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I agree with you that the risk of domestic conflict along political lines is underrated by most. I think tensions are the highest they’ve been in my lifetime, and probably the highest since the 1960s; however, it’s at best misleading and at worst sensationalistic to refer to the current situation as a prelude to a “civil war”, in the American sense.
A better analogy would be protracted, low-level conflict between the state and various amorphous paramilitaries, a la the Troubles in Ireland or the Years of Lead in Italy. Even a coup or a
suspensionfortification of democracy by the military, as periodically occurs in Turkey for example, is (worryingly) increasingly plausible, but not the Boogaloo.The central feature of the American Civil War that is missing today is, simply, a single, united nexus of competing state power/legitimacy that has supermajority support across a large geographic region. The CSA fielded entire armies of regulars to fight against the Union in pitched battles, conducted diplomacy with foreign powers, and executed the basic domestic functions of a government (passing and enforcing laws). When states seceded, they did so by calling special state conventions, which then voted on secession as legitimate elected officials of their respective state governments.
As bad as the situation is today, I cannot honestly say that anything remotely similar is at all likely to occur. For one, the Tribes are just too geographically dispersed and intermixed across the country: even the reddest/bluest states are no more than 65% Republican/Democrat in the popular vote. By contrast, South Carolina’s state convention voted unanimously to secede. For another, there is no single Schelling point around which literal armies of men with guns can gather: yes, there’s Antifa, the Proud Boys, whatever, but those are small fry, paramilitaries at most, not actual nation-state-tier organizations with the attendant legitimacy and bargaining power, foreign and domestic. Wake me up when they get to the level of something like Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Addendum: I don’t mean to jinx things, but I’m really surprised we haven’t seen any drone-based violence lately. The technology is there and has been for a few years, as evidenced by the Ukraine conflict. Perhaps we’ve just been lucky. I pray our luck continues.
It's a bit too early. Russia and Ukraine are paying drone pilots too well. Anyone who dreams about killing fellow men by flying into them can do it with legal and moral impunity and get paid for it. However, when the war ends, there'll be a much greater supply of people who can both design and deploy attack drones.
The biggest risk would come from across the border. You can easily get a hunting rifle with a scope in the US; no one will look at you twice if you spend a few weeks at a range improving your aim. Getting something that goes "boom" without drawing the attention of BATF is much harder for the average American radical. It isn't a problem for the average Mexican cartel, though. They can even cover the drones with patriotic messages before flying them into, say, Greg Abbott.
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Yeah, the immediate cause of the civil war has to be the fact that the South could present a united governmental front and thus actually secede in opposition to Lincoln. To add to your point, I think a civil war is unlikely for the same reason the Kim family wanted nuclear weapons; nukes and various other advanced weaponry provide a deterrent effect to full-on governmental rebellion. Anything that rises to the level of full-scale civil war cannot be allowed — for the sake of the launch codes if for no other reason — but it’s likely that the kind of low-level strife of people and police we’re seeing in Minneapolis will continue.
I’ve told friends and family I’m seriously worried about a Troubles-style set of social violence breaking out. Unfortunately, we’re at a point where both sides of the culture war are out for blood, and believe the other is out for blood, in an escalating cycle of fear leading to anger leading to hate. I don’t know how we stop that.
Perhaps this kind of social unrest was the inevitable result of algorithmic social media, the same way the printing press led to peasant revolts, schisms, and religious wars. Every time I get curious and open up Twitter I feel like I’m fed a firehose of misunderstandings, misattributions, misanthropy, and raw, burning, yet affectedly droll hate.
I’m reminded of the verses from the gospel of Matthew:
These are not the end-times, and Deus will not ex machina us from this crisis. But I don’t know how this ends, especially as marriage, parenthood, the family, and the community, normally the buffers against social contagion or corruption, are “in play” as part of the warfare. The theology of my religion claims that men and women together brought about the beginning of evil through their cooperation of evil; perhaps the book about the evil coming into this world through the antagonism of the sexes against each other has yet to be written.
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