November's Civil War Referendum
Yes, it's an election, but our troubles started in 2021.
I’ve been saying We’re Gonna Fight since 2017 and I started thinking this somewhere between 2009 and 2012. I didn’t pay much mind to the starting point because I was sure we were going to stop it. Now I’m just as certain that we can not.
We have a presidential election in seven months and there are two possible outcomes.
Democracy prevails and our weakened, discredited central power faces a serious reduction in remit in places like Texas and South Carolina. Look at the border stuff and the electoral map, respectively, for a sample of what this will be.
Democracy fails and our weakened, discredited central power, illegitimate in the eyes of the world, begins a mixture of kleptocratic kakistocracy and less inept but still comically bad theocratic repression.
Yes, really. Let’s review.
Attention Conservation Notice:
If you’ve already read How Civil Wars Start and The Insurgent’s Dilemma you’re free to doomscroll elsewhere.
What It Will NOT Be:
The U.S. has a national birth defect. It’s not that we had a civil war, it’s that we had one with defined nation states, uniformed armies, a clear beginning, and a fairly clean end. Forget all about that stuff you saw in Gods & Generals, we’re not having cavalry charges … unless Army is having some fun at Navy’s expense. We’ve got multiple aggrieved ethnosectarian groups and a weakened, discredited central power. The rest of the world sees clearly, but we are blinded by our own past.
Required Reading:
As above in the ACN, there are two must read books in this area.
How Civil Wars Start - the combinations of factions, these being groups that are polarized enough to not mix socially, and anocracy, that being the space between democracy and dictatorship, are the only two preconditions that matter. The anocracy bit should be understood as the political equivalent of playing in traffic - no matter which direction you’re headed, you stop and mess around in the middle, you’ll get squished.
The only way out of it? Doubling down on democratic participation. So long as the GOP lean into their voter suppression efforts, conflict is assured.
The Insurgent’s Dilemma is a review of the nature of insurgency since the decolonization era, the last time that insurgencies could tip over and then replace a national government. A review of chapter titles would be best here:
Introduction
Unraveling the Dilemma
Localized Insurgency: Para-states and Peripheries
Infiltrative Insurgency: The Trojan Horse
Ideational Insurgency: The Digital Counter-state and Beyond
Mind the Gap: Countering Localized Insurgency
In Defense of Democracy: Countering Infiltrative Insurgency
Dueling Narratives: Countering Ideational Insurgency
I read this book a bit like Meme Wars, a review of things in which I’ve participated or observed closely over the last fifteen years. Meme Wars was personal and tactical, The Insurgent’s Dilemma is strategic in nature.
Intermission:
I paused to check Space Karen’s cybersewer and just look at the trends.
Intromission:
We are indeed fucked, I’m sorry to say. Knowing this is coming, what preparations have YOU made? I’ve been working at mine with a sense of urgency.
Removed every bit of walk on talent from my life; the scene was unclean.
Packed up and moved, disempowering scene Fuckmuppets who had an idea of where I lived.
Retiring desktops, switching back to laptops, mobility is a must.
Overdue dental work first, then preventative measures.
Overdue specialist visit in a couple weeks, taking care of something that won’t kill me, but which has been a constant annoyance.
Career changes thanks to dramatic and seemingly permanent improvement in my health last June after sixteen years of Lyme and post-Lyme sequelae.
Firming up plans for departing the U.S.
I don’t say much about it here because I don’t want to fuel any Pissposting, but the precedent setting 1st Amendment case I won against federal informant James “Pissboy” McGibney came with an OIG complaint against the Dallas FBI field office. A lot of people vent about leaving when the news get intense for a minute, but I’ve just been slowly working towards it for the last several years. I must say it’s low key kinda weird having the paper trail to support an asylum claim.
Conclusion:
There will not be some back to the future blue & gray horse riding with sabers. Just not gonna happen. There will be men all in camo except for red MAGA hats. Cities will swarm with younger men and women in black bloc. Social services from Christian Nationalist churches will compete with similar efforts involving folks wearing little rainbow flags. We’ll splinter based on race, creed, and color.
The mathematics of insurgency is well established; power curves are people, if you see linear activity there’s something hiearchical driving it. When it came to social movements here in the U.S. that driver was always federal infiltration. Given current conditions this is definitely happening in some quarters, but it’s no longer clear what is nominally the rule of law, what is corrupt law enforcement/disloyal oligarch private militias, and what is foreign fiddling. You’re safer assuming ALL is the answer.
As we saw in yesterday’s MIOS: Doin’ A FISA, I’m catching active foreign influence ops by going through stale leaks. I shudder to think what those with access, authorization, and budgets are finding. We do have an open border problem, but it’s not the physical line between the U.S. and Mexico, it’s this damnable internet and our quaint notions of jurisdiction. I do not think we can agree on a fix before we’re dragged into something politics can not resolve.
I hate to be repetitive, but I do NOT think this overall direction is a good idea and I in no way advocate for it. But far worse would be to fail to understand it, make choices predicated on the future being almost the same as the past, and then suffering some grim personal setback when reality bites.