The First Civil War was a war of different economic systems. You had Slave Power in the South and Free Labor in the North. All the other ostensible causes of the First Civil War sprang from that conflict in views about labor. I think a lot about the possibility of a Second American Civil War. I have a friend who is smarter than me who says I’m full of shit on the matter — rich people don’t give a fuck about poor women not being able to have abortions.
As such, lulz, if there choice is between autocracy and civil war, we’re just going to become an autocracy.
And, yet, I just don’t believe that history is all about economics. And, if you really wanted to get nitty-gritty about it the United States is tearing itself apart on an economic basis as well.
Because the Right is ascendant and the United States is now an anocracy rather than a democracy, the Right is able to force Blue States to “bend a knee” for anything they want — be it social or fiduciary policy.
Also — Blue States economies are more modern and forward looking than Red State economies. Blue States generate more economic output and are, generally service and technology based. Meanwhile, Red States are more based on rural economic output.
The point is –I’m just not prepared to dismiss that we’re going to have a Second American Civil War. We may, indeed, just slip peacefully into autocracy, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I’m beginning to wonder if maybe all my jokes about the bolts popping off the United States should be taken a bit more seriously. It definitely feels as if we’ve reached a new era of lawlessness. If it’s not Trump being above the law, it’s people jumping onto stage to attack performers.
If my history serves me correctly, the vibe was similar in the late 1850s. People definitely had a sense that the country was tearing itself apart. The issue is, we need to come to grips with the idea that we’re on a historic macro political “vibe shift” one way or another between now and about 2025.
I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know what it’s going to be, but Something Big is on its way. As I keep saying, I think it’s an existential choice of autocracy or civil war around 2024 – 2025.
I vacillate widely between thinking we’re going to have a civil war and thinking we’re just going to give up and become an autocracy. I honestly don’t know which one is going to happen.
But I will say that SCOTUS is doing us no favors one way or another by overturning Roe. Doing so, in hindsight, could very well be seen as something similar to the Dred Scott decision that definitely was a ping from a civil war about to come.
And, remember, there is, in fact, an economic element to Roe being overturned. If Republicans get greedy and try to turn not just Red States into an anti-feminist dystopian hellscape, oh boy. If it becomes apparent to enough people in, say, California that all three branches are in permanent, firm control of MAGA then there is at least a non-zero chance of a secession crisis that would lead to a civil war.
But l honestly don’t know. It really could go either way.
I think some of the resistance to taking the idea of a Second American Civil War seriously is it just is difficult for the average person to process. People think I’m being hysterical and “terribly negative” because they have a basic belief in the system.
But just look around. Anything to do with Trumplandia is above the law. Trump and his entire coterie keep breaking the law and nothing happens. That makes every0ne — even if it’s subconsciously — begin to think that our systems of law don’t mean anything.
And, really, it could go either way — either we slide peacefully into a Russian-style autocracy and we no longer have to worry about things seeming to fall apart, or things completely fall apart into violent chaos and we only return to “normal” after the end of a civil war.
Don’t know which one we’re going to choose. The next indication of what’s going to happen will be when the overturn of Roe officially goes into effect. If liberals freak out in the real world instead of just being keyboard warriors, then maybe a civil war is more likely to happen than autocracy.
Then the next test will be what happens with the 2022 midterms.
Either outcome could cause a massive clusterfuck. If Republicans lose, they could get so mad that there is significant violence. If Democrats lose because of the administration of elections is now officially corrupt, then, too, there is a chance that will que up violence as soon as 2023.
I hate violence. I hate conflict. I am a man of ideas and peace. And, yet, it is growing ever more clear to me that if the United States picks the option of autocracy rather than civil war that we are all very, very fucked.
The path is clear for America’s first autocrat in the style of Russia’s Putin. Within a few years of taking power, Putin had totally dominated the Russian liberals and, lulz, that was it. And now here we are 20 years later with Putin still president and Russia firmly established as a legalistic autocratcy.
