Category: Civil War

Civil War, Neat Graphs, and Carrie Fisher’s Leg

“That’s not an argument, that’s just contradiction.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

argue

Hmm, I’ll have what he’s having.

Wilder Note:  Normally, Friday posts (for the last 70 or so weeks) have been devoted to health topics.  I figure why not make everyone feel thoughtful right before the weekend, rather than guilty on a Monday for eating a whole cake and two tubs of Betty Crocker® frosting on Saturday night while drinking enough chardonnay to dull the pain from having lost that stupid election to that stupid guy from New York.  Oops, too personal?  Anyway, as the TEOWAWKI series has gone from one post to maybe weeks and weeks of posts (in outline) that I realized I’d put a topic on the back burner that I really want to write about and it really fits the “big ideas” Monday slot that’s now been invaded by the End Of The World, well, Fridays had to give.  So until The End Of The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTEOWAWKI – top, that Internet!), Friday posts may or may not be related directly to health for the next few months.  This one isn’t.

Here are the links to the TEOWAKI posts (for now):

Now on to Friday’s first Big Ideas post:

I’ve written before about how it seems that our culture is unraveling around us at an increasing rate.  You can see those posts here:

Is there any data to back up these theories?

Yes.

I originally thought that the Pew Research Center primarily did research into the sounds that kids made while using finger guns.   These are sounds like Pew, Pew, Pew, Bang-Bang, and Rat-a-Tat-Tat.  I was informed that finger guns are now illegal because they can be easily concealed and have far too large of an ammunition capacity, needing to be reloaded only when “making a shotgun loading sound” would be cool.

It turns out Pew does research on social and political trends, which is maybe more important than finger gun noises, but far less fun.  And political trends wasn’t even my second theory, which included fart and skunk smell research.  But Pew put together one report titled “The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider (LINK)” that’s especially relevant in describing what’s going on in American life today.  The excellent blog Epsilon Theory (LINK) had a post that referenced the Pew Report, which is how I found it, and it fit perfectly with the posts we’ve been doing about the dissolution of the American political scene, though I think we come to different conclusions on what will ultimately happen.

Imagine how happy I was to see yet more proof of my theory that everything is falling straight apart and that millions of Americans will, within my lifetime, be engaged in bloody civil war!

Let’s start with the big graph.  It tells (broadly) the story.

pewpewpew

1994

In 1994, sure we had differences, but mainly we had more in common than divided us.  Going through the numbers, Democrats and Republicans broadly agreed that illegal immigration was, well, illegal and was a thing to be stopped.  Also about this time, Bill Clinton got punched in the teeth when he lost the House of Representatives by trying to go too far left too fast.

Bill’s response was to take the position of the Republicans and the position of the Democrats and steer between them.  Republican points that were really popular, like making welfare recipients work?  Adopt it.  There was a vast overlap in the center – the overlap between Republican and Democrat is significant.  The results of this policy were also pretty significant – this tension actually restrained government spending for the first time since Andrew Jackson made Congress personally count out every expenditure in piles of nickels on the Senate floor.

I remember being at a political rally for Democrats at around this point in time (1994, not during the Jackson administration).  It was a big rally – Carrie Fisher was there with the Democratic candidate in question.  So was I – with a sign for the Republican opposition.  We didn’t go into the rally, but stood on one side of a driveway while a small group of Democrats stood on the other side.  There were 50 to 100 in either group.  We yelled at each other, each making fun of the other’s candidate, but the yelling was light hearted and humorous.  Everyone had fun.  I think I saw Carrie Fisher’s leg.

At that point in time, there was more extremism on the right than on the left, but even that wasn’t pronounced.  With the defeat of Evil Communism, well, life was good.  Heck, a guy named Francis Fukuyama even said that The End of History was at hand.  Western liberal democracy would be the final form of government in a more peaceful world where capitalism was pretty significant feature.

2004

Not too far past 9/11, Americans had something that kept them unified – war.  It appears that several people skipped reading Fukuyama’s book.   At this point, a feeling of cohesion in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was still evident, W reluctantly called legitimate.  Americans are actually politically closer than in 1994, but now more extreme leftists than extreme right wing folks.  When Bush beat Kerry?  Meh.  No protests.  No outrage.  Bush personified the center.  But the far left wing was growing.

