America’s schism: Are we heading for a civil war?
“Not long ago, the idea of another American Civil War seemed outlandish,” said Ron Elving in NPR.org, but now “it seems to suddenly be everywhere.” Last week marked the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, when our proud, 225-year streak of peaceful transitions between presidents came to a violent, bloody halt. In the ensuing year, that awful day seems only to have deepened the partisan divide—and the belief that further violence may be inevitable. A recent Washington Post poll found that 40 percent of Republicans and 23 percent of Democrats—in other words, tens of millions of people—now believe that violent attacks on the government are “sometimes justified.” Another recent poll found that a majority of Republicans and 41 percent of Biden voters agreed that it may be “time to split the country.” Trump Republicans are even more deeply convinced than a year ago that the 2020 election was stolen, said Zack Beauchamp in Vox, and far-right Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for a “national divorce.” Both conservatives and progressives see each other “as existential threats,” and believe that election rules have been rigged against them. That “makes it more and more likely that neither party will view a victory by the other as legitimate”—which political scientists and historians warn often precedes “democratic collapse.”
The divisions in our society are “real and deep,” said Steven Hayward in the New York Post, but “projections of a new civil war are overwrought.” First of all, “we lack the sectional geographical divide” that you need for a proper war; despite the lazy pundit shorthand of “red” and “blue” states, the real national schism is between the cultures of urban and rural communities. The two sides don’t have armies, either, said John Harris in Politico, and this notional civil war would be fought “about what exactly?” In 1860, the issue was slavery, and while we’ve enough mutual distrust to fuel years of rancorous politics, actual civil wars generally need “a real cause”— some “great question that will be resolved by the outcome.”
That question may be whether white, conservative Christians can tolerate a multiracial, secular America, said David Remnick in The New Yorker. The election of Barack Obama to the White House in 2008 deepened the fear of “many right-wing, rural whites” that they were losing their majority status. Today, tens of millions of white Americans are increasingly skeptical of free elections, and are openly talking about Hungary-style strongman rule as their best defense against “being ‘replaced’ by immigrants and people of color.” A second civil war wouldn’t involve uniformed armies clashing on grassy battlefields, said Lincoln Mitchell in NBCNews.com. It would take the form of “numerous, perhaps hundreds, of rival militias” using high-powered explosives and assault weapons to conduct terrorist attacks and political assassinations.
“The once unthinkable has become thinkable,” said David Smith in The Guardian. For a glimpse of where we may be headed, consider the Troubles that plagued Northern Ireland in the 20th century: bombings, guerrilla warfare, kidnappings, and assassinations of judges and elected leaders. Civil war isn’t inevitable, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. But even greater conflict than we’ve seen in recent years seems “more likely than a return to the sort of democratic stability many Americans grew up with.” Jan. 6 feels more like the beginning than the end.