Much is being made about the eminent historians who met with President Biden last week.
According to The Washington Post, they felt compelled to raise alarms about currents events in American politics bearing unnerving parallels to those of the 1850s, namely the years preceding the Civil War. Their galvanizing fear is that we are polarizing ourselves into history repeating itself.
A civil war unlike before
Of course, for the neo-confederates in keystone militias on the far right, another civil war is what they’re jonesing for. Except that America today is not a nation divided against itself along the one Mason-Dixon line that divided itself during the 1850s. Instead, it’s now divided more along the many lines that resemble those on a jigsaw puzzle.
Which means that any civil war today would look more like a deadly version of the WWE Battle Royal SmackDown for neighborhood bragging rights than any Red vs. Blue battle for control of the Union you might imagine. Specifically, it would have (predominantly) white areas across gun-crazy America breaking out in the kind of lawlessness – marked by rabid gun violence – that has always beset (predominantly) black areas like The South Side of Chicago…
Imagine scenes Spike Lee dramatized in his 2015 movie, Chi-Raq. Only, instead of gang bangers firing aimlessly at each other with handguns, imagine neighbors opening fire on each other with AR-15 military-style weapons. That would make far more apt the allusion Lee makes in the title to the carnage of the war in Iraq.
Instead of ending racism, electing Obama entrenched it
The point, though, is that there’s nothing current about these events and what they portend. Wake up America! The new civil war has already begun… And, if I had to date it, I would say it began on November 4, 2008, the day America elected the first black president of the United States.
I reflected a few years later in “Romney vs. Obama: Race (Still) Matters,” November 1, 2012, as follows:
Many whites voted for Obama in 2008 more as a gesture of racial absolution than of political faith. And having thusly absolved themselves of their sins of racism (with this one, historic act), many of them now feel liberated to give way to their racial prejudices without fear of being called racists.
Moreover, Republicans have been proselytizing civil-war rhetoric for decades – brazenly exhorting (whites) to take “their” country back and of course to “Make America Great Again”. At the same time, as shills for the NRA, they’ve been using every incidence of gun violence (even black on black and whites on mass shootings) to urge (white) Americans to arm themselves (with military-style assault weapons) for war.
An infuriating feature of their warmongering, however, has been the failure of anyone in the media to force these Republicans to specify who the enemy will be when civil war breaks out. Because, as Jan. 6 demonstrated, none of the idiots inciting this (new) lost cause seem to appreciate that they themselves will probably be caught in the crosshairs of a circular firing squad, which will best describe any fighting.
I told you so...
More to the point, some of us have been drawing parallels between current events and the years preceding the Civil War, well, for years. So, while others are alarmed that they met with Biden to raise alarms, I am constrained to regard these historians as mere johnny-come-latelies.
For starters, I can cite such blog posts as “Coarsening Trend of Political Debate in America Portends Civil Strife,” September 14, 2009, Gun-Crazy USA: Mass Shooting Targets Congressmen (and Postmen) Too,” June 15, 2017; and Republicans and Democrats Began Governing Like Sunnis and Shia. Now Washington Looks Like Baghdad.” January 17, 2021.
In all of those posts, and many more, I raised the kind of alarm I did again just over a year ago in “Preston Padden Helped Launch Fox News. Now He’s Damning It … but Sparing Murdoch.” July 7, 2021. Here is an excerpt:
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The Roberts Court is aping The Taney Court (of the 1850s) by affirming [Jim Crow 2.0 laws in red states across America]. This, despite their patently discriminatory intent and, worse, that they are bound to divide the country on matters related to America’s “original sin”- just as similar cases did in the years preceding the Civil War. If those who fail to learn from history are doomed, God help America.
Remarkably, these current events are playing out exactly as Ulysses S. Grant predicted. He, of course, is the master strategist who won the Civil War and preserved the Union. More to the point, what he said at the Annual Reunion of the Army of Tennessee in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 29, 1875, bears repeating time and again:
If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.
(State Historical Society of Iowa)
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Even so, I’ll end on this sobering but reassuring note for all patriotic Americans, namely Democrats, Independents, and Republicans who have come to their senses. It pertains to prevailing concerns that Jan. 6 2021 might only have been a a dry run for Jan. 6 2025, when Congress convenes to count the electoral votes and certify the presidential election of November 2024.
Because here is the warning I sounded a year ago in this respect in “Civil War II Looms Larger as Texas Suppresses Voting Rights and Bans Abortions,” September 2, 2021:
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But what do these voter-suppressing MAGA pawns, who are now passing laws to rig elections in red states across America, think is going to happen when they attempt to present their trumped-up electors? Do they think electors from blue states are just going to roll out the red carpet for their two-legged orange calf to return as president?
Civil War II: Red States vs. Blue States!
And, trust me just as Trump himself dodged the fight on Jan. 6, no Trump will be among the idiots fighting this war for his cause either. Oh, and Biden, not Trump, will be Commander in Chief.
So, in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, prepare to die, suckers!
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Enough said…?