The US Appears To Be On The Road To Civil War

This issue could be resolved with a greater respect for states rights, as Republicans themselves continuously repeated after the overturning of Roe. Oh wait, you mean they’ve been lying the whole time and knew damned well they were lying the whole time and this is actually about national minoritarian power?

Plus I’m pretty much done with the child trans panic. Whenever I drive by my PNW exurban town public school zones, I see lots of kids walking during operating hours. Sometimes running when it’s some gym class activity. I’ve never seen a single trans kid. But what I have noticed, is that the mostly white kids of 2000 are now mostly brown kids in 2023, from places like Pakistan, Mexico and Somalia. I suspect that this is the real issue for our “anti-woke” red staters (but they’ll settle for the lie of a full-blown trans panic for now).

I think an even more divisive and important issue might be guns. Rural voters and their exploiters are currently going to extremes to promote guns, and the resultant horror might push urban voters (and educated rural voters) to enact coercive measures to control guns. To anyone outside of rural America, the issue seems to have the moral clarity and violent repercussions of the slavery debate.

Well, red/blue divides aren’t confined to the coasts. Cities around the country are blue oases in red states.

All too likely. At this point there are two tribes-not parties-that hate each other with the power of suns. The results of the next presidential election will be regarded as illegitimate by the losers no matter which side wins.

The Dems started this with their no-evidence Russia-Gate and used the power of the security state to cripple Trump. There will be blow back.

I do definitely see things splintering (at the very least), & think all the Elites care about is the veneer of authority and control (in order to extract resources from us, their “subordinates”.) Recently I read an interesting piece in the most recent 5th Estate issue by a former mentor of mine, John P. Clark, an anarchist professor who teaches at the Jesuit Loyola University in New Orleans. He discussed the fact that now only the (far) Right are good at doing mass mobilizing, since the (nominally but not really) U$ political “Left”/ Dems are just PMC drones who want to run everything thru state, institutional, techno or academic power centers and can’t be bothered to waste time in face to face interactions with the lowly hoi polloi. I think this is quite true. The 8 years I lived in Louisiana I did see a lot of crazy theocrats and white supremacists, I had to work alongside some of them. The Right obsession with Trans people is of course looking for a wedge to go after others, but start out with those considered the “weirdest” or most marginal. Next on the agenda are “slutty” women (those with their own sexual agency who aren’t properly deferential to patriarchal mores), gays (who aren’t like Mary Cheney in the 0.1% because of course such people can’t be attacked), etc. I think that since much of the South never got over losing the Civil war, the splintering of America would mostly be a good thing. It won’t be good if you live in a violent, ignorant theocratic hellhole (Indiana, most of Ohio, the old Bible Belt, Idaho etc.) but may be somewhat more comfortable elsewhere. Despite their utterly fake “Pioneer spirit” it’s well known that Texas takes far more revenue and benefits from the feds than blue states do, & thus its departure would hurt it materially in the long run; so be it. It’s clear that a number of factors in U$ culture (primarily the settler-colonial violence, racism and ingrained anti-intellectualism and sense that since we were formerly “the richest” & “most powerful” therefore QED the “best”) allowed for the cultural rot and desire for primitive Bronze Age strictures and the sense of “security” such “traditions” give. If these people want to devolve to Afghanistan level misogyny, gun loving and queer-hating, sadly there seems to be little to prevent that at this late date. Since I live in Northern Minnesota now, a Blue state which even (shockingly) Michigan has become since the R’s overreached with Alito’s Roe destruction, (Hell, even reactionary Wisconsin elected the nominally “left” Judge Janet last week, thanks Samuel A), I think we would be better off to be politically separate from these wackos, & let them spiral down into increasingly lower levels of poverty, ignorance, drug addiction and violence, as this is evidently what they wish for. . . . I guess the main concern would be that hopefully if any federal government remains to administer the break-up that nuclear weapons be removed from the Red-reactionary states. Bill Clinton recently “apologized” for letting the Russians take control of the Ukraine (also Kazhakstan & I think Belarus) nukes when the USSR broke up in 1991, because he wishes the Ukie Banderist crew had nukes to attack Russia; hopefully there will be someone in power when the U$ breaks up into a nominally post-enlightenment semi-secular axis v. a Theocrat Gun-humping fetus worshiping (but child-hating) axis to prevent the Christofascists from having access to Nukes. That would indeed be extremely dangerous to everyone. (Oh, & in closing I never mentioned the 800 lb. gorilla in the U$ living room– all this “Culture War” b.s. is there because the business and MIC interests are fully in control of ALL levers of government power, & clearly neither voters nor anyone else can get back the “good jobs”, “affordable health care”, “safe streets” or any other things we let them sacrifice to Finance-Capital’s Mammon. But again, some on the right do nominally still have social interactions with others that most of the remaining “middle class” white collar folks have thrown away in achieving “success”. The R’s remain the Harlem Globetrotters who always win institutionally because they BELIEVE in something (albeit insane somethings), whereas the Ds/ PMC don’t believe in anything beyond rent-seeking, complacency and their own comfort, thus always playing the rear-guard “Washington Generals” team and losing as the script mandates. That old quote about the “good” people (even though the U$ is so right wing the remaining pretend-left is mostly reactionary and only slightly better vis a vis social tolerance than the unwashed, scabrous R’s) doing nothing, allowing the evil people and ideas to triumph clearly remains relevant here.)