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2017

Democrats have all scampered left.  Far left.  Republicans have moved right certainly, but not nearly as far as the Democrats have moved left.

How bad is it?

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97% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.  95% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat.  Yes, there’s still overlap, but rapidly we’re nearing the point where we don’t even recognize the same facts.  Imagine how little regard there is for the opinions of the other side.

And it’s worse with the media.  As a whole, they’ve been leftists since . . . forever.  But now?  Not only do Republicans represent less than 7% of journalists, the places where journalists work and live are in big cities where people wearing Make America Great Again hats are shot on site.  Or they would be if the leftists currently believed in individual, rather than state gun ownership.

The media are ideologically leftists, and live in cities where they might not even see a Republican in a day.  They work in a bubble (leftist journalists) and live in a bubble (leftist cities and often states) and have no conception that people on the right exist.  This explains why, on election night, the media was stunned that Trump won.  They didn’t even try to hide their bias and dismay.  Rachel Maddow alone cried enough tears to create minor flooding in the basement of the broadcast building.

There is simply very little the median Democrat has to say to the median Republican beyond “give me your stuff”, and little the median Republican has to say to the median Democrat other than “no, there aren’t 621 genders and 627 on Saturday night.”  They don’t even speak the same language and in some cases this is literally true.

Part of the shift has come because the composition of American has changed.  First and second generation immigrants are now roughly 25% of voters, a far higher proportion than at any time in history.  And 70% of immigrants are leftist, compared to 18% that tend toward the right.  This makes sense – most immigrants come to the United States from countries that are far to the left of the United States.  I remember listening to the radio where a left-wing journalist was gushing with enthusiasm that a communist (literally and self-described) woman from India had been elected to the Seattle city council.  When you talk about foreign influence on politics, well, the immigrants that are here legally have distorted politics and added to the overall polarization.  This explains why the right has fought back so strongly – they (correctly) sense that the immigration desired by the left will disenfranchise (forever) their entire political ideology.  If Hispanics voted on for the right, Republicans would have put forth the Everybody’s Really An American plan and the Democrats would have put forth a bill to mine the border with giant radioactive scorpions on either side of the 500 foot deep pit.

It also explains why so many Democrats (and Independents) have (quietly) defected to the Republican side.  The party is moving away from them.

And the extreme left turn of the Democrats explains why Alexwhatshername Occasionally-Cortez, who is running on an actual and explicit socialist platform is the future of the Democratic party, not an outlier – this is the type of person that will win primaries as the Democrats float left.  And I think the Republicans will continue to float farther right, which, in time, will make Trump look like a moderate.

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What happens when/if the next leftist gains the White House?

Whiplash on every conceivable policy, but with a side order of vengeance.  And a system like that will produce, rather inevitably, an economic dislocation, a government crackdown.  A step too far.

This will be the spark.

And there will be war.  If the United States weren’t so divided, the war could be external as politicians looked to focus people against the outside to reunify the country.  But for now, we couldn’t even agree on a common enemy.  So our enemy will be . . . us.

But, hey, cake is out of the oven!  Who wants cake?  I even have some spare tubs of frosting . . .

Show Me the Man, I’ll Show You the Crime: Justice, Civil War, and Game of Thrones

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” – Game of Thrones

masterthrone

I’ll admit I’m enjoying this season of Game of Thrones.  Intrigue.  Betrayal.  Lust for revenge.  Oh, wait, that’s just the political news since August started.

As I’ve noted before, none of these political posts about civil unrest are my wish – they’re more what I see coming (or maybe coming) as history rhymes with the past in the United States.  It’s not the same, really, since we’re very different as a people in many significant ways than 1860, but the passions of the people and the divide that we see doesn’t appear to be closing and in a way that is reminiscent of the 1850’s.  Here are a few of the previous posts in this loose series:

Harvey Silverglate wrote the book Three Felonies a Day – I bought my copy back in 2010, Amazon reminds me.  Silverglate’s theme in this book is that there are literally so many regulations and laws that you’re breaking multiple laws daily.  And you don’t know that you’re breaking a law because many of them aren’t horribly logical or even obvious.  Silverglate gave the spoiler in his title – he thought the average American committed three felonies a day regardless of evil intent.  At that rate, the government holds all of the cards.  Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was head of Stalin’s secret police.  Beria’s second most famous quote, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”  His most famous quote?  “Whazzzzuuuuuupp?”

