How Dark is Our Darkness

Are Americans inching towards our second civil war? Is American democracy teetering on the edge of a violent unraveling? Let me posit the state we seem to be in. “Writing an Op-ed for the December 22nd Los Angeles Times, L.Z. Granderson, notes: “There is an Avett Brothers song with an increasingly prophetic refrain: ‘there’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light … and I’m frightened by those who don’t see it.’ It is the perfect summation of a nation that can’t see that it is becoming a one-party state because it believes elections make it a democracy. Well, China and Cuba hold elections as well, and no one stateside considers them to be beacons of freedom.

“This, future historians, is at the heart of our pending undoing. It won’t be from an attack by Russia. It will be from us becoming like Russia, where the violent deaths of President Vladimir Putin’s critics have become normalized. And before you dismiss this as hyperbole, think about how children being shot and killed in our schools has become normalized… Think about how many members of Congress voted not to investigate the attack, even though police officers were injured and some later died, colleagues were running for their lives and the peaceful transfer of power — the hallmark of our democracy — was violently interrupted by insurrectionists.

“There is a darkness upon us that’s flooded in light … and I’m frightened by those who see it and don’t care… ‘It’s amazing people want to kill me over paving roads and clean water,’ said Rep. Andrew Garbarino, a New York Republican who voted for the infrastructure bill… That’s because it’s not about paving roads or clean water… It’s about winning… Even if we lose democracy in the process.” Pretty nasty, but…

Since a civil war requires violence, do the rise of well-armed and self-trained militia (7 to 1 more likely to be on the political right), the ransacking of the U.S. Capitol a year ago and the exoneration of Oath Keepers supporting Kyle Rittenhouse after entering an August 2020 protest with an AR-15 which he used to kill two and wound one protestors constitute enough evidence of the sufficiency of rising violent intent from the right? With almost one gun for every American citizen, combined with increasingly open gunowner rights, certainly the means of violence exists. But is there a willingness to deploy that violence to impose a minority will on the nation?

In 1965, two thirds of Americans believed that government generally acted in the best interests of its citizens. In 2022, that number has completely reversed. Trust has left the building, the city, the state… and the entire nation. Anger, irreconcilable anger, has become the norm. Family members no longer speak to one another over political disagreements. Domestic violence and divorce are often victims of political animosity. The underlying numbers are scary.

“A year after a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol in the worst attack on the home of Congress since it was burned by British forces in 1814, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds that about 1 in 3 Americans say they believe violence against the government can at times be justified.” Washington Post, January 1st. 23% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans hold that belief. Watching elected Republicans in Congress, who cowered under their desks, recast the 1/6/21 insurrection as a peaceful expression of First Amendment rights, illustrates a numbness, even support of violent political expression. These numbers are progressively getting worse every year.

But isn’t the bastion of the Trump-configured GOP a powerful evangelical force that believes in the Ten Commandments? “Thou shalt not kill” stands side by side with proscription against bearing “false witness.” Yet the big lie is predicated on “false witness,” and it is indeed those with the greatest evangelical zeal, willing to sacrifice their most basic Christian values to hold the words, teachings and exhortations of Donald Trump above those of Jesus Christ… often with their pastor’s blessing and encouragement. Including an acceptance by many of violence for political reasons. The willingness of purported (and self-described) “patriots” to do whatever is necessary to preserve traditional white evangelical values against any majority wishes to the contrary – opposition voter nullification and suppression at a feverish rate – exists even as that vector decimates democracy.

One only has to listen to a recent speech by Donald Trump, Jr. at a December 19th rally (Turning Point USA), presenting the case on behalf of his father and the new political right: “Relatively early in the speech, he said, ‘If we get together, they cannot cancel us all. Okay? They won’t. And this will be contrary to a lot of our beliefs because—I’d love not to have to participate in cancel culture. I’d love that it didn’t exist. But as long as it does, folks, we better be playing the same game. Okay? We’ve been playing T-ball for half a century while they’re playing hardball and cheating. Right? We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference—I understand the mentality—but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay? It’s gotten us nothing while we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.’

“Throughout his speech, Don Jr. painted a scenario in which Trump supporters—Americans living in red America—are under relentless attack from a wicked and brutal enemy. He portrayed it as an existential battle between good and evil. One side must prevail; the other must be crushed. This in turn justifies any necessary means to win. And the former president’s son has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.” It’s worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go… Decency is for suckers.” As reported by Peter Wehner for the December 26th The Atlantic.

But if it really gets that bad, isn’t a more peaceful solution simply to allow states to secede from the union? “A survey published in September by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, for example, found that 41 percent of Biden voters and 52 percent of Trump voters at least ‘somewhat agree’ that ‘the situation in America’ makes them favor blue or red states ‘seceding from the union to form their own separate country.’” Stephen Marche writing for the December 31st Washington Post. 

Well, that would be better than a shooting civil war, right? Ah, but there’s a catch. First, we actually fought our original Civil War to stop secession. The Union even refused to sign a surrender document ending the Confederacy, since that would have recognized a political territory as having had the right to try to secede. Since allowing a legal secession would require a major modification of our Constitution, currently an insurmountable task, that is a very difficult path.

But even if a state or combination of states were still willing to secede, the resulting issues are staggering. What will the currency be, what happens to the military forces within those states, who assumes the national debt, what happens to retirees and the Social Security System, who gets to keep the nukes or NASA, etc., etc. 

Not to mention how the rest of the world accepts the newly formed state.  “‘There’s only one sovereignty game,’ [Ryan Griffiths, a professor at Syracuse University] points out. Everybody needs to get into the same club, and that club is the United Nations, which would require the approval of whoever is still technically the government of the United States.

“Without U.N. backing, a new country can’t do international exchange or use international post offices. An application to the United Nations goes to a working group, and if the group thinks the application is too trivial, they reject it. If they think an application is serious enough, which they do by asking other states, then it goes to the Security Council. The Security Council is the arbiter, but the council almost always agrees when the application has proceeded that far. So the United States, if it wanted too, could easily hold up any state asking for sovereignty. It would have the Security Council seat, and it would have the home state veto…

“‘In the long run, there will be another secessionist movement in the United States. It will just happen. No country is permanent. It will change. It will break apart in some way.’” Marche. So the stage is set, there is sufficient willingness from enough Americans to fight, mostly not to secede but to crush those with differing views, and the numbers are going the wrong way. So if that civil war happens, what would it look like? Stay tuned. Or has it already begun? Effective 1/6/21?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am shocked how the stock market trundles along, how most Americans simply want to live their lives and survive the pandemic… without recognizing how close the United States is to ending.