Civil War 2.0 Begins
Deeply saddening, but completely unsurprising.
If you are among the 667 subscribers to this Substack, you may NOT be surprised by what is happening in Los Angeles. Nope. You’ve had plenty of foreshadowing here.
Let’s take a look at the runup to America’s Civil War 2.0.
Attention Conservation Notice:
A recounting of how we got where we are. You probably don’t want to admit it to yourself, and that’s entirely understandable.
Historical Articles:
We’re Gonna Fight - 2024-02-05 me going on about what’s coming, mentioned Barbara F. Walter’s How Civil Wars Start and David H. Ucko’s The Insurgent’s Dilemma.
November’s Civil War Referendum - 2024-04-10 me again pointing out that we’re not going to see cavalry in blue & gray, we’re having a proper civil war, not a repeat of our 19th century unicorn war.
We’re Gonna Fight: International Edition - 2024-04-22 A dense post on life after globalization.
What Would a Second US Civil War Really Look Like? - 2024-04-26 Simon Roper digs into what might happen, also mentioned How Civil Wars Start.
Snivel War - 2024-07-01 me declaring we were going to pay attention to the oncoming conflict in Q3 of 2024. I often do quarterly topics like this.
Patriots & Tyrants - 2024-07-04 A full reprint of Thomas Jefferson’s letter that contains the patriots & tyrants quote.
Theocracy In Our Future - 2024-07-26 Where are all those evangelicals from my youth, who would howl about false prophets at the drop of a hat?
We ARE Fighting - 2024-09-27 Nobody is going to bombard Fort Sumter, we’re sliding into it, not plunging.
Surfing Our Kondratiev Wave - 2025-03-16 an assessment from a small group of analysts on what will happen next.
Stages of Genocide - 2025-03-25 Can’t happen here? It IS happening here, please extract your head from your hindquarters.
Our Oncoming Civil War - 2025-03-31 Barbara F. Walter being interviewed about her book, How Civil Wars Start. It really is required reading.
Edging Towards Violence - 2025-06-06 a brief milestone post, noting that trouble is now imminent.
Observations:
The U.S. declared war on the Mexican cartels. What has begun in Los Angeles will naturally merge with this, as the situation becomes lethally violent in L.A., and the cartels seek to exploit this for their own purposes. It wasn’t how things actually started, but the “battlespace shaping” that will lead to this has been obvious.
The container ships stopped showing up at Long Beach and Oakland a few weeks ago. This is due to the Trump administration’s grabasstic tariff policy making, but watch for this to get attributed to the kinetic conflict they’ve ginned up here in California. The smooth brained conspiracists will carry the ball on this one.
See that post from July 26th of last year? See the Secretary of Defense violating the Establishment Clause? Go stand in front of your bathroom mirror and slap the shit out of yourself until you’re SURE you’re awake, then look right at yourself and explain what this means in your own words.
And Trump would like to arrest governor Newsom.
Personal Preparation:
You should probably review this piece where Amanda Ripley talks about lessons from disaster survivors. Note in particular the “milling around talking phase”, which is what groups of people do when confronted with a major discontinuity, unless they have prior experience or have been prepared in some fashion. I hope I’ve helped some of you avoid this phase … for me, it’s why I posted Mourning Mankind on 2025-02-04. My thing has always been prevention and it was obvious that had failed no later than November 6th of 2024.
How Civil Wars Start has been required reading, but it’s about to get marked historical. We missed the window to prevent what is happening, it’s only useful in that it contains the recipe for coming out of it - doubling down on democratic participation.
The new must-read is David H. Ucko’s The Insurgent’s Dilemma. Everything changed, YOU can’t predict what comes next, this book will help you make sense of things. We’re going to get to a new normal, after many spasms of violence, and it won’t look like anything most of us would expect.
Conclusion:
I am not even reading/watching U.S. news. This self made disaster has been coming at us full bore for a long time, and now it’s here in an undeniable fashion. My interest in prevention started in March of 2009. This Substack was all about tradecraft in service of interdicting this problem, from its inception at the end of August of 2023 until I recognized it was too late, in early November of 2024.
Talking about defensive tradecraft is still a thing here, but getting involved in the conflict itself? Sorry, but I walked point for 189 months, or maybe more correctly I should self-describe as trail team lead, and in the end it was for naught.
What’s next will be a whole bunch of standing deadwood “influencer” types getting clobbered, and some of the ones that remain standing will eventually prove to have been coopted, that’s if we ever get to some truth and reconciliation phase of things. Then disaffected elites will seek to fund some sort of response, and the majority of what they dispense will end up in the pockets of middlehumans, some of whom will be standing deadwood, others of whom will be grfiter/war profiteer types.
So there you have it. I should start tagging these all #toldjaso
Coda:
Turn off the news. No need for FOMO; it might be starting in L.A., but it’ll come to your street soon enough.
Look at my Past & Future shelf on BookWyrm.
The Insurgent’s Dilemma is the book to start on immediately if you’re baffled by what is happening.
An excellent next book in the queue would be Dmitry Orlov’s The Five Stages of Collapse: Laying the Groundwork for Social, Political, and Economic Revolution, and for bonus points neither it nor Reinventing Collapse are terribly long.
I can’t figured out how to get it into BookWyrm, but I really enjoyed Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization. If you’re trying to make out what I meant up above about “disaffected elites” I think this might be worth a read. The more thoughtful military men who will be running the counter-insurgency effort against peaceful protesters will certainly have seen this.