It was shortly after the Confederate States government was established in Montgomery, Alabama, that that the South opened fire on a small military base: Fort Sumpter in South Carolina (pictured above). And so, on April 11, 1861, the Civil War began. Blue vs. Gray. Massive armies meeting on the battlefield. Two clear sides tearing at each other. The result: more American casualties than the combined losses of WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam combined.
Is a possible new American civil war will equally encompass an easily defined central/southern United States configuration against northeastern, perhaps north-central states and the west coast territorial split? Not likely. For example: Northern Florida is quite red. Southern Florida blue. Texas is red, except most of their big cities are blue. Western Oregon and Washington are blue. The eastern portions are red. Coastal and major urban California is very blue, but agricultural and rural areas are red. Hmmmm. But that doesn’t mean a civil war cannot happen.
Cops and military tend to lean to the right, and while they are charged to honor and protect the Constitution, very few have even tried to read that document. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to require each and every police officer (however titled) and member of the military to take a course on constitutional law? Shouldn’t they know what they have been sworn to protect?
Here's a little example of how those sworn to protect our Constitution have figured out how to distort that democratic road map to their individual desires… from the American Bar Association Journal (December 21st). “‘Constitutional sheriffs’ [roughly 10% of the nation’s 3,000 sheriffs] contend that their authority goes beyond enforcing the law to determining what the law is.
“These so-called sheriffs say their authority is greater than other elected officials because of their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, according to a Washington Post op-ed by Christy E. Lopez, a ‘professor from practice’ at the Georgetown University Law Center.
"Robert L. Tsai, an author and a professor at the Boston University School of Law, explained the concept in a 2017 Politico article… ‘The strange idea that unites all members of this movement is that a sheriff is the highest law enforcement officer within a county’s borders—superior not only to local police, but also to officers and agents of the federal government,’ wrote Tsai, who was previously a professor at the American University Washington College of Law.
“The sheriffs’ claims are bogus, according to Lopez… ‘After searching in vain for any legal basis for sheriff supremacy and checking with several others who have studied law enforcement and civilian oversight, I can confirm that a constitutional sheriff with unique autonomy is not actually a thing,’ she wrote.
“Constitutional sheriffs have refused to enforce local mask mandates and federal gun laws… ‘We are defying tyrants,’ said Richard Mack, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, in a November interview with the Washington Post. ‘People appreciate and sympathize with the mission. They don’t want to be told they have to wear a diaper on their face.’”
This is simply an expression of an explosively growing belief by many conservatives that they have an individual right to determine what their constitutional rights are and which laws they will or will not resist. The headlines, for example, are rife with conservatives’ protesting that mask wearing and vaccine mandates violate their self-declared “constitutional rights,” even though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that no such rights exist, beginning with Johnson vs. Massachusetts decided in 1905.
Aggregations (70%) of Republicans have likewise self-determined that the 2020 election was fraudulent, notwithstanding that they accept the election of their Congresspeople that were on the same ballot and that there has been no serious evidence of genuine voter fraud, despite numerous audits and recounts, produced by any credible source. That self-determination has justified a litany of red state legislation that effectively disenfranchises rising opposition to conservative values and candidates. With a highly politicized Supreme Court expressing a revulsion to overturning these practices, conservative gloat on the likelihood that their efforts will work.
In short, conservative minorities, well beyond the private militia that have formed all over conservative America, will probably defy the central government (unless they can take it over), creating pockets of potential violence dissonance, strongest in red states, in between in so-called “swing states” and resisted in clearly blue regions. That many conservatives feel that strongly is evidenced by their willingness to face COVID death, a simple medical and not an obvious political reality, by never wearing a mask or getting a vaccination, a value they wish to impose on schools, businesses and other popular or necessary venues.
There are a few hopeful signs, mostly among younger, better educated and more individually tolerant rising voters, who seem to be rejecting this move towards minority autocracy by a two to one margin. Their issues, however, center around climate change, student debt and housing affordability, yet there is evidence that they are so frustrated by the current political scene that they simply are not participating as active campaigners and voters that their numbers otherwise suggest.
As the number of politically related shootings increase, and notwithstanding the Derek Chauvin and Kim Potter convictions, the number of questionable police shootings of people of color seems to continue. At what point does the dam burst? At what point do opposing factions simply embrace the “inevitability” of a shooting war? If ever? Is the second American civil war coming? And if it is, what might it look like? Stay tuned. My series continues.
I’m Peter Dekom, and even though we have fought a Civil War before, most Americans simply ignore history and our own escalating dissention and wrongfully believe, “it can’t happen here.”
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