There is now raging in the United States of America a full-blown civil war--a battle among civilians of the same country. But this post-modern version can prove to be more devastating because it is not a battle among states over geographical boundaries. It's an intramural between tribes, pitting one social class against another, stoking deep-seated antagonism between citizens and immigrants, whites and people of color, industry versus labor unions, LGBTQ and mainstream genders, even authentic versus fake media.
When the unrest dies down--if it dies down--Americans will have to learn to live in a fractious society compartmentalized by so many virtual boundaries. They will realize that the United States of America is a gumbo of snarling social beasts of all species and temperaments forced to eke out an existence in an extremely tight and congested common cage. It will not be unlike a 21st-century technological version of the state of nature.
Little by little each day, freedom-loving nationalists will chip away at the tenuous relationship between government and the governed. One day, they will not even be mindful of the social contract anymore. It's going to be every strongman for himself: survival of the fittest--just like in the state of nature.
Ironically, that is civil war in the truest sense. When citizens, by overt acts or implicit attitude, disown government because they don't control its leadership, the whole concept of government itself erodes. This is particularly dangerous when the polarization is so even--like roughly half and half--that the dominant opinion is not dominant by much. There is no more compulsion to yield to the surrender of individual rights and self-interest in exchange for protection by a central terror, the State. Who else would care the moment minority opinion is no more coerced into civil obedience by the supposedly invincible central authority. What happened in the January 6, 2021 siege of the US Capitol is a teaching moment, not only for American lovers of democracy but for everyone else around the world trying to copy the American model.
Make no mistake about it. Civil war in America is not coming--it has come.
Don't look for opposing columns of rifle-toting soldiers in colorful distinctive uniforms lined up in firing squad formations. That's no longer how wars are fought these days. But if you're thinking columns of M1-Abrams tanks backed by F-14, F-15 and F-16 tomcats bristling with heat-seeking missiles locating one another by radar, you are just as antiquated. That is no longer how wars are fought these days, either.
Wars of the future, which has arrived in America, will be wars over control of the political leadership, interested parties ranging from foreign, domestic or Russian. Why bother invading a country, when you can have the whole country by a cakewalk if you can just grab the reigns of power. The opposition you will encounter is not a modern armed force with technologically-advanced weaponry--just a naive American public most of whom derive their political philosophy from bumper stickers. With digital cajolery, it's fairly easy to win over the hearts and minds of the general populace.
It is not without its unique challenge, of course. The US has sponsored many wars in the theaters of regional conflict around the world--from Afghanistan to Vietnam--where its declared mission was to "win the hearts and minds" of the local community. Now the US will learn that doing so was always easier said than done, when the hearts and minds to be won are their own--and they cannot use bombs as persuasive tools anymore.
America's right-wing militias are evidently a step ahead. They have been waging war for years on the internet. It was only in the last four days since the January 6 siege of the US Capitol that America woke up to this reality. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media have all closed down right-wing accounts including Donald Trump's for promoting violence.
Again, they are wrong--in the sense that they are a day late and a dollar short. Violence erupts from the collective will of a radicalized right-wing community whose central organizing principle is violence to begin with. Violence did not need to be embedded in their consciousness, all social media did was provide the means to channel the sentiment and allow for its widening circulation. Social unrest is like a brewing storm that grows and strengthens out of its own inertia.
Donald Trump is the eye of that storm, the vortex if you will. I don't credit him with the capacity for ideological advocacy. He is probably the one man in America who has the least clue of what's going on around him. All he understands is that if he played along well enough the outcome could be his remaining in power. He is no Mao Zedong whose social philosophy was the moral compass that guided the actions of the throngs of revolutionaries who bore him on their shoulders. He is no Mahatma Gandhi whose personal demonstration of sacrificial forbearance showed Indians how to bring imperial Britain to her knees by wearing out her muscles.
Donald Trump is, in many ways, like his comical namesake Donald Duck--popular, appealing, capable of assembling a huge cult-like fan base and most of all a quintessential simpleton.
You don't need a sociology degree to identify with Donald Trump. You just need to believe whatever you already believe in. Be assured that so long as you will vote for him Donald Trump will endorse your belief. In his own words, "This QAnon, these white supremacists and ultra-nationalists people, I don't know what they are about, but I heard they like me, and so I like them!"
