on the Left, who screamed "Not my president!" during the Trump years and voted for Biden, believe that Trump voters are gun-toting white nationalists who are getting ready to mount another "insurrection" because the last one on January 6 wasn't successful.

So how long can we really co-exist?  How long will the Right obey leadership from the Left? 

Here is another article that showed up today with the words CIVIL WAR in the headline.  For that reason, it's blog-worthy.

For most of my reporting career, to refer to some dispute or another — over a judicial nomination, perhaps, or an uproar over a proposed shopping mall near a battlefield — as “a new Civil War” was to reach for a metaphor.

On the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, we mark the evolution of journalistic cliche: Serious people now invoke “Civil War” not as metaphor but as literal precedent.

The Trump years, which it is now evident did not end with his presidency, have awakened a conflict so profound that, as in the 1860s, democracy, constitutional order and union itself are in peril.

A big deal, indeed. But also a puzzle: If this is a 21st century version of 19th century disunion, shouldn’t it be more obvious what the war, at bottom, is all about?

The Jan. 6 anniversary is a reminder that the chaos of the Trump years in one important respect — and perhaps only in one — is a historical anomaly. The country many times over has witnessed dissent and disruption far more violent than anything seen in recent years. But earlier episodes featured profound ideological and moral questions — easily visible to the naked eye, in the present and to historians afterward — that lay at the heart of the matter.

The real Civil War was about slavery — at the start, to restrict its territorial expansion, by war’s end to eliminate it entirely. Capitalists opposed to the New Deal knew why they loathed FDR — he was fundamentally shifting the balance of power between public and private sectors — and FDR knew, too: “They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred.” The unrest of the 1960s was about ending segregation and stopping the Vietnam War.

Only in recent years have we seen foundation-shaking political conflict — both sides believing the other would turn the United States into something unrecognizable — with no obvious and easily summarized root cause. What is the fundamental question that hangs in the balance between the people who hate Trump and what he stands for and the people who love Trump and hate those who hate him? This is less an ideological conflict than a psychological one.

On the surface, of course, everyone knows what the Capitol mayhem and its acrid aftermath are about. One side unreasonably believes that President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory was stolen, and the other side reasonably fears that former president Donald Trump’s followers are so slavishly under his spell that they are willing to hijack the legal apparatus guaranteeing free and honest elections in order to facilitate his return to power in 2024.

But the violent conflict spurred by the 2020 election flowed from years of conflict over every aspect of Trump’s rise to the presidency and his performance in it. In the nearly seven years since his presidential ambitions took flight in 2015, there has been a daily deluge of outrages and provocations, and a corresponding flood of explanations of what’s really going on here — why his partisans are so aggrieved, why they are so drawn to the most garish personality ever to occupy the presidency.

Efforts to explain Trump often rely on complex sociological or economic theories. He was a backlash to globalization and selfish elites. He exploited resentment of trade and the decline in real wages. He was the representative of people who disliked the cultural ascension of women and African-Americans and the diminution of working class white males. And so on.

All semi-plausible. All inadequate in the face of Trump’s zigs on one day and zags the next, and the obvious truth that most of his partisans are attracted to him less for any programmatic reason than for the sheer bombast of his performance — and especially that he offends his opposition.

Are you starting 2022 in an optimistic mood? You might take solace in the argument that it’s hard to have a real civil war without a real cause — a great question that will be resolved by the outcome. Trump’s moment in national life will die out because he always has lots to say but no longer has anything meaningful to say.

Or perhaps recent years have steered you toward escalating pessimism. Perhaps the squalor of modern politics flows from ancient truths of human nature. People are easily manipulated with appeals to prejudice and paranoia, never more so than when technology has led to massive growth in the industry of commercialized contempt. A country that can have a civil war with no one really knowing what the conflict is about is one in which the muscles of governance are pitifully atrophied.

Read entire article here;  We Are In a New Civil War … About What Exactly? - POLITICO

How do I believe an actual Civil War could start in America?  Maybe when the Left gets power and the Right doesn't believe the election was fair and honest?  Maybe when the Left gets power and starts demanding that everyone on the Right gets jabbed 3 or 4 times with an experimental shot?  Maybe when the Left starts demanding that all people who refuse this shot be banned from all public places and restricts their ability to have a job and earn an income?  Maybe when the Left starts demanding the every person in the country go along with their insane ideas that men are actually women and men can have babies too!  When you disagree with their insanity, those in power will see if they can have you fired from your job and never attain a position of power ever again.  Maybe when the Left is in power and attempt to purge the entire US Military of anyone who voted for Trump?  Maybe when the Left is in power in major cities and allow entire city blocks to be burned to the ground because the mayors believe the people need some "room to rage against unfairness."?

When these conditions are all there it might only take a minor power outage to light the fire.