Advertising
Supported by
Guest Essay
By Stephen Marché
Mr. Marche is the protagonist of “The Next Civil War. “
“No man in America wanted, or expected, or intended to,” Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, said in the early 20th century. What would possibly seem inevitable in retrospect — the terrible consequences of a country plagued by political turmoil, violence, and heartbreak through slavery — came as a surprise to those who lived through this. Even those who expected it were unprepared for its violent escalation. At least in this sense, the existing department that afflicts the United States emerges distinct from the Civil War. If there is ever a time of civil war, it will not be for lack of imagining it.
The most prominent example comes this week in the form of an action blockbuster called “Civil War. “The film, written and directed by Alex Garland, presents a situation in which the government is at war with breakaway states and the president, in The Eyes of a Part of the Country, is delegitimized. Some critics denounced the project, arguing that releasing the film in this particular election year is downright dangerous. They assume that the mere mention of a long-term national clash can turn it into truth and that the film is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s not true.
Not only does this critique vastly overestimate the power of the written word or the moving image, but it ignores the genuine forces pushing America toward an ever-deepening divide: inequality; a hyper-partisan duopoly; and a superseded and dysfunctional Constitution. Mere stories are not hard enough to replace those authenticities. But those stories can make us aware of the threats we face. The greatest political danger in America is not fascism, nor is consciousness. It’s inertia. The United States wants a warning.
The explanation for the increased anxiety over a civil war is obvious. The Republican National Committee, now at the direction of the presumptive nominee, asked the applicants if they thought the 2020 election had been stolen, an apparent litmus test. Extremism has migrated into the political principal. la stream and some fanciful fictions have migrated with it. In 1997, a Texas separatist organization was widely viewed as terrorist thugs and their movement, if it deserved that title, collapsed after a week-long confrontation with police. Just a few months ago, Texas sued the federal government over the border. Armed militias are camped along the border. It’s not a trailer for a movie. Happens.
But politicians, pundits and much of the electorate don’t seem to take the threat of violence seriously enough. There is a deep-seated assumption, derived from the country’s recent history of global dominance, along with a kind of biological national optimism, that in the United States, everything works out well. While right-wing journalists and fiction writers have predicted a violent end to the Republic for generations, one of the foundational documents of neo-Nazism and white supremacy is 1978’s “The Turner Diaries,” a novel that imagines a From the American Revolution to a race war: His writings sound more like wishful thinking than warnings.
When I attended conventions in preparation for the writing of my book, I discovered his visions of a collapsed American Republic strangely appealing: it’s a world where everyone grows their own food, gathers as a circle of relatives by candlelight, defends their assets against unpredictable threats, and relies on their own power-to-spirit. His favorite situation was more like a kind of post-apocalyptic “Little House on the Prairie. “
We are retrieving the content of the article.
Please allow javascript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience as we determine access. If you’re in Reader mode, log out and log in to your Times account or subscribe to the full Times.
Thank you for your patience as we determine access.
Already a subscriber? Sign in.
Want all the Times? Subscribe.
Advertising