America is Already at War With Itself

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

Articles depicting the decline of democracy in the United States now abound. They have become a dime a dozen, particularly since the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. They describe a country in disarray that many observers feel is coming unraveled.

The legitimacy of its elite has been shaken repeatedly, and faith in the electoral process itself is now rapidly declining among large segments of the electorate. Stagnating middle-class incomes and rising inequality has resulted in economic insecurity in broad regions of the country’s interior, while growth is increasingly concentrated in a dozen or so metropolitan centres.

Talk of insurrection, secession, civil conflict and civil war has even entered political discourse. Increasing numbers of Americans claim they would actually prefer to declare war on those of their fellow citizens who have become “incorrigible enemies.”

They are confident that the military is so strong that in any conflict the federal government is simply assured of victory. But they forget something.

The most significant political split in America is between rural areas and coastal metropoles, and the armed forces are reliant, as far as recruiting soldiers goes, on the very areas it would be tasked with policing.

The more that brutality would be used against fellow Americans, the more these soldiers would be ordered to fight and kill their own friends and family-- a recipe for serious mutiny and disobedience.

You don’t have to look to other countries where the military dissolved into rival units during civil war, as has happened in the Irans and Lebanons of the world. America has its own example: the 1861-1965 war that saw tens of thousands of Americans die at the hands of fellow citizens.

Last Dec. 17, three retired U.S. army generals warned of an insurrection or even civil war if the results of the coming 2024 presidential election were not accepted by some in the military.

Former Major Gen. Paul Eaton, former Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, and former Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson made the warnings in an op-ed in the Washington Post. They wrote that they were “increasingly concerned” about the 2024 election and the “potential for lethal chaos inside our military.”

The generals highlighted the “disturbing number” of veterans and active-duty members of the military that took part in the Jan. 6 incident.

According to a poll conducted by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement Dec. 17-19 among a random national sample of 1,101 adults, the percentage of Americans who say violent action against the government is justified at times stands at 34 per cent, which is considerably higher than in past polls by the Post or other major news organizations dating back more than two decades.

The political right and left increasingly loathe each other and believe the other side is out to destroy the country. They praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose.

Bizarrely, President Biden went to Georgia on Jan. 11 to talk about election security. The core of his message was that future elections could well be rigged and stolen! It reflects how much the partisan wars continue to rage across the country.

Canadian novelist, essayist, and cultural commentator Stephen Marche has just published The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future. Marche has spoken with soldiers and counterinsurgency experts about what it would take to control the population of the United States; he thinks that the battle plans for the next civil war have already been drawn up. Marche describes a Trump rally where a reporter spotted Republicans wearing shirts that read, “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”

The damage from inflation, assaults on the rule of law at the southern border, and the lawlessness pervading major American cities arguably pose more serious threats to American democracy than the prospect of a sequel to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Liberal democracy is a fragile system because it rests on the principle that citizens will respect the right of democratic representation even for those with whom they strongly disagree. In today’s America, both sides are failing that test. America is engaged in a war with itself.