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The Next Civil War
The Civil War ranks as the most costly of US wars, with 625,000 deaths and a comparable number of injuries. Now the Republican Party is stoking the fires of insurrection and for thousands of right-wing zealots a new civil war seems a political necessity. As increasing numbers of Democratic politicians are threatened, how long will it be before domestic terrorists use their weapons?
The first Civil War was precipitated by a dispute regarding slavery and states' rights. It was inflamed by volatile rhetoric and widespread use of guns.
The looming civil war reincarnates the debate about states' rights. Immediately after President Obama signed Healthcare Reform into law, several state Attorney Generals filed lawsuits arguing the Federal government violated the Constitution.
Rather than slavery, the new civil war is being waged over the necessity to guarantee human rights for all Americans - whether or not every citizen deserves healthcare. Many Republicans feel this is not a legitimate use of government power, that it infringes on the sacred "free market."
In the run up to the first Civil War, passions were inflamed by fiery rhetoric from secessionist politicians such as Jefferson Davis. The impending civil war is being fed by mass-media personalities, such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, who routinely feed their listeners blatant falsehoods. The success of these demagogues was revealed in a March 23rd Louis Harris poll of Republicans: 67 percent "believe that Obama is a socialist." 57 percent "believe that Obama is a Muslim." 45 percent believe that Obama "was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president." 38 percent of Republicans say the President is "doing many of the things that Hitler did." And, 24 percent believe Obama "may be the Antichrist."
Coupled with these skewed beliefs is increasingly strident rhetoric from Republican leaders. House minority leader John Boehner compared healthcare reform to "Armageddon" and declared the GOP to the Party of "Hell no." This refrain was picked up Senator John McCain and former Governor Sarah Palin, who added, "Freedom is a god-given right worth fighting for."
There's little doubt that the use of inflammatory language has increased the ratings of the Fox News Channel, which is now the highest rated cable channel, and "the highest rated basic channel in primetime." Fox commentators such as Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly regularly contend the US "is headed into socialism" and compare President Obama to Hitler. On March 23rd, prominent conservative David Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, appearing on ABC Nightline observed, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox."
Beck and his new Fox News associate, Sarah Palin, have appropriated the rhetoric used by the Militia movement, language that suggests violence may be required to "save" America. Since Barack Obama became President there has been an unprecedented run on guns fomented by a right-wing rumor that Obama was going to restrict gun ownership. As documented in the Spring Report of the Southern Poverty Law Center, there has also been an explosive growth of hate and militia groups. "An astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009 - a 244% jump." (On March 29th, nine members of one of these groups the Hutaree were charged with conspiring to kill police officers.)
The Republican Party's embrace of militant extremism follows a grim logic. The GOP is losing members; a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that only 24 percent of respondents self-identified as Republicans - versus 34 percent for Democrats and 38 percent for Independents. Grasping for support, the GOP has abandoned traditional conservative ideology and allowed its message to be highjacked.
Unfortunately, the Republican Party lacks a leader with the gravitas to speak out against the escalating violence of its supporters. Elected Republicans such a Boehner, McCain, McConnell, and Steele are much less influential than are conservative media figures such as Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Palin. As a result, as Fox News becomes even more outrageous, and violence against Democrats escalates, GOP leaders either claim to be powerless to stop it or argue the mainstream media has exaggerated the problem.
Meanwhile, a second civil war is brewing. Considering the volatile mixture of inflammatory rhetoric, weapons usage, and growth of militia groups, it appears likely there will be a tragic event: an assault on a Democratic politician, the burning of a congressional office, or another bombing of a Federal office building.
In 1860, the onset of the Civil War could have been averted. Dispassionate observers saw that the Confederacy did not have the resources required to defeat the Union. In 2010, the impending Civil War should be averted. Right-wing zealots are a minority and do not have the resources to commandeer America. Nonetheless, they can cause needless bloodshed.
What will it take for voices of reason to rise up within the Republican Party? How long will it be before a major Republican leader speaks out against domestic terrorism and urges the GOP to return to reason and reconciliation?
273 Comments so far
Show All"What will it take for voices of reason to rise up within the Republican Party? How long will it be before a major Republican leader speaks out against domestic terrorism and urges the GOP to return to reason and reconciliation?"
IMHO a voice of reason can't rise up in the Republican party. If it does that voice will be purged. Unfortunately I don't think this country is heading anywhere good...
