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There’s No Civil War
America is not on the verge of a civil war, no matter how much some media moguls may want us to be.
The silent majority of the American people don’t spend their time and energy on sick Twitter burns. Or howling at Trump Tower. Or putting on “pussy hats” and marching with Linda Sarsour. Or even writing brilliant, articulate posts like this on Ricochet.
Even we’re not like this most of the time. We mostly focus on family, friends, jobs, and how awesome the Mets are this year.
My most recent American experience was the day of the eclipse. I spent two hours with my daughter outside a mall (my wife was shopping, I was bored) offering people to look through our glasses. It was awesome. Each person had the same stunned, awed reaction when they saw the eclipse. I watched them. Different races, sexes, religions, and (I assume) income levels, professions, and political views.
Somebody who only knows America from Twitter, Fox, and CNN might expect that to cause trouble, but Americans know their offline world isn’t like that (mostly). In our normal day-to-day interactions, we relate to each other as fellow human beings living our lives together. Off Twitter and cable news, the American reality is not one of civil war.
There’s probably a sappy eclipse metaphor here but I’m distracted laughing at my memory of the picture of Trump looking at the eclipse. That was the Trumpiest thing ever. Carve that on Mount Rushmore.
So, engage in the cultural civil war (or not) but don’t let it dominate your time or destroy your perspective or your soul. Don’t follow the totalitarians into thinking everything is or should be about warring worldviews. What unites us is far greater than what divides us. And even our differences are mostly a good thing.
Spend most of your mental energies living, loving, and laughing.
And if you need tribal conflict, instead of fanning the flames of culture war, focus on those three magic words. Let’s go Mets.
Published in Culture
I reject the war imagery for a couple of reasons. First, I’m not seeing the hostility in day to day dealings with those who lean left. I think that was also the point of the OP. I would expect to see a lot more strife, especially since I live “behind enemy lines.”
Second, the escalation of political differences, objectives and disagreement to crisis/war levels is a hallmark of the left. (Jonah Goldberg wrote about this tendency, but I can’t remember in which book.) Someone mentioned the “war on poverty.” Today it’s the “crisis of gun violence.” It’s the left that runs around with its collective hair on fire. Not us. Yes, there are marchers with pink hats and silly slogans about guns, and there are media types who thrive on their hysteria. But I think the point @gilreich is making is that we do not have to let this be the core of our day to day existence.
Bears repeating, since I can only “Like” it once.
Well … as you know Jamie … it will be a long, hard slog.
The first step is to elect a wartime President …
Still waiting…what are the victory conditions. Let’s start there.
Nah … we’ll start when you admit that there is a Cold War.
But the Patriarchy!!!
You obviously need to check your privilege.
If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!
I have a real problem with this type of argument. Driving through Philadelphia, I was listening to a sports podcast this morning ( that I ultimately had to turn off) which exemplifies this, where the hosts were having an argument about “ is Carson Wentz a Super Bowl winning quarterback?”
Answer A: No because he didn’t play in the game.
Answer B: Yes because were it not for his participation in the regular season, they would not have gotten there with home field advantage, etc.
Round and round they went, with callers too.
I became annoyed because the problem is in the phrasing of the question, which is a semantic trap. We don’t have adequate labels for special cases. Sometimes things are just what they are and we have to leave them be.
It goes something like this: Start with something that can be defined differently by different people and then argue about the label itself endlessly.
Is someone who is genetically 22% African decent an African American?
Examples abound.
But then it gets more frustrating because the argument moves into, in this case, because shots aren’t fired or there’s no pervasive incivility there’ no war and therefore everything is just fine.
Not so.
Regardless of the label applied to the situation, there is a situation that is problematic. There is a very real ‘fight’ going on which could be a precursor to a bigger more violent fight or could result in a soft coup if our side continues to acquiesce.
And because you have a problem with the label and how it’s used doesn’t mean there’s not a very real and dangerous division growing in our country.
Just because we all ‘get along’ when politics aren’t involved ( an eclipse… great (sarc) example- one of the few things that we have in common that hasn’t been politicized…the moon and sun!)
The left is politicizing everything they can. Eclipses are way down on their list for obvious reasons.
One more thing. The reason there aren’t more uncivil confrontations is because most on the right are pacifists and do not provoke or engage in public on a political level; we believe more in the idea of individualism and freedom of thought and are therefore more tolerant of alternate viewpoints. The left does not. Everyone must agree ( or be silent) for their world to work.
