If It Happens, What Might a New American Civil War Look Like

  Gettysburg 1863

US Capitol 1/6/21

Militia at Michigan State Capitol 11/9/20

The Last Blog in My Series in Remembrance of the January 6th Capitol Insurrection

As my preceding blogs have illustrated, there is an increasing tolerance, particularly among conservative Americans, for using violence to oppose contrary political values and practices. We have a dramatically clear and rather undisguised effort in red states to disenfranchise voters likely to oppose conservative views, from gerrymandering and voter suppression/nullification to appointing or electing state officials pledged to reject election outcomes with which they disagree. 

With a Constitutional system that favors primarily rural versus urban states, it is obviously easier for those postulating rural values to become a minority that overcomes our clearly urban-heavy majority. We see that in a filibuster-laden Senate, unlikely to reject that practice even when it comes to voting rights, where 30% of Americans elect 50% of that body. Even the United States Supreme Court has traded its traditional role as a neutral arbiter of the law to become just an extension of conservative minority hell-bent on redefining “America” to adhere to their conservative minority mandates.

We have, in my and the studied opinions of so many historical scholars (reported in previous blogs), begun to eschew democracy to become an anocracy (a creeping march towards autocracy still carrying some hallmarks of a democracy). It has literally become a battle between a militant and increasing white supremacist evangelical Republican Party, unwilling to relinquish political control regardless of the consequences, and a growing majority of minorities demanding equal rights and urban priorities that no longer just benefit the highest income earners. And women fighting for equality and control of their own bodies! Culture wars and right-wing values are the new rallying cry of a determined right. 

With gun ownership – including military assault weapons – proudly on display among militia, the question just might be what could trigger a shooting civil war. Or was the violent January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, now bolstered by a seemingly lockstep vindication of the insurrection by most Republicans in Congress, what history might call the official beginning of our second civil war, a slow burn if you will?

Writing for the January 3rd Associated Press, Nicholas Riccardi presents the pattern of undemocratic efforts by the GOP creating what appear to be irreconcilable differences between that minority view and the rest of America: “In the weeks leading up to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a handful of Americans — well-known politicians, obscure local bureaucrats — stood up to block President Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a free and fair vote of the American people…. In the year since, Trump-aligned Republicans have worked to clear the path for next time.

“In battleground states and beyond, Republicans are taking hold of the once-overlooked machinery of elections. While the effort is incomplete and uneven, outside experts on democracy and Democrats are sounding alarms, warning that the United States is witnessing a ‘slow-motion insurrection’ with a better chance of success than Trump’s failed power grab last year… They point to a mounting list of evidence: Several candidates who deny Trump’s loss are running for offices that could have a key role in the 2024 election of the next president.

“In Michigan, the Republican Party is restocking members of obscure local boards that could block approval of an election… In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislatures are backing open-ended ‘reviews’ of the 2020 election, modeled on a deeply flawed audit in Arizona. The efforts are poised to fuel disinformation and anger about the 2020 results for years to come.

“All this comes as the Republican Party has become more aligned behind Trump, who has made denial of the 2020 results a litmus test for his support. Trump has praised the Jan. 6 rioters and backed primaries aimed at purging lawmakers who have crossed him. Sixteen GOP governors have signed laws making it more difficult to vote.

“An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showed that two-thirds of Republicans do not believe Democrat Joe Biden was legitimately elected as president… ‘It’s not clear that the Republican Party is willing to accept defeat anymore,’ said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist and co-author of the book ‘How Democracies Die.’ ‘The party itself has become an anti-democratic force.’” As tired as so many Americans are at the Congressional review and mainstream media’s focus on this issue, it remains a core dispute that will not simply go away. Trump himself seems unable to accept defeat.

But will a single additional “Capitol insurrection-like” event trigger an explosion of a blue-gray conflict like the 1861 war, with clear territorial boundaries and formal armies or will the war simply be a territorial unraveling as individual states, including militia-controlled areas, reject the supremacy of the Constitution or any federal government that does not align with their views, by violent force where deemed “necessary”? No one can be completely certain, if political violence erupts across the land, but…

As noted in my earlier blogs in this series, clear territorial delineation, a la Union versus Confederacy, is unlikely except in a few obvious conservative states like Oklahoma, South Dakota or Mississippi. But I would expect right-wing states use their ostensibly federalizable national guards (or as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has begun, to create new state militia with no connection to the federal government), or enlist organized private militia, to use force to oppose federal mandates that they cannot otherwise suppress. Some militia may just act on their own. 

I expect more of a balkanization of lands, the 21st and 20th century redefinitions of “civil war” such as shown in the components that once constituted Yugoslavia, the factionalization seen in the Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Syria and other parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, or the cartel and leftist pockets of de facto regional control that we see in Mexico and other Latin American nations. If conservative autocrats succeed in bringing Washington to heel, you can expect to see the same kind of autocratic suppression that exists in other nations that claim to have free elections, like Russia.

But serial unrest, pockets of defined resisters actually taking military and police control of their respective territories, however defined, would seem to be more likely should we escalate to civil war. The United States would thus become an increasingly “slow burn” and ungovernable amalgamation of warring factions and fracturing territorial jurisdictions until the entire country simply unravels as a functioning nation. De facto mini states would rise and fall, warring with each other. If the historical examples recent civil unrest overseas are examples, we would lose international credibility, our borders would probably be reinforced by Canada and Mexico, criminality would explode, economic sustainability (including the dollar) and infrastructure would collapse, our national legal system would fail and life as we know it would be completely altered. Unfortunately, this kind of civil war has a bad habit of lasting decades.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we could instead just recognize and reject the January 6th insurrection, the growing anti-democratic tendencies and the removal of common sense to gun control for what they really represent… and rebuild a great country… again.