From celebrities calling on citizens to take to the streets, to members of Congress calling for the public harassment of White House officials, to mob justice at restaurants — is the US heading toward a new kind of Civil War?
Well, some people think the seeds of a new Civil War have already been sown — and in a recent article, University of Tennessee Law Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds argued in a USA Today column that this new war is indeed “well underway.”
Reynolds was echoing similar comments from political scientist Thomas Schaller who wrote in a recent Bloomberg column that America is “at the beginning of a soft civil war,” and author Tom Ricks who agreed that the country seems to be “lurching” in that direction.
- ‘God is on our side!’
Representative Maxine Waters (D-California) caused a huge stir when she encouraged critics of the White House’s immigration policies to go out and harass members of the Trump administration in public. Waters made an impassioned call for citizens to ensure there would be “no sleep, no peace” for White House officials.
“If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she said.
But her comments were so extreme and incendiary that it prompted a former secret service agent to call them “dangerous” and warned they “go beyond breaking the norms” of civil discourse and criticized her for “endorsing mob-rule to satisfy a political goal.”
Not long after Waters’ comments, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia because she works for the Trump administration.
- ‘Surround their homes and schools in protest!’
Celebrities are getting in on the action, too, encouraging Americans to take to the streets in the millions to protest the Trump administration.
Comments by actor Peter Fonda put the secret service on alert when he suggested that Trump’s 12-year-old son Barron should be taken from his mother Melania and put “in a cage with pedophiles” and that citizens should “surround the schools” of administration officials’ children in response to the child-separation policy.
Somewhat less dramatically, other Hollywood figures have called for protests and change. Actor John Cusack accused the Trump administration of “fascism” and “torturing” children — while musician Serj Tankian wrote on Instagram that the US is in a state of “utter regression” and that it is time for a “peaceful revolution.”
- Confederate monuments controversy
The fierce debate over the removal of confederate monuments and symbols across the US epitomizes the current political and social divide and the competing interpretations of American history, with one side believing the monuments revere figures who fought to maintain slavery while the other side believes they honor great patriots.
When white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black Americans attending a prayer service in Virginia in 2015, it prompted a movement to have Confederate monuments removed from public spaces across the country. More than 100 publicly-supported monuments and symbols have been removed since 2015 — but not without controversy and counter-protests. While monuments are being removed across the US, other groups are pushing for new ones to be erected.
- Media wars, polarization of opinion
All of this social discord is playing out, magnified, on Americans’ TV screens in a way that appears to be exacerbating the problem. Eager to up their ratings, news networks invite the most polarizing of guests for daily screaming matches to be beamed into people’s homes. Traditional “News” organizations such as CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and Washington Post as well as modern “informational” outlets on the internet like Twitter, Google and Facebook have abandoned informational reportage in favor of “fake news” and “propaganda.”
In his article, Reynolds wrote that news media which “promote shrieking outrage in pursuit of ratings and page views, are making the problem worse” and reminisced about a time when Americans could disagree with each other without hating each other.
- Stratification of society
While all this is being played out on TV screens and social media, those at the fringes of society are feeling the effects of a sick system perhaps more than anyone. The socio-economic stratification of American society appears more obvious than it has at any time in recent years.
Alleged inequality and supposed police violence against African-Americans is the given “reason” that prompted the NFL kneeling protests, which turned into a nationwide controversy between Americans who are proud of their flag and national anthem and all they stand for — and those who claim true freedom and justice have not yet come to America. Manufactured crises such as an opioid crisis, child poverty rates, and a constant drumbeat to pit Black against White; poor against wealthy; labor against business, have all inflamed anger and division in America from a simmer to a boil.
Americans don’t feel social ties which transcend politics. It’s all us vs. them — and nothing in between. Churches, fraternal organizations and neighborhoods used to cross political lines, American cohesion has “shrunk and decayed” and people are increasingly finding their identity only in victimization politics.
Marriage counselors say that a relationship is doomed to fail when the couple begin to view each other with contempt — and in America today, there seems to be nothing but feelings of contempt felt on both sides of the political spectrum.
If possible, we need to step back and ask some pertinent questions;
- “Who gains power or advantage from the fomented chaos?”
- “Who gains wealth or influence from the fomented chaos?”
- “Who would lose power, advantage, wealth or influence if the American people were to coalesce and unite once again in common purpose?
There are, unfortunately, members of our society who look upon media, political parties and government as protectors of society. Something like sheepdogs who protect the sheep. Perhaps so, but the sheep might want to consider that the sheepdog works for the shepherd and keeps the sheep safe until the shepherd decides it’s time to slaughter them.
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