That article is one of the dumbest, most vacuous pieces of political analysis I’ve ever read. If there is a civil war imminent (which I doubt) and this author represents the liberal braintrust, conservatives ought to win easily…
You make a good comment, Franco. I certainly agree that there is a dangerous division growing in our country. I don’t agree that our side is not fighting back. And, in fact, frequently winning. Indeed, one of our best weapons is to publicize the stupid antics of the other side. Those stupid antics are not the face of America today. They are just stupid antics and most Americans see them as exactly that.
The people who use the war metaphor are, it seems to me, trying to emphasize the importance of the fight. The high stakes involved. But high stakes are not what turn a disagreement into a war. And the metaphor itself is misleading when it comes to goals and to tactics. That’s why none of the war-people can answer the question about their strategy or their victory conditions. Metaphoric wars tend to be lost – war on poverty, war on drugs, etc. If we want to win this war, by winning hearts and minds, I think the first thing we ought to do is to stop insisting that we are at war with our fellow citizens. That’s just not the kind of rhetoric that is going to bring people over to our side. It is, in it’s own way, just another version of virtue signalling.
Worse than that, I think fire breathers can drive people over to the other side. That was and remains my fear regarding nominating Trump as the GOP standard-bearer, while his particular brand of rhetoric clearly fires up his base, I fear it has permanently alienated millions of potentially-persuadable moderates.
Of course I could be wrong, time will tell. We’ll have to wait and see how the party does in the midterms, whether Trump gets reelected, in short it will probably be at least a decade until we have enough perspective to look back and say whether Trump saved conservatism or destroyed it.
I agree that we’re not on the verge of a civil war (by definition). However, we’re on the verge of a war about civilized behavior for a polite society versus anarchy and societal destruction by the left in their unending quest to perfect the human being for their collective Utopia.
The Antifa represent the most visible and physical manifestation of this. What these anarchists don’t realize is the majority of people just want to live their lives in peace, without being forced into some gigantic, leftist social experiment.
They also don’t realize these people who want to be left alone (Republicans and Democrats) are ready to “go to the matresses” when it comes to preserving our freedoms, one of which is to disagree without being physically threatened or attacked . . .
The cultural revolution is a better metaphor. We do have an awful lot of struggle sessions.
By not fighting back I mean that most of us don’t parade our politics in public, we don’t shun people for their ideology, we don’t confront someone wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, etc.
Try being open about your views, and you will be attacked and/or shunned. We all know that.
I agree the left is overreaching and throwing tantrums that make them look silly in many cases, but I’m unsure where this results in political victory. It may only result in moving the window further leftward. In fact, that some of the Democrat representatives appear moderate proves the case.
Gay pride parades in the last decade were quite off-putting to average Americans flaunting their sexuality and pushing boundaries, but they won every fight.
Pundits and writers are living in a dream world believing they can influence significant numbers of people. Most Americans ignore these arguments, don’t read newspapers or commentary, and get their ideas from their own worlds. It’s an illusion to believe there’s an ideological battleground whereby any significant change will occur.
Whatever ‘we’ do, the media will interpret it in the worst light for us and the best for them. And it’s exactly the opposite in the other direction as well.
We can insist that our fellow citizens are at war with us, and we don’t want to have to fight for our rights, but we will if we have to.
As much as I dislike Trump’s rhetoric and personality, I’m passed the point of believing it makes much difference. Twelve years of Bush administrations, with our so-called leaders refusing to push back in the least against the regular slanders hurled at them and us by the Left only resulted in lost ground. If Trump damages conservatism by his boorishness, or a Bush / Kasich / etc. damages it by retreat and apology at every turn, what’s the difference, strategically?
We’re under constant verbal, ideological, and occasionally physical, assault by the Left, including by most of the media and popular culture. I don’t have a grand strategy for resisting this assault, but I do understand that whatever we try, the first step is to admit we’re under attack; that there are forces arrayed against us that will never be sated until the American way of life we all love has been “fundamentally transformed.” They will never tire. They will never rest. They believe they are fighting for goodness and that any who resist are evil, by definition. Such a motivated group needn’t be a majority, or even a very large minority, especially if the opposition spends most of its energy arguing about whether there’s even a threat.
These are the three most important sentences written on this entire thread.
My concern with the “punch back just as hard” crowd is that they seem to want the fight more than the resolution. You can’t paint the left to be crazy extremists if you use their extreme tactics yourself.
I have faith that the American public will see the radical left for what they are, my fear is that a not insignificant portion of the right will follow the left over the cliff and alienate the rest of us.
I don’t believe we’re at war with our fellow citizens. But I believe the other side believes they’re at war with us. It’s been working for them for decades. The elder Bush’s rhetoric about a “kinder, gentler nation” and the younger’s “compassionate conservatism” did nothing to slow the decline, from what I could see.
So what’s your grand strategy for winning hearts and minds?
