Reprinted with permission from:
“The Second Civil Struggle in the USA and its Aftermath” by Sam Vaknin (second, revised impression, 2029)
Summary of Chapter 83
“The polities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries swung between extremes of nationalism and polyethnic multiculturalism. Following the Nice Battle (1914-8), the disintegration of most of the continental empires – notably the Habsburg and Ottoman – led to a resurgence of a particularly virulent pressure of the previous, dressed as Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism.
The aftermath of the Second World Battle brought on a predictable backlash in the West towards all method of nationalism and racism. The united states, Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic, the EU (European Union, then European Group), the Commonwealth led by the United Kingdom, and the prominent USA epitomized the eventual triumph of multiculturalism, multi-ethnic states, and, in the Western democracies, pluralism.
Africa and Asia, just emerging from a part of brutal colonialism, have been out of synch with these developments in Europe and North America and began to espouse their own brands of jingoistic patriotisms. Attempts to impose liberal-democratic, multi-cultural, tolerant, pluralistic, and multi-ethnic ideas on these emergent entities was largely perceived and vehemently rejected by them as disguised neo-colonialism.
The disintegration, during the second half of the 20 th century, of the organizing ideas of international affairs – most crucially Empire within the 1960s and Communism in the Nineteen Eighties – led to the re-eruption of exclusionary, intolerant, and militant nationalism. The Balkan secession wars of the 1990s served as a stark reminder than historic forces and ideologies never vanish – they merely lie dormant.
Polyethnic multiculturalism came below attack elsewhere and all over the place – from Canada to Belgium. Straining to include this worrisome throwback to its tainted history, Europeans applied various models. In the United Kingdom, areas, resembling Scotland and Northern Ireland had been granted greater autonomy. The EU’s “ever closer union”, reified by its unlucky draft structure, was intermittently rejected and resented by increasingly xenophobic and alienated constituencies.
This time round, between 1980 and 2020, nationalism copulated with militant religiosity to supply particularly nasty offspring in Muslim terrorism, Christian fundamentalist (American) thuggish unilateralism, Hindu supremacy, and Jewish messianism. Scholars, resembling Huntington, spoke of a “conflict of civilizations”.
Mockingly, the much-heralded battle took place not between the USA and its enemies with out – but within the United States, in a second and devastating Civil War.
Americans long mistook the institutional stability of their political system, assured by the Structure, for a national consensus. They actually believed that the former ensures the latter – that institutional firmness and durability ARE the national consensus. The reverse, as we all know, is true: it takes a national consensus to yield secure institutions. No social construction – regardless of how venerable and veteran – can resist the winds of change in public sentiment.
In hindsight, the watershed obtained in the course of the Bush-Cheney presidency (2001-2009). The social and political concord frayed and then disintegrated with every successive blow: the battle in Iraq (2003-7), the botched evacuation and rescue efforts in the wake of hurricane Katrina (2005), the failed assassination try on the President’s life (2006), the further restrictions placed on civil and human rights in Patriot Acts III and IV (2008), and, lastly, the nuclear terrorist attack on Houston in the closing days of this divisive reign.
From there, it went solely downhill.
As opposed to the primary Civil Battle (1860-5), the Second Civil Struggle (2021-26) was fought within communities and throughout state boundaries. It was not territorial and basic – however whole and guerilla-like. It cut throughout the nation’s geography and pitted one ideological camp against another.
It might be too soon to objectively analyze and evaluate this gargantuan conflict. It was preceded by a decade of violent demonstrations, home-grown city terrorism, and numerous skirmishes involving the National Guard and even, in violation of the Constitution, the armed forces.
Some historians solid the whole interval as a battle of the religious vs. the secular. It clearly was not. By 2021, most Americans professed to being deeply religious, in a single manner or fashion. Nobody seriously disputed the importance of the Church – however many insisted on its separation from the state.
Therefore the protracted (and heated) confrontation between pro-life and professional-selection advocates when Wade vs. Roe was overturned by a politicized and weakened Supreme Courtroom in 2007. Hence the drawn out (and violent) debates in regards to the teaching of evolution principle in colleges or the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research.
Nor was the Civil Warfare fought between isolationists and interventionists. An ever more brazen model of put up-September 11 world terrorism and a growing dependence on worldwide commerce inexorably drove most Americans to simply accept their new role as an Empire. They actually realized to enjoy it, each emotionally and economically.
Thus, even erstwhile Jacksonian isolationists reluctantly acquiesced in their nation’s international exploits. But they insisted on blatant unilateralism and the projection of American might merely and solely to guard American interests. They abhorred the missionary ideology of the neo-conservatives. Spreading values, akin to democracy, ought to higher be left to NGOs and charities – they thundered.
The Civil Conflict was not concerning the preservation of East Coast liberalism, as some self-serving students would have it. America was by no means much less racist and homophobic than in the years immediately previous the conflagration. The talk, again, revolved round institutions. Should altering mores be enshrined in legislation and case regulation? Should the national ethos itself be rewritten? Should the very definition and quiddity of being an American (white, male, straight) be revisited?
Neo-Marxist chroniclers attribute the causes of the Second Civil Struggle to the growing disparities of wealth between the haves and the haves not. Presidents Bush and Cheney surely reversed L.B. Johnson’s Nice Society. They and their successors erased the quite a few entitlements and help packages that most of the economically disenfranchised came to depend on and to regard as a beginning right and as a cornerstone of the social contract.
Turning the clock back on affirmative motion and food stamps, for instance, indeed provoked widespread violence. But such outbursts can hardly be construed to have been the precursors of the gigantic flame that consumed the USA a couple of years hence.
Lastly, the Civil War was not about free commerce (beneficial to the service and manufacturing primarily based economies of some states) versus protectionism (helpful to the agricultural belts and bowls of the hinterland and to the recovering Gulf Coast). America’s economy was far too dependent on the surface world to reverse course. Its nationwide debt was being financed by Asians, its products were being bought all over, its commodities and meals had been coming from Africa and Latin America. The USA was in hock to a globalized and cruel economy. Protectionism was campaign posturing – not a cogent and coherent trade policy.
So, what were the roots and causes of the Second Civil Struggle?
None of the above in isolation – and the entire above in confluence. For many years, the citizenry’s belief in a packed and rigged Supreme Court declined. Politicians came to be considered a detached and heartless plutocracy. Americans felt orphaned, cheated, and robbed. The national consensus – the implicit settlement that together is healthier than alone – has thus evaporated. The result was the shots and explosions that rocked the United States (and the world in tow) on January 20, 2021.”
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