Reprinted with permission from:
"The Second Civil War inside the USA and its Aftermath" via Sam Vaknin (2nd, revised influence, 2029)
Summary of Chapter 83
"The polities of the nineteenth and 20th centuries swung among extremes of nationalism and polyethnic multiculturalism. Following the Great War (1914-eight), the disintegration of maximum of the continental empires – extensively the Habsburg and Ottoman – brought about a resurgence of a specially virulent stress of the previous, dressed as Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism.
The aftermath of the Second World War added on a predictable backlash in the West in opposition to all way of nationalism and racism. The USSR, Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic, the EU (European Union, then European Community), the Commonwealth led by means of the UK, and the distinguished USA epitomized the eventual triumph of multiculturalism, multi-ethnic states, and, within the Western democracies, pluralism.
Africa and Asia, simply rising from a section of brutal colonialism, had been out of synch with these developments in Europe and North America and commenced to espouse their very own brands of jingoistic patriotisms. Attempts to impose liberal-democratic, multi-cultural, tolerant, pluralistic, and multi-ethnic concepts on these emergent entities became in large part perceived and vehemently rejected through them as disguised neo-colonialism.
The disintegration, throughout the second half of of the twentieth century, of the organizing standards of global affairs – maximum crucially Empire within the 1960s and Communism in the 1980s – caused the re-eruption of exclusionary, illiberal, and militant nationalism. The Balkan secession wars of the Nineteen Nineties served as a stark reminder than historic forces and ideologies by no means vanish – they merely lie dormant.
Polyethnic multiculturalism got here beneath assault someplace else and anywhere – from Canada to Belgium. Straining to contain this worrisome throwback to its tainted history, Europeans implemented numerous models. In the United Kingdom, areas, together with Scotland and Northern Ireland have been granted extra autonomy. The EU’s "ever nearer union", reified through its unlucky draft constitution, was intermittently rejected and resented by using more and more xenophobic and alienated constituencies.
This time around, between 1980 and 2020, nationalism copulated with militant religiosity to supply specifically nasty offspring in Muslim terrorism, Christian fundamentalist (American) thuggish unilateralism, Hindu supremacy, and Jewish messianism. Scholars, such as Huntington, observed a "conflict of civilizations".
Ironically, the a great deal-heralded struggle came about now not among the USA and its enemies without – however within the United States, in a 2nd and devastating Civil War.
Americans long mistook the institutional stability of their political gadget, assured through the Constitution, for a national consensus. They genuinely believed that the previous ensures the latter – that institutional firmness and durability ARE the country wide consensus. The opposite, as we realize, is proper: it takes a countrywide consensus to yield solid establishments. No social structure – no matter how venerable and veteran – can resist the winds of exchange in public sentiment.
In hindsight, the watershed obtained at some point of the Bush-Cheney presidency (2001-2009). The social and political concord frayed and then disintegrated with every successive blow: the struggle in Iraq (2003-7), the botched evacuation and rescue efforts in the wake of typhoon Katrina (2005), the failed assassination try on the President’s life (2006), the in addition regulations located on civil and human rights in Patriot Acts III and IV (2008), and, ultimately, the nuclear terrorist assault on Houston within the remaining days of this divisive reign.
From there, it went best downhill.
As against the first Civil War (1860-five), the Second Civil War (2021-26) changed into fought inside groups and across country boundaries. It became now not territorial and classic – but overall and guerilla-like. It cut throughout the u . S .’s geography and pitted one ideological camp in opposition to any other.
It may be too quickly to objectively analyze and examine this gargantuan conflict. It changed into preceded via a decade of violent demonstrations, home-grown city terrorism, and numerous skirmishes involving the National Guard and even, in violation of the Constitution, the militia.
Some historians forged the complete duration as a struggle of the religious vs. The secular. It simply become now not. By 2021, maximum Americans professed to being deeply religious, in a single manner or fashion. No one critically disputed the significance of the Church – but many insisted on its separation from the nation.
Hence the protracted (and heated) disagreement among pro-lifestyles and pro-preference advocates when Wade vs. Roe become overturned by means of a politicized and weakened Supreme Court in 2007. Hence the drawn out (and violent) debates about the teaching of evolution idea in schools or using embryonic stem cells in scientific studies.
Nor become the Civil War fought between isolationists and interventionists. An ever extra brazen brand of publish-9-11 international terrorism and a growing dependence on international change inexorably drove maximum Americans to accept their new position as an Empire. They certainly found out to experience it, each emotionally and economically.
Thus, even erstwhile Jacksonian isolationists reluctantly acquiesced of their u . S .’s overseas exploits. But they insisted on blatant unilateralism and the projection of American may simply and most effective to guard American hobbies. They abhorred the missionary ideology of the neo-conservatives. Spreading values, inclusive of democracy, should better be left to NGOs and charities – they thundered.
The Civil War changed into not approximately the upkeep of East Coast liberalism, as some self-serving pupils could have it. America was in no way much less racist and homophobic than inside the years without delay preceding the conflagration. The debate, once more, revolved around institutions. Should converting mores be enshrined in legislation and case regulation? Should the countrywide ethos itself be rewritten? Should the very definition and quiddity of being an American (white, male, directly) be revisited?
Neo-Marxist chroniclers characteristic the reasons of the Second Civil War to the growing disparities of wealth among the haves and the haves not. Presidents Bush and Cheney clearly reversed L.B. Johnson’s Great Society. They and their successors erased the severa entitlements and useful resource packages that some of the economically disenfranchised came to depend upon and to regard as a delivery right and as a cornerstone of the social contract.
Turning the clock lower back on affirmative action and meals stamps, for instance, certainly provoked great violence. But such outbursts can infrequently be construed to had been the precursors of the tremendous flame that fed on the united states some years subsequently.
Finally, the Civil War was not about unfastened alternate (beneficial to the service and production based totally economies of a few states) as opposed to protectionism (beneficial to the agricultural belts and bowls of the hinterland and to the recuperating Gulf Coast). America’s economic system changed into a long way too dependent on the outside world to reverse course. Its national debt became being financed by way of Asians, its merchandise have been being offered throughout, its commodities and ingredients have been coming from Africa and Latin America. The USA became in hock to a globalized and merciless economy. Protectionism become marketing campaign posturing – not a cogent and coherent alternate policy.
So, what have been the roots and reasons of the Second Civil War?
None of the above in isolation – and all the above in confluence. For a long time, the citizenry’s agree with in a packed and rigged Supreme Court declined. Politicians came to be seemed as a detached and heartless plutocracy. Americans felt orphaned, cheated, and robbed. The countrywide consensus – the implicit settlement that together is higher than on my own – has for that reason evaporated. The outcome became the pictures and explosions that rocked the United States (and the sector in tow) on January 20, 2021."