This makes the Trump insurrection more dangerous. It is not organized around any kind of leadership structure. Donald Trump may be its symbolic head but he controls nothing within the movement he claims to spearhead. All he knows is that there is a resonance of pro-Trump opinion among 75-million Americans who voted for him. He assumes all of them to be card-bearing rank-and-file mercenaries in the Trumpian Army. That is a myth, of course, just like the myth that he has 88-million followers on Twitter.
I am one of those followers but I'm no fan of Donald Trump. Just because people "follow" what he's doing, or even approve of what he's saying, does not mean they subjugate their own views and interests under his control. I follow him on Twitter because it saves me time having to wait for mainstream media to report what he said. Other people follow him for their own selfish reasons.
Organized fringe groups like the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists group Proud Boys or the Ku Klux Klan follow him because it serves their interest best. They have been forgotten, but Trump's endorsement of their sinister agenda made them suddenly relevant again. More than that, Trump acts like scatterred chaff that attracts the incoming missiles. All of a sudden, they can do maximum mischief and have Trump take the blame. The more blame Trump gets, the more he thinks he controls the blame-causers, which Trump media baptized as "The Base." Once they have cemented that commensal relationship, the dye was cast. Trump would have his monster to ride, the monster would have a lightning rod on its back drawing all the fury of the lightning at no injury to the beast.
In my December 12, 2020 article here, I posited the question, "Will enough Americans follow Donald Trump to Civil War?" My answer was YES, it still is.
Americans who deny this have not studied, or refuse to understand their own history. Although the reasons behind the American Civil War are many and complex, it really boils down to racial prejudice and control over the means of economic exploitation. Industrial Revolution-fueled North forged ahead with mechanization, slowly losing appetite for slave labor. But agricultural South couldn't conceive of any machine that could pick cotton. Black slaves were the backbone of its labor force. A government system that threatens to legislate slavery out of existence was a threat. The Civil War was all about whether political leadership should perpetuate slavery and social division. Ironically, the Unionist northern states and the Southern Confederate states fought against each other reciting the same provisions of the US Constitution--just like the Trumpian Republicans are doing now.
Donald Trump labels himself the most inappropriate title of a "wartime president" for the COVID war refused to fight. He likes to draw a parallel between him and Abraham Lincoln who was a real Civil War-time president. Donald Trump, of course, understands nothing about American history. But he just knows that whichever side wins the war gets to install the president they want.
Donald Trump's modus operandi is that simple--whoever wants him, whoever is loyal to him--those are "his people." They are the people he was addressing in his Rose Garden remarks, "I feel your pain, I feel your frustration...go home, we love you, you are special."
I really doubt that these people number 75-million. But enough of them are willing to respond to Donald Trump's dogwhistle call to help him help himself. After studying their double-blind relationship I have no doubt in my mind that Donald Trump can lead enough Americans to a newer more dangerous civil war. And that is not the bad news.
The bad news is, he can lead them into civil war. He can't lead them out of it.
I dread the limitless and unstoppable carnage that will follow.
All of a sudden, America has the beginnings of a unionwide insurgency that is difficult to turn back because it's almost impossible to localize and locate. Having no leadership structure, there is no central command system to disable. There are no personalities to track and prosecute--except Trump. America will be faced with a situation not unlike the long-running rebel movement in Northern Ireland, whose primary militia consisted of highly-motivated but largely unorganized "lone wolf" dissidents with access to advanced technology in the making and deployment of weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, this emerging homegrown insurgency is not itching to acquire territory--they are citizens already of the country they want to take over. And should they be successful in installing their own president, he can--as brazenly illustrated by Donald Trump--instantly erase by simple pardon all crimes they committed on their way to grab power.
When I used to teach political law, I liked asking this question in my students' final exam: "What's the penalty for rebellion?" Many grappled with explaining the various degrees of the penalty stated in the Revised Penal Code, missing the whole point of rebellion. Very few got the correct answer which was: "It depends. If the rebellion succeeds, it has NO penalty."
That, I suspect, will be the first lesson that the Trump insurrectionists will teach all new recruits. This notwithstanding the fact that clearly, the first salvo of the Trump insurrection--however sensational it looked on TV--was still a failure, but no one seems to be lined up to suffer any penalty so far. Ⓒ 2021 Joel R. Dizon
NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:
Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON
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