Some thoughts about our forthcoming civil war
Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me?
I want to believe with all my heart and soul that a civil war is NOT coming to the United States.
But also: With all my heart and soul, I can't help but think it's a real possibility.
My heart and soul aren't to be fully trusted, however. I have a somewhat doomy outlook, always expecting the worst. It's not a fun way to live! But on the other hand, you can't be disappointed, really, when you're expecting the worst. Sometimes it doesn't happen, and then you're pleasantly surprised. And when it does happen -- when you find yourself in a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic -- you take some wry satisfaction from knowing you were right all along. The end really *is* nigh!
Here's another weakness: I might also be too prone to putting too much stock into whatever I've read most recently.
I mention all of this, because I just finished reading Barbara F. Walter's "How Civil Wars Start" and I'm trying not to feel utter despair.
The short version: Civil wars tend to happen in countries that are either drifting toward or away from democracy -- gray zone middle zone between democracy and authoritarianism called anocracy -- in countries that are riven by ethnic and religious factionalism, in which one of those factions is feeling a "loss of status" keenly, and these factors can all be exacerbated by demagogues who know how to misuse social media to their own ends.
Somehow, the United States doesn't really come up until the last third or so of the book. But yeah, it all sounds a bit familiar. (Actually, it's so on the nose I can't help but wonder if it's too much so. But that sense is more instinct than facts on my part, and Walter makes a pretty compelling case rooted in a number of examples.)
There's a counter-argument that, no, we're not really headed toward a civil war. Two recent pieces have offered some rays of hope, but they've done little to allay my fears.
* At the Washington Post, Tom Ricks writes that he's less pessimistic about the possibility of civil war than he has been. And he includes this observation:
Moreover, the Capitol invaders turned out to lack the courage of their convictions. Having broken the law, they shied away from the consequences. Unlike the civil rights activists of the 1960s, they did not proudly march into jails, certain of the rightness of their cause, eager to use the moment to explain what they had done and why. They lacked the essentials that gave the civil rights movement and others sustainability: training, discipline and a strategy for the long term.
That seems a possible misreading to me, if only because of very different circumstances. The civil rights activists of the 1960s -- the MLK branch, at least -- were engaged in a project of persuasion, pricking the conscience of the nation. It was a strategy befitting the relatively powerless. What the Jan. 6 crew was trying to do, however, was retain their power. Of course they don't want to go to jail for that! It's not that they don't have sustainability, I don't think: It's that they believe jail is for other people. That's rather more dangerous.
* At the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg profiles war correspondent Luke Mogelson and his new book, “The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible.”
“Every civil conflict that I’ve covered has been rooted in real injury and grievance,” he said. “In Iraq, for example, I was spending time with soldiers who had the scars to prove their suffering at the hands of the people they were fighting against.”
In America, by contrast, the right’s enemies tend to be either wild exaggerations or outright fantasies — antifa supersoldiers, totalitarian globalists, satanic pedophiles. “Whether or not the very real fear of these very unreal threats would be enough to sustain a hot conflict and people killing and dying for those projections of their own paranoias, I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never seen that.”
I wonder if the rise of social media has obviated the need for "real injury" to be a pretext for violence, though. What's remarkable in the current moment is that a number of people have been convinced they've suffered such injury -- by Donald Trump, by Alex Jones, by Tucker Carlson -- even though ... maybe they haven't? If people can be made to feel they've been wounded, then does it matter whether they really have? I guess we'll find out.
Then again, maybe I'm missing something. Thomas Edsall's column this week has haunted me for a few days, specifically because of this quote from Suthan Krishnarajan's recent research on how we perceive anti-democratic behaviors:
The results consistently demonstrate that many people rationalize their perceptions of democracy. When, say, right-wing respondents are confronted with regular right-wing behavior, they instinctively consider it to be much more democratic than identical left-wing behavior. Likewise, when confronted with undemocratic right-wing behavior, they do not seem to acknowledge that it is undemocratic, whereas identical undemocratic left-wing behavior is seen as highly undemocratic.
This tendency, Edsall says, applies across the political spectrum -- left-wing folks can see the speck in their brother's eye but not the log in their own.
Edsall quotes Krishnarajan again:
What takes place in this rationalization process is an elevation of principles in which political events are no longer evaluated based on specific democratic rules and norms but on abstract societal preferences. Instead of asking, “How does this behavior live up to my democratic principles?” a rationalizing citizen might ask, “How does this behavior change the political direction of my country?” By elevating their understanding of democracy from procedural rules and norms to what they think is good for the country, rationalizers can find a way to reach the desired conclusion of whether a particular behavior is democratic or not.
What does all this mean? I'm still trying to figure it out.
But my sense of things is that a civil war would be horrific. That the MAGA right is not so interested in preserving democracy and the rule of law, at least as I understand those things. That these things are related. But that it's important not to be in the business of rationalizing the behavior of "my side" -- and thus exacerbate the forces that might be pushing us toward that horrific thing I want to avoid.
Forgive the navel-gazing. I am not nearly the most prominent voice in our national discussion, but I do -- for the moment at least -- have a platform that most folks don't have. Punditry encourages the performance of certainty. It's good for clicks, if nothing else. I'm unconfortable with it. My job (as I see it) is try to state the truth as best I understand it and to do so firmly, to recognize others who are doing the same even if we're not ideologically aligned (I'm thinking here of conservative writers like David French), but also to bring some humility and empathy to the project. There's an idealistic reason for the last part -- I think it's the right thing to do -- but also a practical one: The people I'm afraid of right now are also my fellow citizens. We will either share the country ... or we won't. The latter scenario is almost too horrible to contemplate.
But I want with all my heart and soul not to have a civil war. That means not just proclaiming loudly that I don't want it -- but trying to figure out how to live and write in a way that contributes to peace.
I'm still working on it.