The Road to Splitsville OF COURSE YOU REALIZE THIS MIGHT MEAN WAR
The Road to Splitsville OF COURSE YOU REALIZE THIS MIGHT MEAN WAR
The Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT
NOTE: Next week’s Chapter 52 will be THE FINAL CHAPTER of THE SPLIT. Prepare yourself physically and spiritually for this event, if you even can.
We will also publish a final edition of The Road to Splitsville, to be written on the morning after Election Day. However, we will almost certainly continue to publish a newsletter, at least once a week, thereafter. It will probably not be called The Road to Splitsville. It will be free and you’ll…you’ll just love it. Keep watching this space.
So let’s talk about civil war. Except wait—it seems to us that there are at least two different kinds of civil war. In one, faction A fights faction B to see who gets to rule the entire country. In the other—the one the US experienced in the 19th century—faction A seeks to secede from the union, and faction B seeks to prevent it.
What we see in the US today, according to the excellent Thom Hartmann here, are the conditions that might possibly result in, not a Split (alas!), but a slugfest battle royale for the whole enchilada. Yeah, yeah, “block that metaphor!” but you know what we mean.
In fact we’ve discussed such a possibility before in these “pages,” when we mocked, derided, made fun of, and were grossed out by the intention of some nutbar Christian extremist groups to take over the US and turn it into a theocracy. The likelihood of that outcome—a religiously-motivated civil war—seems remote, both to us and to Hartmann. So what’s his problem?
This:
It turns out that the vast majority of the hundreds of civil wars fought throughout history were started by those in power or wealthy elites very close to power. Facing economic, political, or demographic change, they’re the ones who see their wealth and power slipping away from them; that’s why they start civil wars, to hang onto that power and the wealth associated with it.
He cites Barbara F. Walter, an expert on the causes of civil wars, and links to her succinct, disturbing TED talk in which she cites the two main prerequisite conditions for civil war: anocracy, and identity politics.
Wut—?
In an anocracy, there are all the trappings of a democracy — elections, political debates, peaceful transitions of power—but the government has ceased to serve its people, devoting virtually all its energy instead to supporting the elites that have captured it.
He runs down two familiar litanies. First, how much government served the interests of the middle- and working-class between 1930 and 1980:
We got from our democratic government the right to unionize, Social Security, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, high-quality public schools and nearly free colleges, food and housing support for the poor, Medicare, Medicaid, voting rights, low-cost healthcare, and reasonably priced insurance (among other things). Housing was affordable.
And even that list is incomplete. Add OSHA, EPA, FEMA, anti-trust enforcement, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and so forth. So what happened?
The “Reagan Revolution” happened. Unions were demonized, “trickle down” tax cuts were implemented, Newt I-Am-My-Own-Muppet Gingrich convinced Republicans that compromise was a sin, and five Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled, in Citizens United (2010), that corporations were people and “money was speech,” so the wealthy and corporations could yak and blab as much as they wanted in elections.
The rest is literally history: regulatory capture, an obscene financial arms race every election, impotent anti-trust regulation, the housing market controlled by speculators, the corporatization of healthcare, and (along with Democratic Party fecklessness in opposing, if not colluding with, it all) a Republican Party dedicated to making the rich richer and the poor angrier. Especially if the poor were white.
Thus, Walter’s second key precondition for civil war: identity politics. You will note that, since 2016, no Republican, from Trump on down, has offered a single thing to their voters other than to oppress their “enemies.” The GOP can’t even be bothered to present a platform any more. As we’ve observed since MAGA emerged from the primeval slime, a Trump voter will burn his own house down if it will make the liberal next-door cough. Convince enough low-information/high-stupidity voters that what’s ruining their lives is immigrants, “elites,” “experts,” and Democrats, and you don’t have to give them a thing. Just keep ‘em pissed off.
To provoke civil strife, white workers are told by Republicans like Trump that non-whites “want your jobs” (and want to “rape your women”), and that America is becoming a “hellish” “shithole country” as it gets browner and browner.
To make matters worse, there is social media, the algorithms of which amplify messages full of hate, bigotry, and provocation, to spur replies and harvest clicks—all (or, at least, many)
emanating from the comfort of some asshole’s desk chair in Moscow or Minsk.
Hartmann thinks that Trump, if he wins, will try to start a civil war. But we ask: Why? Once he’s in power, he’ll fill (and destroy) the government with his loyalists, and there’ll be nothing left to do except, in the words of journalist Sarah Kendzior, “strip the US down and sell it for parts.” Or, if you prefer a more festive image, think of the scene in Godfather II, where Michael Corleone and others celebrate the birthday of gangster Hyman (“We’re bigger than US Steel”) Roth with a lovely cake in the shape of Cuba, which they cut into generous pieces.
But Hartmann also thinks that Trump will try to spark a civil war if he loses. Okay! At least that makes sense! But we don’t think he’d succeed. After all, as Keith Olbermann often points out, they have the guns, but we have the tanks. (Not to mention the drones.) Plus, the January 6th insurrection was a murderous, bloody mess, yes. But it was a surprise, and one that Trump let go on unchecked for three hours. This time around, if there is one, a) we’ll be expecting it, and b) Biden won’t just guzzle diet Coke and watch it on tv.
What, at long last, Senator, does this have to do with being or not being on The Road to Splitsville? Just this: We may not be en route to a separation of the red states and the blue states into two distinct countries. But what Hartmann and Walter point to is indeed a split, and it’s a fait accompli. Even if it doesn’t result in outright civil war, the damage is done. Anocracy has arrived, thanks to Republican greed, oligarchic machination, lunatic Christian nationalism, and Democratic ambivalence. All this is mobilized, on the right, by identity politics promoted by home-grown and imported propaganda, social media, and Republican demagogy.
However…
One thing Hartmann doesn’t account for, at least in the linked blog, is the effectiveness of Trump qua cult leader. Trump arrived on the political scene pre-packaged as a tv star, a billionaire business genius, and a swaggering playboy. (Stop laughing.) He bragged about how smart he was; he punched down, openly insulted anyone who came within range (remember the Republican primaries?), and, in every way possible, offended the libs. He had a beautiful trophy wife or two, a palace by the water, and a malignant narcissist’s preening sense of his own perfection.
It was all fake, of course, but so what? They didn’t know that. Trump was, in other words, exactly the kind of super-hero ripe for the worship of an orc army of angry, resentful idiots. Who will lead them when—as could happen relatively soon—he’s gone? Overgrown teenager (and illegal alien) Elon Musk? Laughable Manhood author Josh Hawley? Fascist shrimp Ron “Yesterday’s Man” DeSantis? JD “America’s Creep” Vance?
The Democrats have what in baseball is called “a deep bench,” a roster of great (and young!) leaders capable of stepping up and inspiring millions when Kamala Harris is finished. The Republicans, in contrast, would be better off being led by an actual bench, like the nice ones on Fifth Avenue along Central Park.
We may indeed be split, and there’s no knowing what will happen next week, and in the weeks to follow. But, while Thom Hartmann’s warnings are entirely appropriate, there are additional elements at play. It’s possible that, once Trump goes (into retirement, into prison, into the morgue, into a cozy dacha near Lord Putin’s palace on the Black Sea coast) the right will decide that civil war isn’t such a great idea, and it’d be better to just quietly skulk off and form their own country. Or just skulk off.