America Edging
Closer to Civil War?
Clearing out my desk
and having a general tidy-up, I uncovered an article by Niall
Ferguson from last October. (You seriously mean you have not tidied
your desk since last October?) Before anyone puts me in the Pigpen
stockade, I must point out that I have done some tidying – just not
enough to get to the bottom of the pile. (aside) I remember when I
was a hard-working teacher, the Head sometimes would come into my
room – take one look at my desk (piled high with exercise books,
bits of paper and the detritus of a hard day at the chalk-face) and
comment on the untidy look of my desk. At such times he would,
unwisely in my view, comment that in his office his desk was always
immaculate. I simply could not avoid pointing out that the nature of
his desk simply showed that he did not have enough work to do. I
managed to do so with such good humour as to avoid being
trash-canned.
I digress.
Niall was arguing
that there is a kind of cultural war being fought on social media.
He goes on, “Of course the culture war is no more of real war that
the trade war with China.” He goes on to relate that in the news
at that time was the fact that pipe-bombs had been sent to some of
the President’s most vocal critics.. Clinton, Obama, Soros and
DeNiro to name but a few. A Florida man, Cesar Sayoc, 56, was
arrested. His van was covered with pro-Trump bumper stickers
including one reading “CNN sucks”. “Trump owns this”
declared a normally sober Washington correspondent. Ferguson did not
agree - pointing out that a direct causal relationship between the
two acts is just silly.
That people on both
sides of the political divide use hyperbole and inflammatory language
is not at issue. The do – on both sides of the Atlantic. And,
social media simply amplifies the opportunities to do so. Both
alt-right extremists and left wing nutters are more than capable of
inflaming any otherwise inconsequential situation. But, leading to a
civil war?
Ferguson contends
that scaremongers who fantasise that all left-leaning Americans may
emigrate to Canada (far too cold!) and right-wing gun nuts may secede
from the Union rather than submit to even modest Second Amendment
reform are over-stating the case.
He reflects: the
historian Victor Davis Hanson has warned that we are “at the brink
of a veritable civil war” and, therefore, we all need to pay
attention. His comments are designed to warn reasonable voters of
the dangers of extremism.
His historical
analysis quoting the 1850’s (When congressmen routinely entered the
House and Senate armed with pistols and swords and “The Caning of
Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22,
1856, in the United States Senate, when Representative Preston
Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina used a walking
cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican
from Massachusetts, in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two
days earlier in which he fiercely criticized slaveholders, including
a relative of Brooks. The beating nearly killed Sumner and it drew a
sharply polarized response from the American public on the subject of
the expansion of slavery in the United States. It has been considered
symbolic of the "Breakdown of reasoned discourse" that
eventually led to the American Civil War.”) - Wikipedia
Niall goes on: “the
most troubling analogy I heard last week was between the 2020
Presidential election and that of 1860. Lincoln was in a four-way
race in 1860. If a center-ish, say Ohio Governor Katich runs on a
third-party ticket and the Democrats nominate a progressive (say)
Sanders or Harris and if Trump seeks re-election (almost a certainty)
we could have a somewhat similar situation.
The parallels are
not comforting. The 1860 election simply confirmed that there was no
way to reconcile the two polar opposites. The issue of slavery had
made them irreconcilable. Lincoln’s election simply brought the
situation to it’s logical end.
You may argue that
there is no single issue like slavery to unite behind in today’s
culture war. But, the person who drew Niall’s attention to this
was none other than Steve Bannon.
Nuff, said?