... and IMHO, I am in full agreement with the author Morris Berman (The Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America): It's too late for the American empire. We are in collapse, and it will take but one or two more terrorist or economic shocks to nail the coffin shut. Thus, there will be no voices of reason in the Republican party, just as there will be no honest action or statements from the Democrats (a.k.a. the "other" Republican party).
What a bunch of gloom and doomers. I'm excited about this time. All the deceit and hatred, instead of being hidden, is coming to the surface and being exposed to the light of truth. I'm grateful to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the tea baggers for being honest enough to show the world just how low in the food chain they live.
Exciting times, indeed. Congratulations on your optimism! I don't begrudge it, but I don't find it realistic. The lunatic fringe you identify is just more media manufactured smoke and mirrors, and can be dumped as easily as the neoconservatives dumped the religious right. Ideologically, the war is already over in the sense that we are no longer a democracy, but a corporatocracy.
I rather enjoyed Wyatt Cenac's take on this on the Daily Show earlier this week: "Bring it on... We have guns, too."
Funny, but just not true. Progressives and guns are oil and water. You can find a few, but not many. If we can't get together for a stinking march on Washington without having 2.3 causes per person and massing a whopping 8000 people, we are not going to have any sort of a fight, it just is never going to happen.
And besides, smart people usually don't get into fights.
I, too, wish "we" could unite. As one who has fallen out of the middle class and into the lower class due to an expensive and debilitating illness, I look with chagrin at my former colleagues, each individually hanging onto his/her individual job in an "individual" corporation (thus representing and manifesting the "character" of that corporation more than their own, subsumed values, which stay at home where the individual entertainment center salves the wounds of the day's ration of cognitive dissonance). I do not know why people don't broadly recognize that the current state of affairs in the U.S.A. is due to an effectively waged class war by the world's richest people (and the oligarchs just below them in charge of funneling wealth upward).
James Lovelock said the other day that "people are too stupid" to effectively address climate change. Apparently, they are also too stupid to effectively address the political change that has stolen their democracy and replaced it with a corporatocracy (which can only evolve to overt, gloves-off fascism). Everyone is keeping their heads down, toeing phony lines, and altogether missing the chasm between the 30,000 or so of the wealthiest "families" and the billions of "us," who are maintained in a state of temptation that fuels the consumption that is destroying the Earth.
All we have to do is stop buying endless piles of crap and start living lives of quality, not quantity. No, that's not all we have to do. We have to reestablish democracy and elect some sane people. Sounds like revolution more than civil war.
Well, enough said.
JohnShade
"Progressives and guns are oil and water"
While I believe that is true, many liberals do have guns. And liberals are the majority of the left, not progressives.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I don't agree with you on that because polls consistently show that the majority of left-leaning voters in America enthusiastically support policies far to the left of the DLC led Democratic Party that has been moving further and further to the right away from its old core constituent base with regard to actual domestic policies for a quarter of a century now.
You and all the folk responding missed Cenac's point.
He wasn't saying, "We progressives;" he was saying, "We Blacks and Latinos."
The war that the Tea Partiers want to fight isn't against progressives but against blacks and latinos. The Tea Partiers don't like "socialized health care" because for them that means that "hard working white people" have to pay for their own health care and for that of "lazy, good for nothing n______ and Mexicans." This is the racism behind the outrage.
What Cenac was saying is that the inner city Black and Latino population includes armed gangs. "We got guns too."
LibWingofLibWing
People don't like the bill because its crap, expensive and helps no one except insurance companies, drug companies, etc.
Don't fall for the false "racism" democratic story line, because thats what it is.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the Republicans to promote reason and reconciliation!
Maybe we should not try to put the fire out but instead pour more fuel onto it. Sure, the rightwing propagandists inciting the mobs have their own interests and goals, but there remains the possibility that runaway positive feedback loops could be created that would lead the mobs in unanticipated directions and the corporatists could lose their control over them.
Where is that creative destruction that the neocons blathered on about during the Iraq fiasco when you really need it? The political/economic system as presently constituted is terminal and grand changes are necessary for long-term sustainability and survival. One peaceful and orderly manner in which grand changes could become possible would be through the development of a strong movement to amend the constitution to allow states to secede. The corporatists have shown they are willing to play along for a while with this idea for certain short-term political reasons, so maybe before they change their minds the movement could build enough momentum to survive the inevitable corporatist resistance.
Now, I would not wage a bet on this happening, but I cannot see many promising paths out of this dark swamp.
