Professionals Think We Are Heading For Another Civil War
Kevin Felts 06.04.18
How close is the United States to another Civil War? According to professionals who observe activity leading up to a Civil War, they think we are getting close.
The consensus is around 35%, with estimates ranging from 5%-95%. One such professional put our chances at around 65% of a Civil War within the next 15 years.
How did the professionals arrive at those numbers? By observing Civil Wars in nations such as Afghanistan, Somalia, El Salvador, and Iraq. Then taking those observations and applying them to the political atmosphere in the United States.
From The New Yorker – Is America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?
Mines concluded that the United States faces a sixty-per-cent chance of civil war over the next ten to fifteen years.
Other experts’ predictions ranged from five per cent to ninety-five per cent. The sobering consensus was thirty-five per cent. And that was five months before Charlottesville.
[…]
Based on his experience in civil wars on three continents, Mines cited five conditions that support his prediction:
- Entrenched national polarization, with no obvious meeting place for resolution;
- Increasingly divisive press coverage and information flows;
- Weakened institutions, notably Congress and the judiciary;
- A sellout or abandonment of responsibility by political leadership;
- Legitimization of violence as the “in” way to either conduct discourse or solve disputes.
New Tactics For a New Age
What would a Civil War look like in our modern age? Chances are technology would play an important role. Private Facebook groups could be set up to instantly exchange information with large numbers of people. Encrypted instant messenger programs allow people to exchange information securely and instantly.
On the other end of the spectrum are hackers trying to bring down the networks or hack into accounts.
Then comes the injection of misleading information, and fake accounts in an attempt to draw information into question..
Foreign Policy provides some good insights – What a new U.S. civil war might look like.
For the United States, the shape of future homeland conflicts will be asymmetrical, distributed, and heterogeneous. A contemporary homeland conflict would likely self-compose with numerous dynamic factions organized by digital tools around ideological and affinity networks. It would likely be a patchwork of affiliated insurgency groups and their counterparts engaging in light skirmishes along the overlapping edges of their networks, mixed with occasional high-value terror attacks against soft and hard targets.
Such groups are much smaller than conventional militaries and where they lack in firepower, they wield transgression. As in Charlottesville and Berkeley, the fronts are less territorial than ideological.
In the first Civil War there was the north and the south. Today, we have the fly over states, and the liberal states on the east and west coasts. The differences between conservative fly over and liberal states, are as stark as the debate over slavery.
Since the first American Civil War, some of the southern states, such as Texas, have become economic powerhouses, While liberal states, such as California, are ever increasing their dependence upon federal tax dollars.
Opinion
One thing is for sure, the United States has become increasing polarized. It seems there is no middle ground between the left and the right, or Democrats and Republicans.
Just about everything on the list can be found in our culture. If the experts believe another Civil War could erupt in the United States, shouldn’t we heed their warnings?
Maybe liberals and conservatives can find a way to work with each other, thus reducing our chances of another Civil War?
As Rodney King once said, “Can we all get along?”