The idea is that you find the unpopular person, and then, because everyone has committed a crime (many, if not most victimless) you find the crime.  And let’s be honest.  Trump has committed felonies.  So has Hillary.  And, so have you.  I, on the other hand, have led a spotless and exemplary life, so no reason to go sniffing about here.

Like Beria, Robert Mueller has the man, so he will show us the crime.  We’ve seen this before – Ken Starr and his relentless and unceasing review of Bill Clinton gave us perjury charges when Clinton lied about (probably) the most pathetic sex ever to occur in the White House since Woodrow Wilson’s encounter with the first electric . . . well some things are best left unsaid.

And how do we know that Mueller is our Beria?  It’s simple.  He gave immunity to Rick Gates for crimes that were arguably worse than Paul Manafort’s.  He charged Manafort with things that the (according to many observers) are commonplace in Washington, and that no one has ever been prosecuted for.  And as far as income taxes, Representative Charlie Rangel failed to pay . . . a LOT of taxes.  And failed to disclose $600,000 in assets on a federal form.  And, yet?  No harm, no foul.  I could raise many examples of similar crimes by Congresscritters and government employees that only are prosecuted if they don’t play the bacon-wrapped-shrimp party game, where you go along with what’s going on.

Hmmm.

The main concept of this special prosecutor is that, regardless of what crime it is, a crime will be found that Trump will be prosecuted for.  This is a consequence of the idea that Trump is illegitimate, and must be cast out.  In conversations I’ve had with some on the left, the very idea that Trump could serve out his term is considered hateful.  The idea that 90% of Republicans love him is unfathomable.  I’ll explain below why this sort of thought is more dangerous than a Spice Girls reunion.

Belief in rule of law keeps society together:  it is the hallmark of Western civilization.  To the extent that society at large believes that guilty people are punished and the innocent set free, the rule of law is deemed to have worked.  There can’t be favoritism.  Not for cops.  Not for elected officials.  Not for appointed officials.  Not for Hillary Clinton.

When people believe that the system is rigged (rightly or wrongly) you get the Los Angeles riots, the Ferguson riots, and the Bundy Ranch standoff.  Remember the Bundy Ranch?

The Bundy Ranch standoff occurred in Nevada back in April of 2014.  I won’t recap it in detail, but it occurred because a group on the right felt that the rights of the Bundy’s were being violated.  Largely peaceful, the standoff resulted in the Bundy family keeping their cattle, but at least two people were convicted of felonies related to the standoff, although the Bundy’s themselves were acquitted of all charges based on gross prosecutorial misconduct.  I’m not saying I agree with the merits of the Bundy case, but dozens of people with guns showed up to back them.

But the rule of law is important because without it, we become stuck in never-ending vengeance cycles, like the people in New Guinea – here’s an excellent New Yorker article (LINK) about a society where warfare and revenge replace justice.  From the New Yorker:

The war between the Handa clan and the Ombal clan began many years ago; how many, Daniel didn’t say, and perhaps didn’t know. It could easily have been several decades ago, or even in an earlier generation. Among Highland clans, each killing demands a revenge killing, so that a war goes on and on, unless political considerations cause it to be settled, or unless one clan is wiped out or flees. When I asked Daniel how the war that claimed his uncle’s life began, he answered, “The original cause of the wars between the Handa and Ombal clans was a pig that ruined a garden.” Surprisingly to outsiders, most Highland wars start ostensibly as a dispute over either pigs or women.

And like Ken Starr animated the right in the 1990’s, Robert Mueller has animated the left.  The left is ready to declare victory, spike the ball, and prepare to fight President Pence in 2020.  As has been pointed out by astute commenters to this blog, there really aren’t two parties (normally) in Washington, merely one party with two faces.  Each one has the same goals, just different timing.  As far as I can see, the only principle each side sticks to religiously is their position on abortion, which is safe to fight about because the Supreme Court has taken that decision away from them.  No other principle is sacred to either side.