Kivals--You are barking up the correct tree. The Corporatist creation of the Teabaggers ought to be their downfall--IF--we take the risk to forget about the contrived Wedge Issues that divide us and reachout to the Other and embrace them as ourselves. The Progressive Populists Movement of the late 1800s wasn't filled out by intellectual wunderkids, but by relatively poor farmers from Texas and then the greater Midwest, whose organizers rode on horseback from small farmtown to small farmtown in an effort to educate and activate--which they were very successful at. If we can't duplicate what they did given all of our technological and educational advances, then we deserve to be enslaved to the Money Power as we will have proven incapable of helping ourselves at the time we needed to help ourselves most.
karlof1
I still must disagree with your premise (and Kivals) that the Tea Party was or is funded or started by the Republican party or corporate interests for that matter. I can find no evidence of it other than Dick Armey and a few others trying to climb aboard and making claims that they represent the Tea Party. It (seems) to be exactly what they say it is.
Heck, I can't even find two Tea Party folks here that can agree on exactly what its about, but they do agree the republicans are not their "cup of tea" either.
The Tea Parties were started by a corporatist on CNBC, Rick Santelli, who in front of Wall Street Traders staged a raging rant against the Stimulus because Obama proposed spending money on helping people save their homes. It was then fueled by Glen Beck and his lies about what the founders would think, especially Thomas Paine. Both these men called on people to stage a new Tea Party.
It was NOT something that arose from the grassroots. It was a marketing program that originated with Wall Street Traders and Fox's tools of the Plutocrats.
But my goodness, how should we be expected to remember something that happened LAST year? ::shocked look::
LibWingofLibWing
"The Tea Parties were started by a corporatist on CNBC, Rick Santelli, who in front of Wall Street Traders staged a raging rant against the Stimulus"
Thats true and if you wanted to technically parse it you could say you could say it was "started" by a corporate newsman on a corporate channel.
I hardkly think that means it was a "markerting program", I would venture to say Mr. Rick Santelli is more astonished than anyone by peoples actions from his rant.
And lets be clear, the only people the "stimulus" helped were some Corporations, some Unions and a bunch of Congressional Pork projects. It created no jobs, helped no one particularly and Santelli was rtight about it. It was crap legislation.
I've got a pretty good memory.
Obama and the democrats have done NOTHING, NADA, NAUGHT to help the economy or create jobs.
He couldn't get away with doing absolutely nothing. The stimulus is helping some on some fringes, cash for clunkers, certain stimulus in some areas, etc. But, it's small and on the fringes, and unlikely to have long term effects, imo.
Also, Santelli was complaining about bailing out people who were underwater in their mortgages - he is fine with bailing out wall st.
lucky
Its close enough to nothing that I feel comfortable calling it nothing, though you have a point.
Its like all the new jobs this month, more than a third are census, half of the remaing seem to be new government jobs...Oh Boy! Another Obama victory.
Can I take my vote back now?
"Also, Santelli was complaining about bailing out people who were underwater in their mortgages - he is fine with bailing out wall st."
Absolutely true, but thats not what people took it for, just the assault on citizens by their government is what most took it for in my opinion. And he was right about one thing, the plan was a bust.
NO! He was NOT right.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/rick-santellis-faux-rant/
"Within hours of Santelli’s rant, a website called ChicagoTeaParty.com sprang to life. Essentially inactive until that day, it now featured a YouTube video of Santelli’s “tea party” rant and billed itself as the official home of the Chicago Tea Party."
Santelli was not commenting on the wall st. bailout! He 100% supported it. He was only commenting on 75 billion (a pittance) going to the worst of the subprime. For the $ we spent on wall st, we could have bailed out every mortgage in America. See Nomi Prins. Notice how all the reich-wingers are up in arms about 'irresponsible borrowers' being responsible? CRA? Acorn? That's a lie!
Veritas, you have some balls calling yourself 'Veritas' (latin for 'truth'), when you have your facts all wrong!
lucky
I simply meant that Obamas bail out of mortgages was an utter failure as was the whole Stimulus plan.
"Within hours of Santelli’s rant, a website called ChicagoTeaParty.com sprang to life. Essentially inactive until that day, it now featured a YouTube video of Santelli’s “tea party” rant and billed itself as the official home of the Chicago Tea Party."
May be, but it has and had little to do with the real Tea Party groups, who still have no "leaders"
A caveat here, I speak only of my part of the country and what I've found on the internet and asking others around the country I know.
As to..."'irresponsible borrowers' being responsible?" There are none. There were plenty of irresponsible lenders. You cannot take out a mortgage if someone won't lend you the money and no one should get a mortgage when they plainly cannot pay it back. (but a whole nother didscussion)
I feel comfortable with what I said, I may just not have been clear enough.(wouldn't be the first time) I don't believe my facts are wrong.