Really, it’s very possible that we’ll look back at the 2020 election as the last free and fair election in American history. And there is a chance that no matter what happens in 2022, one side or the other will get so angry that we have some sort of significant political violence.
But that’s probably not going to happen.
What’s more likely to happen is, lulz, Trump becomes president and his hand picked successor is our first autocrat. It could be anyone from Gen. Mike Flynn to goober Josh Hawley to fat fuck Mike Pompeo. Or, hell, Trump could really be an asshole and pick someone like JD Vance to be his veep and then well, there you go.
Anyway, the point is — if we don’t have a civil war we’re going to wake up in 20 years and be politically identical to Russia. Which brings me to a question that came up on Twitter recently — am I being “self righteous” to suggest if there is a mass exodus of Blue Check Liberals once we become an autocracy that they’re all “fucking cowards.”
I still think that they would be.
The person I was talking to Twitter gave the counter-example of how Einstein left Hitler’s Germany to “fight from outside.” I say — Einstein is the exception that proves the rule. He was a Jewish scientist who had to leave Nazi Germany. Also, the comparison between Nazi Germany and Autocratic America doesn’t hold up because it would take time for the newly autocratic American Federal government to crush Blue States.
It sure would help fight the transition to autocracy if Blue Check Liberals would stand and fight in the US rather than flee to the south of France to write long Substacks about how we’re SOOO CLOSE to bringing democracy in America back from the dead because, I don’t know, Mueller is going to save us at last?
So, if we chose autocracy, that’s it. The end. We’re fucked. We’re going to gradually become identical to Russia and twenty years from now we’re going to still have President DeSantis.
I talk a lot about a Second American Civil War, to the point that some people like the woman who runs, “Mueller, She Wrote” calls me a “terribly negative person” and blocks me.
First of al, fuck her, but second of all, if there was a civil war, where would we expect to be the most violence?
I think there are two states that would implode at the onset of any Second American Civil War — Texas and Virginia.
I say Texas because it’s shifting Blue slowly, and this freaks the Republican Establishment there the fuck out. They know that if they let Texas go consistently Blue like California, then Democrats will have something of a strangle hold on the presidency for the foreseeable future.
So, in a sense, should the political distance between Blue and Red grow so extreme that states start leaving the Union, Texas would be a prime place for a political implosion. The state of Texas is likely to buckle into a number of warring areas. I could see Austin, in particular, facing a pretty grim fate because of how it is considered the most liberal of cities within the state.
The other state is, sadly, my own — Virginia.
Virginia is pretty much two states that are growing to hate each other. And as the middle ground evaporates, it’s more and more difficult for Virginia to function.
I could totally see Virginia collapsing into violence and chaos — probably after a coup of some sort — around 2025 should the there be a civil war around that time like I fear.
This, of course, would put me in the middle of a massive clusterfuck. If that happens, then I’m going North. If my state collapses and I find myself a Blue spec in a Red part of Virginia, I simply won’t have any other choice.
It’s rather rare for a war to start in the modern era for a number of reasons. One is, well, the United States. The other is, it’s just not as easy for a nation or political group to think a war would be worth it.
And, yet, here we are — the MAGA New Right is very frothy and very much making a major fucking miscalculation about what they might face in a Second American Civil War.
Here’s what I mean.
Talk to any MAGA New Right person on Twitter and their orthodoxy is that not only do they have the guns, but the center-Left is made up of a bunch of numale soyboys who are too limp wristed to put up much real world resistance should violence break out.
I call bullshit.
The reason I do this, we’ve had the luxury of peace and prosperity so long in the United States that we’ve grown fat and sassy to the point that we worry about our pronouns.
Even the most lip wristed soyboy is going to sit up and take notice if there is a gun pointed at their face. Gen Z, as a group, just like the Greatest Generation, will be forced to rise to their historic occasion even if they don’t really want to.
