THE SECOND CIVIL WAR?

Someday documentaries will tell the story of America’s second Civil War, when the United States almost destroyed itself for the second time in its young history.

And that retelling might reveal that the first Civil War, the one we fought in the 1860s, never ended, and America’s second Civil War, the one we’re ramping up for now, is actually part two of the first.

For example, Reconstruction was less about making a new nation, and more about repurposing the Confederacy which still clung to the core values of the South — racial intolerance, elitism, and privilege, to name a few.

In 1865, the year the Civil War ended, refusing to surrender the notion of superiority, Southern state legislators enacted laws called “black codes” that were intended to once again control the behavior of former slaves.

Fifty years later, in 1906, 62 black Americans are known to have been lynched.

In the 1960s, 100 years after the end of the Civil War, separatism was still very much alive as African-Americans were barred from classrooms and bathrooms, from theaters and train cars, and from juries and legislatures.

Then in August of 1966, Martin Luther King Jr., while demonstrating against housing discrimination in Chicago, found himself face to face with an angry mob waving the Confederate flag and chanting “white power.”

Fifty-one years after that, in August 2017, hundreds of American Nazis and white supremacists carried torches across the University of Virginia campus chanting “White Lives Matter!” and “Jews Will Not Replace Us!” One woman was killed.

And today, in spite of the fact that the Confederate battle flag only represents seven of the 50 states, very few have challenged the patriotism of those who would try to convince the rest of us that all things Confederate — flags and statues — are not about racism at all.

The past has never been the past. We are a country that has been at war with itself for most of its existence.

But it isn’t just a case of white versus black or dysfunctional party politics: Conflict never stands apart from systemic failure, but peaks at a time of convergence, and that is where we are.

Of course, Donald Trump is the poison in the water, but he came along at a time when black churches, once front and center of the civil rights movement, haven’t really shown any sign of an organized effort to publicly call out bigotry.

And Trump is not responsible for the NAACP becoming as outdated as its acronym, relegating itself to a booking company that issues travel warnings.

It is not Trump’s fault that for eight years of the Obama administration, Democrats rested on self-righteousness, having elected the first black president, blind to the fact that one victory, no matter the magnitude, doesn’t guarantee the health of the party or the nation.

And even though only second-string Republicans show up for interviews in defense of Trump, not enough Republicans have had the courage to act in favor of saving the democracy.

Meanwhile, progressive whites have for the most part retired to the suburbs, satisfied that being friendly and accepting was enough to outweigh bigotry.

About Hispanic and Latino Americans, now the largest ethnic minority in the U.S., Trump has done a good job intimidating this population to the extent that even legal immigrants would rather be silent than risk becoming a target by bigots.

That common purpose cannot reside comfortably with individual rights is proof of our lack of courage in the face of adversity.

In this moment we are nothing like our Founding Fathers.