Its like Dick Armey pretending to be a leader of the Tea Party, he is NOT. Nor does he speak for anyone that I know of. Beck, Limbaugh and Palin don't lead them either.
Happy Easter (I know, I know, just take it for good wishes for your weekend)
The mortgage bailout (75 billion) was actually the only good thing about it, imo.
Q - Why didn't Jesus get through grad school?
A - He got nailed on his boards.
;) have a nice weekend..
Hi Veritas--The video I linked at the Brad Blog yesterday has commentary too that proved the event in Los Angeles to be funded by an entity linked to the RNC, plus many of the talking points came from the RNC too.
But it doesn't matter who the hell started the thing, it exists, is getting bigger, has media exposure, and it will only serve to deepen the Wedge skillfully placed between us if we don't try to make commoncause with it. Can't you see how the fears of the liberal left are being played to and used to alienate them from the Other? This essay is trying to do just that.
Howdy karlof1
Oh I don't doubt that the RNC and others are funding this or that, just the general run don't seem to be linked to any party or run by business.
"But it doesn't matter who the hell started the thing, it exists, is getting bigger, has media exposure, and it will only serve to deepen the Wedge skillfully placed between us if we don't try to make commoncause with it. Can't you see how the fears of the liberal left are being played to and used to alienate them from the Other? This essay is trying to do just that."
Absolutely. Complete agreement. I guess that is what I see. There is no real evidence of all this violence, hate and racism, etc, these knuckledraggers are supposedly guilty of and quite a number of things I see them saying, I see people here and elsewhere saying the same thing while bashing them.
"Can't you see how the fears of the liberal left are being played to and used to alienate them from the Other?"
Yep! And vice versa wouldn't you say?
"Yep! And vice versa wouldn't you say?"
Yeah, and supposedly folks on the Left are aware of psyops and the mechanics of propaganda, or at least many say they are. Back in the day, the Olympian Gods were the ones blamed for manipulating society in such ways--illuminating only the "perversions" while darkening the "virtues."
But we appear to be a distinct minority as it appears most are too vested in their biases to step out of their boxes and take a risk where there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.
karlof1
Where are Zeus and Hera when you need em???
Lets keep trying to change that!
Be Well!
Sioux Rose
Hey there, Poseidon buddy... you just rang my cosmic chimes!
I was out in California 2 weeks ago for a writer's conference and I befriended a woman whose husband is a producer. I was clowning around over cocktails and made references to my first movie script, "Immortally Yours." Mr. producer wants to see this one. It begins with the actual asteroids crashing into the planet Jupiter (back in l994). In mythology, Jupiter is also known as Zeus, and he's married to Hera. Anyway, the script unfolds where Zeus turns in bed to his wife Hera to ask her honest opinion of how he's doing (like the bumper sticker, "How's my driving"?). She calmly points out that all he thinks about are stock averages and sports scores, and that things have not gone swimmingly well for women... on the mortal plane. Then another asteroid rocks their domestic nest convincing him a plot is afoot to ease power away from him, the great patriarch of Olympus.
JUST TODAY I was typing this specific passage (in a rewrite before I send it to this producer), and dang... it was all about Zeus and Hera. Strange that you should summon them... I guess you and I are on the same wavelength now. May the stars be with you...
how much bigger is it getting? how many people were at their convention? Not sure, but I think there were not many. I believe this thing was/is largely manufactured. But, agree with your alienation point - that's it's job.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Veritas, you are deliberately mischaracterizing the origin and deliberate right-wing media hype of and PR ties to these Tea-Party rallies and you know you are. It's starting to get pretty tedious. Their origins are well documented and not some inscrutable mystery, let alone a spontaneous grass roots uprising.
metal
"Veritas, you are deliberately mischaracterizing the origin and deliberate right-wing media hype"
I don't believe so and I'd say that if anything the media hype is left wing about the racism and violence that they are engaged in, for which I can find no real evidence.
Their origins ARE fairly well documented, all the folks that showed up at the Town Halls were not organized or hired, they were just pissed as the monumental stupidity of Congress.
Far, far more are pissed at the epic continuation of ignorance and arrogance displayed by the same group while they continue their irresponsible self indulgence at the expense of the American people.
"Tedious"...hhuummmm, I can't help you there because I can't change my opinion because someone doesn't agree with me.
But please bear with me in the future as I will express my opinion when I see something I disagree with or don't believe is honest. We will know in November which one of us is right about this at least.
