MrCharm42 wrote on Mar 16, 2024, 20:35:
BoP - I appreciate your POV and expertise on these threads; I've certainly learned things - I do think there's a reasonable hope that we can pull out of it - we've done something like it before. Age of Acrimony is a decent read. Reconstruction was really tough and bitter, and we'd just finished killing 750k Americans.
This is going to be long so buckle in or skip it, your choice.
Thank you. I think the main difference is that prior to the Civil War, you didn't have decades of the three actors I mentioned previously pushing divisiveness. I'm not saying that it didn't exist, because it certainly did, but not to the level or the sheer ubiquity that we see today. Also, population size and economics play a huge role in today's environment versus the environment of 1865. For example, the population of the United States was ~15 million people in 1865. Today, it is ~336 million. Also, the wealth gap today is the worst it has ever been in US history...and getting worse by the quarter. Not to Godwin the thread but the early stages of Nazi Germany are a great example of what happens when the average person is spread too thin. When people are broke, hungry, and have no idea if they will even have a roof over their head next week because they could lose their job at the drop of a hat through no fault of their own, they'll happily and rapidly gravitate toward whomever promises them that they will have those conditions again. Charismatic strong men always rise to fill that role of a promise deliverer. The followers of those strong men will cling to whatever ideology is espoused because, realistically, that is all they have left and all that they feel that they can control in their personal lives.
The Civil War also had a different foundation for it. The Civil War was about preserving the Union at all costs and it was a fundamentally unbalanced conflict. Lincoln wrote extensively about the preservation of the Union above and before any other consideration. The Emancipation Proclamation, while extremely important in many ways, was essentially a beneficial PR piece to keep the momentum of the war going in the timeframe in which it was issued. But the Civil War was nearly pre-ordained from the outset from a logistical and materiel perspective. The North had the industrial and manufacturing base, the South did not. The North had the ability to arm, equip, and train field assets to a degree that the South couldn't even begin to hope to match. The North had a more robust and prosperous trade network to generate income with than the South did. The North had more manpower to throw in to the meat grinder than the South did and so on. It was touch and go for a while with the North, no doubt, but that was political more than it was actual planning and execution.
Now, in 2024, the conditions are radically different. There is no pervasive desire to preserve the Union in that being an American is not a tangible, fundamental part of the average citizen's psyche. We see flag waving and soldier worship for the political game that it is. Few of us have considerable faith or trust in our politicians or political systems, including the justice system. They're nebulous machinations that happen far above our heads that splatter us with shit from time to time.They are, in essence, not real to us since we do not have a direct hand in them. Moreover, most people see that politics and justice are games for the wealthy, not the common individual and there have been literally hundreds of examples where the wealthy and corporations suffer little to mild consequences for actions that would put you or the person next to you in prison for the rest of your life. So there are real, well documented examples of where both the political and justice systems are rigged against the average individual.
But we have tangible symptoms of a rot that has set deep in to the core of the United States. Prior to January 6th, 2021, the only invasion of the capital occurred during the War of 1812 (1814 to be specific) and that was by a hostile foreign power. In 2021, it was done by citizens of the United States itself while being egged on by a former President on widely available social media. That has never before happened in US history. In as much as some of us may laugh at the Sovereign Citizen movement, myself included, they're an indicator that trust within a certain demographic has eroded to the point that they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the system which should govern them doesn't. That's a dangerous ideology to spread because it indicates that there is now a belief that the the United States cannot effectively govern itself. Which, if we look at it from the perspective of the creators of our republic, is true. By that I mean, you cannot govern the people without the consent of the people. There are several movements that are growing that are withdrawing that consent because, again, they believe that the current system of government does not represent them.
Another example of a symptom is that people are willing to quickly cut off communication, even members of their own family, and never reinstating that communication over political and ideological differences. I'm not saying it's without merit, merely commenting on the speed in which it is occurring. I'll give you an example. My neighbor and my wife used to talk every day. They had a huge garden and so did we. Mrs. Burrito and the male neighbor would frequently exchange produce, talk about gardening related topics, he came over and asked for my advice on setting up a rainwater catchment system, and so on. When my wife put up a small Biden-Harris sign in 2020, the very next day that neighbor's yard was absolutely batshit insane stuffed with Trump signs and flags. They completely stopped talking to Mrs. Burrito all together. Even though they had a good bit in common and, in the case of an emergency, we would have been a valuable ally to have if only to keep food on the table. She tried a couple of times to engage him in conversation and he acted like she didn't even exist. All over political differences.
You can't heal a division if you are unwilling to communicate. It's also not a one way street. Conservatives and liberals alike engage in the same behavior. I'm no better and I freely admit that, but I also am cognizant enough to see it happening and know why it is happening.
We also have an extreme case of othering that has been going on for as long as I have been alive. You can't build bridges if you do not recognize that the person sitting across the table from you has more in common with you than differences with you. Someone is undoubtedly going to pop in and say "But what about when they hate women and LGBTQ people and and and..." as if they are smugly making some profound point. Sure, those are important topics, but they are outside the scope of what I am addressing and that is the inability of the United States to fundamentally reconcile with itself and resume having a national identity that is shared by its citizens. More the point, it does not have the desire nor will to even begin that reconciliation, let alone the willingness to see it through to the end.
I mean, I could turn this in to a dissertation level explanation of why the United States is in the worse shape it has ever been from the standpoint of being a whole, unified country but it is late and I think you get the gist.
That's why I say, the question of balkanization within the United States is a matter of
when not
if with the current political and justice climate and the growing exclusionary divisiveness within its civilian population.
"Just take a look around you, what do you see? Pain, suffering, and misery." -Black Sabbath, Killing Yourself to Live.
“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau