Author: p_c_neary@hotmail.com

On Valentine’s Day, 2065, the Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration dropped a bombshell: the US federal government had initiated criminal conspiracy charges against all major American sugar producers. Based on an enormous trove of evidence, sugar was the culprit for a wide-variety of health problems (obesity, heart disease, some cancers, autism and birth defects, even many mental illnesses). Furthermore, Big Sugar executives knew this as far back as the 1960’s, and engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the scientific data and even blame other products (remember the low-fat craze?). Millions of Americans, and other peoples worldwide, suffered and died due to the corporations’ actions.

Sugar immediately became the most suspect ingredient in history. The processed food industry began a race to the bottom of no-sugar in their products. Restaurants proudly posted signs proclaiming “we serve no sugar” or “take your sweet tooth elsewhere!” Sugar-free advertising became a badge of honor. But it didn’t stop there.

Of course, there was no Sugar Bowl college football game that year, or ever again. American sugar company stocks cratered, and advertisers turned down sugar sponsorship offers. The major media ran in-depth stories about the depth of the conspiracy: lies, pay-offs, political connections. Then media ran heart-wrenching stories of lives destroyed: everything from yo-yo dieters who had wasted their lives not realizing they were fighting a sugar addiction to families traumatized by children with autism or birth defects.

Predictably, the tone changed from the obvious (“Sugar is Evil”) to the more conspiratorial (“who knew what when?”). And there were plenty of targets. Big Sugar had many co-conspirators, from advertising agencies to scientists to politicians who played along. But it didn’t stop there.

Such a vast enterprise, operating openly for so long and causing so much heartache required a full and complete re-investigation of our history. Why didn’t federal bureaucrats stop this sooner? Why did some politicians not make this the top health priority? Why didn’t my doctor tell me? Where were the influencers, the sports heroes, the media personalities on this issue?

And so it began. The statue of former President Ron Desantis, who continued defending sugar long after it was obviously wrong, was defaced several times before being removed. Several high schools named for former first lady Michelle Obama dropped the association, since she was pro-nutrition but insufficiently anti-sugar. The House of Representatives changed the name of the Nancy Pelosi House Office Building to the Victims of Sugar Office Building, noting she never investigated Big Sugar while hoarding her designer ice cream. The University of Florida (America’s largest sugar-producing state) announced full-scholarships for students of families with disabilities associated with sugar use. The American Sugar refinery in Louisiana entered bankruptcy negotiations to settle claims for damages. Candy became a symbol of public disgust: you had to be a certain age to buy it in stores, and it was sold from behind the counter in unmarked paper bags. The NBA eliminated its LeBron James Award for Positive Corporate Relations after it became public he had invested in Big Sugar.

Alright, we’ve gone from the sublime to the absurd, so I think I have made my point. When you retroactively apply the thoughts, opinions, or even morality of today to the past, you must take care. I say this as a person who believes in moral absolutes; I always chuckle to myself when Progressives who say morality and truth are relative (to each person), then apply absolute tests of morality to historical figures. Not much for intellectual consistency, what? And to anyone out there thinking, “but Pat, you can’t be comparing sugar to slavery or Jim Crow or genocide or. . . “, I’m not. I am comparing the use of critical theory to history with a hypothetical future, to illuminate just how ridiculous it is, regardless of the seriousness of the subject matter. Plus, if you want to make the “slavery is far more serious argument”, okay, but what are you doing today given that there are almost twenty-five million people living in slavery now? Want to take responsibility for that? Or for ignoring it?

Much of what I wrote about sugar is true. It would not be surprising if some of the exaggerations I made later prove to be true, too. Sugar is terrible for you, it is addictive, Big Sugar did fight to blame fat for obesity and heart disease, politicians did and do protect sugar producers. And many if not most people know all this. Looking at our current lives with a “sugar-only” lens fails to consider how ubiquitous sugar is in our foods, how it causes cravings, and how many other MAJOR HEALTH CRISES compete for our attention. Life is more complicated today then where you stand on sugar.

One of the worst aspects of woke-ism is the assumption we moderns are morally and intellectually superior (because we are on the right side of history) and thus the application of today’s (superior) views to historical persons, places, or things. One might question the superiority of modern man (or woman). Where is today’s Lincoln or Washington? Da Vinci or Augustine? Mother Teresa or Jeanne d’Arc? We seem to have much more information at our fingertips, yet be much less well-informed. I see little reason to profess our intellectual or moral authority.

This is not an academic argument. The America represented in popular tracts like The 1619 Project is a practically-irredeemable place. As a young man growing up in a small town in Indiana, I was taught the standard fare of American history: the battles and the heroes and the missteps. I also learned about slavery, women soldiers in the Revolution and Civil War, the Japanese internment camps and the Jim Crow South. And I grew up far from any progressive educational paradise. All these things were covered in due course: briefly, and with context. If I had digested the American history put forward by Howard Zinn or the New York Times , I never would have dedicated almost forty years of my life to defending America and it’s constitution. Why defend the indefensible? Is that the goal?

G.K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, “Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” America, as a nation founded on an idea, has few common touchstones. You aren’t an American because of the way you look, or who you know, how you vote, how much money you have, or even how you got to America. You are an American if you believe in the idea of America. History is one of the few anchors our nation has. It must be history warts and all, as it happened and by its own standards at the time. Otherwise it is not history, it is an immature and unwise form of propaganda.

A violent mob attacks a US government building, seizes and occupies it, and attempts to incite a larger revolt. Order is only restored after violence resulting in the deaths of several of the attackers. The press, local and national, provides immediate coverage of a national sensation, calling the attack an “insurrection”, “rebellion,” or “treason.” The surviving attackers are put on trial. Some media relentlessly hype the story, assessing the profound implications of the attack, how things have permanently changed, that some people can no longer be trusted in any way, that there is no way to compromise with evil.

January 6th, 2021? Nope. October 16th, 1859. The attack is now known as John Brown’s Raid on the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. The parallels are frightening, but instructive. No one called it a raid at the time: that was a convention which only happened after the Union won the civil war. It was an insurrection or treason, and those who engaged in it were so charged and executed. The raucous press came from the technological wonders of the telegraph, just then becoming the means of instantaneous communication. The obsessive media coverage was in the South, which not only viewed the attack as the last straw, but used it to further inflame popular opinion. John Brown’s intent to incite a nation-wide slave revolt struck deeply at the fears of Southern plantation life, where hundreds of such revolts (large and small) had created an atmosphere of panic which only needed a small nudge to disunion.

As a spark along the lines of John Brown’s raid, January 6th pales in comparison. Yes, it was ugly, a stain on our nation’s record, and totally unnecessary. But the proximate cause of our next civil war? Sorry, no. For a moment, let’s consider the counterfactual case: this was the spark, it does lead to civil war. What would that look like? Let’s start with some data, shall we?

This graphic shows how the US voted, county by county, in the 2020 election.

The traditional analysis of this data is the US is a “sea of red” areas with little population surrounding isolated blue city-states. One could imagine a contiguous Red-state region comprising the south, midwest, and mountain states, with blue territory in the DC-Boston corridor, the Pacific Northwest, and Arizona/New Mexico. But such a configuration is more illusory than real. Illinois is a blue state; the area east of the Cascade mountains is quite red. Urban areas across the South are big and blue. There are areas where one can never run into a person of a different political perspective (think Roberts County, Texas, or San Francisco), and Americans are increasingly moving to places which align with their political views, but that doesn’t (yet) make either side a coherent nation when looking at the state level. Which means a Second American Civil War would not be an organized one with armies marching on Capitals, but a disorganized one, pitting armed groups against one another. Less Gettysburg, more like Bleeding Kansas.

Where food is produced (green for crops, orange for herds):

There is an obvious advantage to the wide-open red spaces in that that is where much (but not all!) of the food is produced. The longer the disunited battles go on, the more important the need for food. Sieges and starvation are huge weapons to be wielded under such circumstances. However, the other side of the coin is transportation:

It goes without saying that all forms of transport (and communication) go through urban hubs. So while red areas may produce the food, they will find it difficult to share it, and even more difficult to communicate. To borrow a military term, blue city states may have “interior lines of communication” which give them a natural advantage against larger red areas.

Speaking of forces here are the US Armed Forces totals, 2020:

But where do these service members come from?

I have seen some pundits smirking that whoever tries to start a civil war will be no match for the US military. That is true of course, but neither were the Mujaheddin. The US military was totally unprepared to pacify a small place like Iraq, let alone red or blue America. Occupation and pacification is manpower intensive, and the US military simply “does not have the dudes” as my boss used to say. On top of that, more of those in uniform come from red areas, and while some would honor their oath to the Constitution, others would interpret it differently (same as it ever was). The US military would be riven by the same divisiveness as the rest of the country.

Speaking of weapons, here is a 2020 breakdown on the twenty states with the largest registered gun totals:

The key word above is registered. Only 6 million of the 390 million firearms in the US are registered (according to the Pew Research Center). Read that again. And the vast majority of these weapons are in red hands, in red areas.

So where does the data lead us? We have to make two assumptions here. Which side is provoking the action, and which side is trying to be “left alone” rather than dictate to the other side. I think it is fair to argue red America would be more likely to provoke, but also is more likely to want to be left alone. These are arguable assumptions, but we need to make them to push the analysis forward.

After the “spark,” one would see declarations by various states and areas denying federal control or jurisdiction. Local militias set up roadblocks or engage in raids to seize key infrastructure or to terrorize adjacent population centers. Some rural, red areas would sit out the conflict, either siding with their blue state government (Illinois? New York?) or just passively watching and waiting. Likewise, some major urban areas in the south would choose to go with the red flow. Some deep red areas would barely notice a change: a farmer in Iowa might wonder what all the fuss was about?

Blue citizens in the cities would feel a pinch first. Things like water supplies, power generation, even airports are far enough from urban centers to be at risk of occupation. Of course everyone would notice the stoppage of the free flow of goods and people: something far more drastic and uncertain than anything during the pandemic or even 9-11. One real wild card is information flow in this information age. Blue America would hold an advantage here, with an early monopoly on broadcast and social media. But, it is hard to deny broad area access to the internet for extended periods of time. More likely, information access would be a bargaining chip played against other essentials (water or power, for example).

All this happens as a million scores are settled across the land. Red Americans living in the cities will uproot and flee just as rural or suburban blue Americans do the same when violence, or just the threat of violence, beckons. America is a country with a high tolerance for violence, and a second civil war would challenge the upper limit. The absence of pitched battles does not mean the absence of large numbers of casualties.

Both sides would be exhausted within months. Assuming red America just wants to be left alone, there is no need for storming the Hudson river bridges and occupying Wall Street (literally). Blue America would fairly quickly realize there is no way to force red America to capitulate, and where is Idaho, anyway? Negotiations begin, and some of the more moderate people on both sides would question whether the fighting was really worth it. There is no simple geographical resolution, no two-state solution, as the fighting would have made clear. Who gets the nukes? Who gets the federal debt? The infrastructure was unified and can’t be apportioned. How does the place formerly known as America begin to function again?

I bet the daunting nature of the challenges, the horror at the damages inflicted, and the dim prospects for the future would serve to further a tacit re-integration of the United States of America. The peace process would probably include a constitutional convention to address the root causes and prevent a relapse. Some state boundaries would be re-aligned, and states would acquire more authority over theirs laws and resources, to the cost of the federal government. Red states would use this new authority to cement certain cherished conservative positions (e.g., guns, abortion, voter fraud) and blue states would do the obverse. Blue states would seek to limit resources transfers (via the federal government) to red states. If federal authority is lessened, the US might end up with a weakened President and Executive Branch, a single (unicameral) legislature with a mixed representation by state and perhaps other groups, and a more limited Supreme Court. Deep scars would remain, and the re-United States would need a legal remedy to address the war crimes, expropriations, and other calamities.

In this analysis, red and blue America waste countless lives and treasure to end up back where they started, only greatly reduced and with an enforced national commitment to be civil again. Hardly the stuff of patriot dreams. This is only one hypothetical analysis, but the data provided earlier has real and strong implications. It doesn’t require the gift of foresight to know widespread violence rarely leads to a better life. The common folk, red and blue, know this. Southern newspapers inflamed their readers after Harper’s Ferry, so much so that the South began secession before Lincoln even took office! When you hear talk of another civil war today, ask yourself, “are they trying to prevent it, or foment it?”

Much of the recent focus on the possibility of another American Civil War stems from the coverage of the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. I made the case in the last post that this focus on a potential spark misses the point: we aren’t ready for a spark. But what might push the red and blue extremes to make the psychic break that violence is necessary, and therefor create the conditions for a future spark and conflagration?

The key question is how much respect there is–on either side–for the system of government.

During the first civil war, Lincoln famously made the conflict all about the Union, that is, the system which bound the states together.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Horace Greeley

While Lincoln later ennobled the effort to save the Union by including emancipation, his initial impulse was telling: the American system was worth saving at any cost.

The Confederacy also paid mock tribute from their side, borrowing much language from the US Constitution and making the argument that the issue was state’s rights, not slavery (a red herring, but the attempt shows how important was the need to justify the conflict in terms of the existing governmental system.).

Today there is ample evidence for conern that both sides show fundamental distrust for the American system.

How are our norms holding up? It is easy to point out Team Trump’s “deep state” conspiracy, and Trump himself was to political decorum what Genghis Khan was to the law of war. Now President Biden has called the other side traitors favoring a return to Jim Crow. Senator McConnell famously fiddled with US Supreme Court vacancies, making up new traditions as he went. Majority Leader Schumer is calling to ease the filibuster (he might want to whisper in the ear of the late Harry Reid as he lies in state in the US Capitol, and ask how that might work out the next time Republicans are in control of the Senate). For forty years Republican Presidents found their Supreme Court Justices never quite worked out the way they intended; now Democrats insist the court must be term-limited, expanded, or otherwise neutered to the left’s taste. Don’t even mention the electoral college: I don’t blame the average American for not knowing why we have one, or what purpose it serves. And the constant refrain of “American Democracy” has had the predictable effect of leading people to wonder why the popular vote is irrelevant. All of which is to say, yes, our norms are up for debate by both sides, with neither side seeming to understand that if the rules of the games are gone, we are about to engage in political Calvin Ball.

Well, at least we have legitimate elections, right?

Again, Trump’s nascent 2024 campaign seems to be predicated on discredited theories about voter fraud in the 2020 result. And various GOP state parties are trying to amend state election rules to permit political officials to overrule vote counts. But then don’t forget all those who claim the Supreme Court “stole” the 2000 election (they didn’t, according to the NY Times AND the Washington Post), or that the Russians engineered Trump’s 2016 victory because he was their Manchurian Candidate (he wasn’t, and the Steele dossier was garbage). Stacey Abrams claims she lost the 2018 Georgia Governor’s race due to voter suppression in an election where Georgia registered the greatest increase in average voter participation of any state in thirty years. And now Republicans are banking on rolling back more liberal voting rules introduced for the pandemic, and Democrats are calling it Jim Crow 2.0. Except for one small point. There is no evidence greater turnout favors Democrats or hurts Republicans. There is also very little evidence easy registration, drop boxes, early voting rules, absentee ballots or voter identification laws affect voter turnout. Both sides are posturing about this, and calling into question every election at every level of government. If elections are only legitimate when your sides wins, you have a problem.

What about the ability of the American system to force compromise? That too hangs in the balance. Both sides agree the Electoral Act of 1887 needs to be updated to rule out the type of shenanigans Trump’s lawyers peddled about the electoral count. Yet the Democrats haven’t moved on it. Republicans won’t support any form of lifting the debt limit. The Congress passed the infrastructure bill with bipartisan support, but the Democrats insist on stuffing the Build Back Better bill with items even all the Democrats can’t agree on. Both sides and both Houses are set to pass a budget resolution, but mostly because it will reinstate earmarks (designated pork for one’s constituents). I guess that is some hope: Congress can still agree on bacon.

If you’ve read this far, you may be wondering how I come to the conclusion that we’re not ready for a spark. Our norms are under attack, elections results are questioned, our legislature gridlocked. That’s not a pretty picture, but both sides are still fighting within the system. I don’t think the system is healthy right now; I do think that if either side continues to over-react by challenging the system itself, we will set the stage for eventual violence.

What that may look like I’ll consider in part III.

A Canadian academic warns that Canada needs to be prepared for the break-up of it southern neighbor. American academics are far beyond that, warning the nation is on the brink of falling into authoritarianism. US General Officers warn the US military is not prepared for–but should be prepared to suppress– insurrection. President Biden likened the January 6th, 2021, riot to an insurrection (a “knife at the throat of our democracy”), and many more commentators called it the first shot in an increasingly violent political battle. A recent poll found one-third of Americans believe it may be necessary (under some circumstances) to take violent action against the federal government!

I agree we live in volatile times, bordering on the violent. The increasing number of road rage incidents and other violent crimes, and the general state of discourse on social media all confirm it. People are on edge, that is unarguable. But civil war?

I’ll take a few blog posts to talk through why civil wars happen, how they happen, and even consider what another American civil war would look like. To begin, I don’t think a civil war is particularly likely. Too much is made of recent history like the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and not enough attention is paid to deeper trends which are much more important.

First off, why do civil wars happen? They are not accidents of history; they require certain fundamental precedents, much like a wildfire requires a dry spell and under-brush. The most fundamental requirement is deep-seated resentment. Groups have to fear one another, loathe one another, separate from one another, and finally hate one another. The reason is immaterial: the attitude is all important.

Next, for cause, there is the absolute necessity for either side to decide there is no way out except through fighting. This is the realization that despite all the pain and suffering envisioned, the only choice is war. This hurdle is the most difficult to surmount. People understand that civil war brings immense uncertainty to their lives, so they don’t undertake it lightly. If there is an alternative, they will usually choose it.

Finally, the resentment and resignation (to fight), like a wildfire, needs a spark. Something happens which crystallizes the thinking of one side or the other: Things will not get better. Mind you, you may need more than one spark. Leading up to the American Civil War, there were crises over Missouri, Kansas, Texas, California, the Supreme Court ruling on the Fugitive Slave Act (Ableman v. Booth), John Brown’s raid, and finally the election of 1860. Ernest Hemingway’s famous comment about how bankruptcy occurs applies here: “Slowly, and then suddenly.”

So where does the United States stand today against these criteria? We certainly have deep-seated resentments among the polar ends of the political spectrum. Progressives and Trumpsters have nothing but venom for one another, and those of us in the middle often get lumped in with one side or the other for any attempt to provide balance or perspective. While most Americans fall somewhere in between the political extremes, the activists on either side–and the media on either side–work hard to divide. At this they are succeeding.

Has either side decided there is no way out except for fighting? No, but the trends are not good. The Capitol riot was a horrible affair from start to finish, and the President’s intent (even in the rally) was to intimidate the Congress (and the Vice President) into changing the electoral outcome. It was an ill-conceived, poorly planned, and ultimately unsuccessful effort, but the violence it condoned was another escalatory step. On the other side, Progressives explained away the violence of the Black Lives Matter movement as “understandable” and also excused the anarchist violence against the government in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Not at all the same thing, but yet also steps in the wrong direction.

These steps were less important in my opinion than the current moves afoot to change our system of government–or its norms. I will address these changes, and the dangers they pose, in the next bog post. Suffice it to say the current focus on whether January 6th, or the mid-terms, or the 2024 election could be the spark to civil war puts the cart before the horse. Neither side has made the determination that only violence will succeed. But that determination may be forthcoming if it looks like the governmental system itself is up for debate.