Be well my friend and have a safe and happy Easter.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
How will we know what, precisely, in November about which one of us is right about the Tea-Baggers?
Whether or not they are a large popular movement or not has nothing to do with the issue of whether they were originally whipped up and encouraged by right-wing corporate media and PR firms. There would have been no Tea-Party rallies in my State except for the FACT that Fox News and Clear Channel owned FM radio stations heavily advertised them in the days leading up to those events, including the fact that they would be hosted by right-wing media tool Sean Hannity and feature Newt Gingrich as their keynote speaker. Sure, loads of right-wing rabble may have been attracted to all that right-wing media hype and CHOSEN to participate in these PR firm-crafted events, but that doesn't make them grass roots events or that early "movement" a coherent political movement more than it is a corporately concocted funnel movement to allow Republicans to vent over the bank bailouts and health care deform before trying to herd them all safely back into the GOP corral by November.
this is the center of the knot, right here. and it doesnt have to be untied. it can be cut, or burned. it can be abandoned. it can be ignored. lots of ropes are still tied to pilings that see ships no more forever.
I never cease to be amazed by what has happened to the Republican party. It's descent into fascism, militarism, and imperialism in a mere 40 years is amazing. Mostly I chalk it up to the ignorance of the average American voter. Jefferson is being proved right again and again.
Jim Shea
And excepting a few of its members, the Democrat Party hasn't gone down this same sewer?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
True enough and over time which is worse, the Party of origin of this mindset, of the Party of masquerade that pretends it is the Party of the "little guy" or the Party of the "working-class," when it is the well-paid facilitator of the agenda of the original fascist Party?
If we're going to be historically correct, the Federalist--the Party of the Founders--was "the original fascist Party." Then the Democrat/Republican Party, which was the first Liberal Imperialist party, the Party of Jefferson and Jackson. After a few decades the conservative, business factions dropped out and formed the Whigs with the few remaining Federalists--Lincoln was a Whig at first. We are now back to the beginning, 1787, with just one Party, or Duopoly, that commands the media while the populace is atomized--almost disenfranchised as they were then, and unable or unwilling to find commonground needed to defeat the very numerically inferior oligarchy.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I disagree with you on several points here, but I was talking about a later phase of the Democratic Party when it actually did considerably less closely represent corporatist/fascist interests than the GOP.
There is no need to fight a civil war. Let the right wing in the southern states succeed from the rest of the US and become a confederacy of selfish greedy conservatives, and everyone of like mind in the North can move to the new south country. This could be a really good thing.
What's happened in the South? All of the recent action has occured in the North. The deepest economic misery--those who have fallen the furthest--is in the North.
karlof1
Beat me to it, thank you.
Bullsh*t. It's at least pretty evenly distributed:
http://projects.flowingdata.com/america/unemployment/
Maybe someone can dig one up about real estate..
Sounds like you yourself might be a bigot. What's with the southern states? Racism is abundant in every part of this nation. The northern states are nowhere close to being exempt from it.
moonpie
Beat me to it, thank you.
In other words, who cares about democracy and elections? If the minority is upset they lose the election then they can secede. Of course when they have an election themselves their own minority will secede. On and on this goes until there is no democracy, only anarchy or a new feudalism.
This is why Lincoln said, "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." That nation he described as one "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and that opposing secession was so "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
I hate to break this to you, but we don't live in a democracy anymore. Try to catch up with that, and you'll understand that it is, in fact, revolution that is warranted now (in accord with the Constitution). This civil war crap is just a distraction.
I agree that we don't live in a real democracy anymore but in a "managed democracy" that is a sham. However, I think promoting secession is going the WRONG way in restoring democracy.
I agree with your assertion that we need a revolution, that is if the revolution is non-violent. Violent revolutions tend to result in Napoleons.
You are correct, secession and democracy do not align. Also, non-violent revolution is the best way to go, but I honestly don't think any revolution is forthcoming. Americans are too weak-willed.
So what. If they don't want to be apart of whatever fantasy you have about so called democracy and elections let them go. Rule by consensus is a much better form of democracy than so called representative republicanism.
"Rule by consensus" sounds good. In practice, however, it means rule by the worst bastard who doesn't give a f*** what everybody else wants or needs.
having participated in many groups who governed themselves by seeking consensus, i can say that the only real drawback is that everyone gets to talk and that can slow things down... fascism is so much tidier, and so is majority rule - hey there's more of us than there are of you only works when rigorously applied up the heirarchy (you know like when you have the king or the ceo surrounded - think of the signing of the magna carta - its just another brutality when it goes down...