As such, should the time come starting around 2025 when I think we may have a Second American Civil War, the center-Left is going to up up a fight as good as the one they face from the bloodthirsty MAGA New Right.
A far smarter person than I pointed something out about my hysterical psychohistory of a Second American Civil War starting around 2025: he said it wouldn’t happen for economic reasons.
This threw me for a loop, but I’ve given this cogent critism some thought and I think my initial belief about a Second American Civil War still holds up. But my comparison to the origins of the First American Civil War require a more nuance than I originally gave it.
So, yes, as my smart friend noted, the “right” to own someone else was an economic right. While there were many, many reasons for the First Civil War, pretty much everything else hung on the economics of slavery. When Lincoln was elected, Slave Power saw his future potential anti-slavery policies as a direct threat to their economic well being.
Hence, secession.
Thus, initially, it seems my belief that there is a near one-to-one comparison between slave power fearing a loss of the “right” to own other people and the modern center-Left fearing their rights being abridged by MAGA power don’t hold as much weight as I originally thought.
But I’ve given this some thought and it seems to me that in the modern age every “right” has an economic element to it. Or, all the rights that the center-Left are worried about do.
Take, for instance, reproductive rights.
If, by 2025, Blue States face all three branches of government working actively to make any form of contraception illegal there is a definite economic element to that fear. That would be the crux of Blue States like California and New York leaving the Union in the first place — the economic freedoms of women would be highly curtailed if birth control was illegal.
The list goes on — gay marriage has a economic element to it, and so on.
My smart friend also suggested that Fortune 500 companies would have no interest in essentially destroying the gravy train that is the American economy and, as such, would put the kibosh on a Second American Civil War.
That, too, doesn’t hold much water with me upon some reflection.
We already have a move on the part of the MAGA New Right to punish “woke” corporations and it seems to me that by around Certification Day 2025 things will have gotten so bad that not even the all-powerful Industrialists would be able to stop California, then the rest of the Blue States from leaving the Union.
At the core of all of this, the thing that is eating away at the Union, making it less perfect, is Red States and Blue States are receding away from each other at an alarming rate at the same time that Red States are ascendant politically and want to force Blue States to bend a knee.
We’re still too far out for me to know if Blue States will, in fact, avoid organized political violence and “bend a knee” to the fascists of the MAGA New Right. All of that is still very much up in the air.
But gird your loins. America as we know it might destroy itself in a violent manner not seen in 160 years.
It just occurred me today why there might be a Second American Civil War starting sometime around Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025: the same reason why the First Civil War happened.
The First Civil War happened because Slave Power got so wrapped up its own paranoia that they felt that their age-old “right” to own other people would be put in jeopardy no matter what once the Republican Abraham Lincoln became POTUS.
Ok, flash forward to 2024 – 2025 and what is going on — Blue States have every right to believe that the newly re-elected Trump will actively abridge various hard-earned rights no matter what they do. Add to this how brazen Trump was in stealing the 2024 election via Bannon’s corruption of the administration of elections and you have a recipe for a Second American Civil War.
And, despite Barbara F. Walter’s insistence that it will be Reds who start a “Troubles” like civil war, it will be a Civil War based on states. If a Second American Civil War does happen, it’s likely to begin with California leaving the Union, which will spark a cascading series of events that will cause sister Blue States to leave the Union as well.
Or at least try to.
This is where things get murky in my future history — what happens with the U.S. Military?
The officer corp of the U.S. Military will be extremely empathetic to the alarm of the Blue States, but as an institution, the U.S. Military will never brook Blue States breaking the law and leaving the Union.
So, I don’t know.
Either there’s some sort of last-ditch military coup in hopes of keeping the country together long enough for a Constitutional Convention (Hello, acting President James Mattis) or we see something even more fucked up — even the U.S. Military buckles. This would involve, just like with the original Civil War, people who supported the Blue States joining the military of the Blue American Republic.