The same strategy that has been part of politics for millenia – speech, discussion, debate and persuasion. At the root of the “war” metaphor is the idea that if we just fight (“But he fights!”) we can somehow vanquish our enemies. That’s just not how democracies work. The left isn’t going to go away, they will always be there. We need to persuade enough of the populace that we have the best ideas and that we are fit to govern. If you want to continue the radicalization of our society (“But they started it!”…yeah so what) then by all means continue to wage war on your fellow Americans. I for one think that the tactics of the radical left are deplorable and will bring about the destruction of our country therefore I see no benefit in emulating them.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone were nice.
First, take back the education establishment. Then, take back the courts and impose (equality before) the rule of law. Finally, take back the media. Of course, we’ll need the presidency, the House, and the Senate, too. Then, we’ll be able to get our message out and change hearts and minds! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
P.S. We’re not at war with our fellow citizens. We’re at war with the Left! But, hey, better not call it a “war” lest someone get the idea that the Left is dangerous to everything we hold dear…
Good, how?
I agree.
Great, how?
The left aren’t citizens?
How are the American public going to see the radical left for what they are? The radical left’s antics are often ignored by the media, and when they’re not, they’re spun as the understandable reaction to “injustice”. Having the expectation that Sandra Fluke should be able to cough up $25 / month for her own birth control pills was a “War on Women!!1!1!!”
The most milquetoast, moderate candidates are presented as The Worst Hitler Ever by the Democrats and media, and the GOP is almost always caught flat-footed, as if they didn’t see this coming. Anyone willing to push back against the slanders (Gingrich, Cruz, Trump, etc.) are shushed and castigated as bomb-throwers that “don’t play well with others.”
So, what’s your grand strategy for changing this dynamic?
Adopting the tactics of the radical left just makes them look more reasonable by comparison. One can oppose the radical left without becoming them.
How well is that working for you?
Pretty well, I have a wonderful life.
I’m all for it, if it can be made to work. Slowing the decline a smidgen isn’t “working”, it’s just failing less quickly. How would you do this differently than has been done for the last 50 years, so that it’s more successful?
“But he fights!” is a necessary, but not sufficient, attribute. We’ve had lots of politicians who were decent statesmen, but that couldn’t bother to put up more than a token resistance to the Left (if they even bothered with the token). “But he fights” wouldn’t have the appeal it does, otherwise.
I’m not waging war on my fellow Americans, but some of them are waging it against me (metaphorically, of course). Indeed, I believe they’re waging it against all of us, right, left, and center, in the attempt to “fundamentally transform” our country into something less, something worse, something barely recognizable.
I don’t wish to emulate them either, if for no other reason than we’re not nearly as good at it, and never will be. That doesn’t mean we’re not in a struggle for the soul of this country, and that the status quo on the Right has been loosing that struggle for decades. I do admit they’ve generally done so with decorum and dignity, however, small comfort though that may be.
One clue might lie in how people who vote Democrat rate various groups –
People voting Democrat still prefer white people to Black Lives Matter and Christians to Muslims and atheists. This suggests ordinary Democrat voters aren’t invested in an opposite land where they’re completely invested in what we think of as the radical left. There may be a lot of spread among Democrats – that is Democrats who for example, love Black Lives Matter, while other Democrats loathe it, thus averaging to the rather tepid score of 6, but they’re not treating it as the best thing since sliced bread.
Such an attitude, if real, works for you as an individual, but does nothing to preserve the system that allows you — as an individual — to have a wonderful life. When the system starts to stress you, it may be too late to repair. I don’t doubt that your approach in this thread allows you a more comfortable individual existence, delegating the dirty work of maintenance to others allows you to float on an idealistic cloud. This is not at all uncommon. Just not helpful.
What is your strategy for not just opposing the radical left, but defeating them?
Leftists may be citizens (although they hate our founding principles and are working to subvert them), but the Left is an ideology based in nihilism and postmodern totalitarianism. It is the opposite of the American idea.
I think you know I’m being snarky, Jamie, because I don’t believe we can retake the education establishment, the courts, and the media. It’s a pipe dream, despite Donald Trump’s best efforts. All we have now is a rearguard action in the long defeat (I’m studying The Lord of the Rings. Can you tell?). There will still be a geographical location known as the United States of America — and possibly a still globally powerful one — but the American idea will die under the suffocating boot of the neo-Marxists. This world ain’t heaven and never will be, no matter how many (false) promises the Left makes.
I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. America was nice while it lasted.
America is a great country and its people better off today than in my parents generation. Most of what makes society tick happens well outside politics and I expect this upward trend to continue well into the future.
Your final question is based on the false prefixes that political movements in democracies are defeated as they would be in a war. Those are your fellow citizens and they have different beliefs than you do. They won’t just go away.