The split will be more like the bastard child of Yugoslavia and the Warlord Era of China, with the added bonus of general religious and ethnic slaughter of the 30 Years War combined with the Rwandan Genocide.

The end result will be a series of failed states from Canada to Mexico that make Somalia positively look utopian.

Peoples of certain races, ethnic groups, sexual persuasions, and religions will be extirpated from various areas; some will be entirely exterminated and/or ethnically cleansed from the continental US.

There will never be peace between the handful of Blue enclaves that remain and the Red interior. The Reds will starve the Blues in their own cities, further destroying their own economies, which will never recover. All will be blamed on the remaining Blue enclaves, against which will be levied permanent war.

This is all predicated on some last remaining adult in the Executive branch or Military rendering all the nukes unusable. The last Federal government will be Christofascist Dominionist, and will seek to use our nukes to enforce their will on the world at large (not to mention against our own Blue cities).

If those are not taken out, all the other possibilities are moot, as the rest of the world will not follow the Christenfueher, and so all will die, either in the big glowy bangs or from the fallout thereafter…

Will we? Won’t we? I’ve pondered this many a time over the years. I don’t know.

Civil war in the US is not out of the question. After all, Britain had more than one and many formerly united countries have broken up. The US was initially united loosely which helped make the war between the states possible, even inevitable.

But I’m not seeing the kind of unities within sectional cultures that was formerly the case — in part because it was so difficult to move from one place to another. If you’re stuck where you are — or you like where you are — you’re going to adopt/be part of that culture. But in the US it’s still fairly easy to move and every section is split into different cultural islands.

There is no way I know of to create the kind of unity within sections that would enable them to go to war against one another. What we see instead is an increase in random violence. rhetorical “warfare”, deep anxieties expressed as hatreds between and within groups, a static, stalled and incompetent political environment and media that uses fear and loathing of The Other to build and keep audience.

A trigger could start this situation into a war of all against all. But also not.

More likely is that rural areas and the US Empty Quarter would just cease to cooperate with The Hated Government. And they would be largely allowed to get away with it. There would be the question of all those corporate welfare and subsidy payments though. So it couldn’t go too far. Just far enough to feel good.

What a mess.

“making it illegal for people to go to other states for abortions of trans related medical care.”

Should be “abortions OR trans-related”

“Part of the mechanic of that was punishing people who helped slaves.”

I’m thinking that it should be mechanics (plural). Or maybe mechanism? Or some other word, maybe, but I can’t think what it should be. This entire sentence really belongs at the end of the first paragraph. It will flow better.

“using rulings by local justices in Republican to enact nationwide bans ”

Should be “in Republican states to enact”

“abortificants” should be “abortifacients”

Hope this helps, this is a very serious issue, among all the other issues we are facing.

Please delete this posting, too. Thanks, Ian.

if there will be civil war, who will furnish the weaponry to fight it?

the transnational elites find the US too big a bat in their hand to ever give that up.

even China will not stop doing business with us, as we make threatening noises at them.

why? their elites want to make money too.

a lot of people here display the same inverse mirror image bigotry against rural people and blue staters as you accuse them of doing to your kind.

also, where will these blue places get their meals, fuel, military conscripts? the ghettos are not inexaustible. and which way will the suburbs—people who escaped the cities because they dislike them or couldn’t afford them–cleave towards?

our country might be at total divide and conquer because that keeps the elites in control. we are going Brasil way, not balkan way.

and no, people’s personal stores of guns won’t really cut it no matter the anti-gun alarmism.