Now, there’s something to keep in the back of your mind about all of this — with the United States pre-occupied with a Second American Civil War, there would likely be a WW3.
A series of regional wars would flare up for no other reason than the United States simply couldn’t do anything about them. So, you would see the DPRK attack South Korea. India and Pakistan blow each other up. Israel and Iran blow each other up. And God only knows what Russia might think up.
And if things got as bad as I fear, you would have NATO nations supporting Blue States in an active way, just like the West is now supporting Ukraine.
A Second American Civil War would not be an overnight affair, either. It would likely last for the rest of the decade. And, what’s more, there would be no assurances that there would even be a nice and tidy endgame to any of it.
The United States could simply balkanize into a post-civil war hellscape, with Trumplandia’s radicalized government murdering POC in numbers not seen since WW2.
But, as I keep saying, I may be overthinking all of this.
We could, in fact, simply slip peacefully into a MAGA-themed autocracy.
I’m not an expert, so you can actively ignore me on this one, but here are my personal thoughts on what might happen should Blue States bounce out of the Union around 2024 -2025.
The theory is, at this point, that because Republicans will be a little too aggressive in their theft of the 2024 election, Blue States, starting with California, will simply leave the Union.
But here’s the rub — this would not happen in the context of antebellum 19th century America, but, rather in 21st century America that has been a nation-state since 1865.
As such, I wonder if there’s a glaring flaw in my basic assumptions about how a Second American Civil War might play out. And that flaw is the U.S. Military. Is it possible that should we actually get to the point where Blue States are leaving the Union that the U. S. Military will step in and single-handedly hold the country together?
Given that the reason why the civil war would start would be the question of Who Is The President? it’s possible that someone like James Mattis might come in as part of a military coup. He would be president just long enough for a Constitutional Convention that would fix the structural problems the country faces at the moment.
And YET, there’s another way of looking at that — such a desperate move could simply be modern day equivalent of a last-gasp change to avoid violence like the Crittenden Resolution that happened at the beginning of the Civil War. It could be that, in the end, not even the US Military can keep the country together.
Give the MAGA New Right a few more years to marinate in their hate who knows what might happen.
The passions of the 1860 election caused a civil war, it seems that what might seem unthinkable now in 2022 could very well happen in 2024 for the same reason: civil war.
Should what we’re led to believe happen and SCOTUS overturns Roe, we will lurch towards a Second American Civil War around 2024 – 2025. All the conditions are there.
There are two major questions at this point.
One is, what will the military do should it seem the country is going to break in two and the other is, do we just slip peacefully into autocracy?
For the moment, the US Military is a real wild card whenever I try to game out a Second American Civil War. It could be that instead of what I fear — a civil war — we get a weird, hazy gray era in American politics were Acting President James Mattis holds the country together while we figure out how to hold a judicious Constitutional Convention.
Or, put another way, it’s highly unlikely that the US Military would one, sit back and watch the country collapse or two, fall apart like what happened at the beginning of the first American Civil War.
So, that, unto itself, is something of a conundrum.
And, regardless of what the US Military ultimately does, it’s possible we’ll just slip peacefully into an autocracy and that will be that. But all I do know is the moment abortion is illegal in huge swaths of America — we’re going to grow far more politically unstable than we already are.
If you want to get some sense of how fucking cooked the Union is at the moment, look no further than how the Right and the Left are getting angry over the recent leaked preliminary SCOTUS overturning Roe.
The Left is understandably angry about the the fact that Roe is being overturned. While the Right is….
…the fact that this opinion was leaked?
That’s what they’re going with?
Apparently, yes.
So, this is an example of how the two are talking past each other. MAGA is totally wrapped up in all of this being leaked, while the Left is rightfully apoplectic about the case.
The point, of course, is that MAGA talking heads don’t want to talk about directly something that makes them squirm — their hatred of abortion rights is extremely unpopular.
And, in the end, we continue to slouch towards either a civil war or a MAGA autocracy.
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