The USA has been an Empire since the Mexican War and the annexation of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and parts of Utah. All the Confederate Monuments torn down and the recently renamed military bases were built to integrate the back-water South back into the North American Empire. It was air conditioning and civil rights that integrated the South and North, sort of. One event not mentioned is that in 1965 the European preference for immigration into the USA was ended. Immigration from across the globe has driven the US population from 194 million then to 331 million. My high school in Seattle, back then, had one black student. Today minority enrollment is 91%. “Mixed-race neighborhoods quietly became the norm in the U.S.” Since the 1970s, working wages have stagnated.

The North American Empire has become a global hegemon led by “off-shored”, jet-set, ideologues who are intent on remaining the tip of the pyramid no matter the consequences. In order to rule, Americans are subject to the same divide and rule neoliberal political/economic system as the rest of the world. All that matters is corporate profits. People are “nada”. World War III has started and Saudi Arabia has switched sides.

Without restoration of the democratic constitutional republic; the crumbling apart will only accelerate. Keeping the Western Empire together is simply too expensive and intrusive. Its only purpose is to enrich a few families and give jobs to the plutocrats’ Overseers. The Empire’s war plans were leaked in a Discord chat room led by a twentysomething gun enthusiast who had access to them on a military base and discussed them with two dozen men and young boys who shared a “mutual love of guns, military gear and God.” The documents were copied and ultimately were posted to telegraph and twitter with alternations.

There will be no “Battle of Bull Run” with Congress riding out to watch if there is no global nuclear holocaust. Things will just stop working due to the lack of energy, firefights in banks, storm destruction, rising seas, and migration towards the cooler climes. If the Chinese have any sense, they will avoid creating a sequel to the movie “Red Dawn”.

The big difference with the historic Civil War is the fact that the slaves were monetized. Freeing them was a direct attack on the wealth of the oligarchs. Social idpol issues today like Trans don’t so directly attack oligarchs wealth. It is an effective technique to divide the proles.
With a serious economic crash that destroys oligarchs wealth, all bets are off. Losing the war against Russia and China that the neocons are dreaming of would do that. But then that’s nuclear death for everyone. Game over.

@Ian Welsh

Elaborate on how you think these culture wars map to underlying economic issues that would be the actual druvers of a war.

I don’t see trans issues in particular being a catalyst for anything. There are no dueling economic systems in modern America. There’s only an omnipresent neoliberalism, and transgender ideology is one of its bleeding edges. Even if people revolt against it, they’re just inevitably picking another flavor of neoliberalism to oppose it. Everything is just a commercialized consumer identity now.

Many resenters of the American Hegemony would welcome an American Civil War or Civil Breakdown or Civil Chernobyl Meltdown Event as ushering in the end of the disliked American Hegemony.

Some of those resenters live in Canada.

But a breakdown of America on Canada’s borders would pose a higher level of problems to Canada than America as-is now poses. How would Canada like to share a border with a nuclear-armed Gilead Republic of Christianazi Satanofascistan? At least one of the Successor States arising in the Former American Space would be such a Gilead Republic.

Dan Lynch

A solution might be replacing closed party primaries with a single general primary with ranked choice voting. Ranked choice would favor the moderate candidates, and help defuse the polarization that currently drives U.S. politics. But neither capitalist party is pushing ranked choice voting (see the Iron Law of Institutions).

There are other, I think better ways.

One would be to abolish districts altogether and elect representatives (at least in the House) by proportional voting, with a cutoff (5 %).

Another thing that might be to have independently drawn, large districts. Most states, let’s take North Carolina for instance, have geographical separations–the Mountain West, the Piedmont Center, and the Coastal Plain East. Those would be the three districts. These would thus likely contain both urban and rural areas, areas of varying ethnic racial makeup, etc.

North Carolina has 14 US House seats. You have three districts. Thus, you could say, in the district races, the top 4 vote-getters get in, accounting for 12 of the seats. Then two more representatives could be elected in a state-wide race where the top 2 get in. That would account for all 14.

That would be a hard system to game. The districts can’t be easily manipulated, given the requirements that they be equal, population-wise. It would be harder to shut minor candidates out. A party that overreached and tried to take all (here) 4 seats of a district might find out that they just split up their own voter base and elected NOBODY. I’m certain you would get a US House, at least, where the makeup of the House more closely resembles the state and national vote totals than it does now.

North Carolina is hardly alone. I can think of many other states with similar “natural” divisions. But right now, there’s a law passed by Congress excluding the creation of districts with multiple representatives. That needs to be repealed.

“Eric Anderson”: yes, people do vote with their feet. I believe that our primary motivator is insulation from people with less money than us. I live in the most pleasant suburb that I can afford here in Silicon Valley, 2 blocks from federal housing (Section 8) and the freeway. I was righteously grievanced to discover there was a stabbing in the police reports for that block.

School districts are the most precisely drawn social class maps you can find. They have the most precise gerrymandering.

Soredemos, you wrote:

“There’s nothing today that is remotely comparable. In fact I would seriously dispute whether there has ever been a civil war fought over kulturkampf issues.”

Why doesn’t Yugoslavia qualify? Huntington thought it did. I lived in Istria for a while. They still had the posters on the wall about what you should do in a bombing attack.

As for the interplay between economics and the very kulturkampf issues mentioned by Ian, consider the case of New Mexico. A little over a month ago, the governor signed into law a bill protecting the right to an abortion and gender affirming child care. The abortion aspect of the law contains no time limit on abortion. Included in CNN’s article about the bill was this paragraph:

“While abortion is legal in New Mexico, several GOP-led states have introduced or enacted measures restricting abortion, including Texas and Oklahoma, which have banned the procedure at all stages of pregnancy with limited exceptions. In response, New Mexico, which neighbors both states, allocated $10 million to build a new abortion clinic near the Texas border.”

New Mexico, which also has another neighbor with strict abortions, Utah, is taking advantage of several commercial opportunities in the medical industry. I would expect Albuquerque, a city easily reached by air, to do the same. Maybe Santa Fe will build one for the rich and famous, and Taos for the New Age hippie redux set. I lived in rural New Mexico for a decade, working as a lawyer in Taos and Santa Fe. This law is hardly the product of local agitation for it.

The governor of New Mexico was touting this on Face the Nation yesterday. She was especially proud of the aspect that apparently allows abortion almost to the moment of birth. She’s the descendant of a Spanish land grantee, the granddaughter of a New Mexico Supreme Court justice and cousin a current Congressman and cousin to a former governor and U. S. Senator, most of whom were Repulicans. Obviously, she’s a Democrat, and an ambitious one.

Ian is spot on. The breakdown of the Full Faith and Credit Clause is a fundamental weakening of the Constitutional glue making the fifty states more than just a non-aggression pact.

different clue:

Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution reads in pertinent part:

Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.

And Section 2 in part:

A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.

Now consider Ian’s example from the newly enacted law in the state of Washington:

The so-called Shield Law will prohibit out-of-state subpoenas and criminal investigations that seek information related to abortion and reproductive healthcare services. It will also make it so the governor cannot extradite any person for out-of-state charges related to reproductive healthcare services and will protect healthcare service providers from harassment for providing protected services.

See the issue?

The Full Faith and Credit Clause is critical not only for criminal law. If I, a citizen of Blue State, get a judgment from a Blue State court with jurisdiction against a citizen of Red State based on contract or torts, will I be able to enforce it, for example by attaching some real estate owned by Red State citizen in Red State or will Red State courts refuse to enforce a judgment from a Blue State court?

As I understand it, Ian is also arguing that each refusal to honor another state’s judgments is likely to be reciprocated by the dishonored state. This wouldn’t have to escalate very far before things would break down commercially as well as politically.

The criminal cases against Trump in New York and Georgia are obvious candidates for the match that sets it off. What happens if New York convicts but Trump is in Florida? DeSantis has said he wouldn’t extradite. What then? Send an FBI swat team against the Florida troopers?

@Henry Moon Pie,

I see your point.

It is the Christianazi Satanofascist antibortion human rights suppressors who have turned this into a “problem” by seeking to exploit the Full Faith and Credit Clause to extend their persecution into non-persecutionist States, just as the Slavers sought to exploit it by exporting their Slaverism and Kidnapping into nonSlaverist States.

If the Christianazi Satanofascists drive more Human Rights states into becoming Human Rights Refuge and Protection States, then it is the Christianazi Satanofascist States which will be causing and engineering the breakapart of the country which some of them are in fact actively advocating for. ( Marjorie Taylor Green).

The way to prevent that Civil War which the Conservanons are working for is to brain drain as many non-Conservanon people as possible from some key Conservanon States in order to peacefully attrit and reduce their population in order to attrit and degrade their economic and social power against the rest of the country.

They can respond by inviting all the Conservanons to leave the Human Rights states into the AntiHuman AntiRights States. Hopefully there will be too few such states to be able to exert any power against the Human Rights States. If those States then decide that they want to seccede to form their own Gilead Republic, we should peacefully let them seccede. And then build a Big Beautiful Wall between us and them so as to prevent cultural contamination from seeping over it from them into us.