Thankfully, I still read it as unlikely that Trump will be impeached in this term.  Although the agencies in Washington are loyal to the agencies themselves and not the American people, it’s still my bet we end up with a Republican house until 2020.  But if the House turns?  The Senate will still not vote to convict on a campaign finance violation, especially when it’s possible the payments are completely legal, Trump having done so in the past to protect himself prior to becoming President.

But . . . what if?

Washington is firmly held by the statists.  For Trump, Washington is enemy territory – an enemy that he taunts almost daily.  In Washington itself, Donald Trump got 4% (that’s not a misprint) of the vote.  That explains why the left is incredulous that he won, they don’t know anyone who ever voted for Trump.  It’s clear that the careerists at the agencies don’t like Trump.  So who does have faith in Trump?

The same people that engaged in the standoff at the Bundy Ranch.

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But I don’t think it will get there, and I hope it doesn’t get there.  But if it does?  I hope it’s peaceful.  I sense we’re heading to a very difficult place, and I hope it doesn’t lead to Civil War II too soon.  I haven’t seen the end of Game of Thrones yet.  On the bright side?  Happy Monday!

The Fall of Texas and the Coming One Party State

“Well, I have a microphone, and you don’t, so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!” – The Wedding Singer

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Thankfully, the Soviets put CCCP on the side of their ships in letters 40 feet high.

When I was a lad, I stumbled upon the book “The Ayes of Texas,” by Daniel da Cruz.  In it, a wealthy Texas entrepreneur, who lives in Texas, funds work on the Battleship Texas (BB-35) to make it seaworthy again in time for Independence Day, 2000.

Alas, the sneaky USSR proposes a treaty to the United States:  put your weapons up, and we’ll put ours up after you put yours up.  And, led by East Coast leftists, we fell for it.  Except for the Texans, who vote to secede from the Union, and fight it out alone against the USSR.  Oh, and our entrepreneur, has secretly outfitted the Texas (BB-35) with nuclear reactors and particle beam weapons.

It’s a good yarn (it has the Battleship Texas surfing on a tsunami of liquid fire), and you can get a cheap copy on Amazon.

And it does, I think, highlight the lynchpin that Texas is in modern politics, and not the alternate reality where the Soviet Union is still a thing.

My consideration of this started in the hot tub.  The hot tub is great – we sit and either relax quietly, or engage in conversation.  And it was just this sort of conversation a few weeks ago about the Civil War (Civil War, Cool Maps, Censorship, and is Fort Sumter . . . Happening Now?) that led to The Boy saying:

“It all comes down to Texas.”

I was interested.  “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he began, “From what I’ve read, Texas today looks a lot like California in 1980 or so.  Look what California looked like then, it was prosperous.  It was wealthy.  It was a beacon for the country.  Everyone wanted to move there.”

I remembered.  Heck, I remembered one time when a family stopped at our house when I was young asking for a cup of flour so they could make gravy at a campsite.  They were making their way from Oklahoma to California.  California was a place where your economic dreams could come true.

“Now, that’s Texas.  The economy is great there.  They’re reliably Republican, and with that there are all of the low tax, low government interference policies that lead to prosperity.  People are streaming into Texas.

“And that’s the problem.  The people streaming into Texas, well, they aren’t Texan.  Over 300,000 Californians (net) have made their way to Texas over the last five years, and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down.  They’re fleeing the highest poverty state in the nation, which coincidentally has the greatest wealth inequality in the nation.”

I responded:  “Yeah, California is regulations-happy.  I read that it was against the law for a homeowner to change a light switch – it had to be done by a licensed electrician.  And one time I was talking to a friend on the phone a few years ago.  His dog started barking.  He was afraid he’d get fined again.  Because dogs barking in California is . . . illegal.  Sadly, when the Californians leave to go to another state, they want to bring those regulations with them, not realizing that those regulations were the cause of the economic problems they have now.  Heck, Californians can’t figure out that their restrictions on housing cause house prices to go crazy faster than Elon Musk with a few minutes to kill and a connection to Twitter®.”

California

Graph-Me.  Data?  Wikipedia.

The Boy responded.  “California used to be solidly Republican.  At some point in the near future, a Republican might not even be on the ballot.  Did you know that Ronald Reagan was governor there?”

It’s amusing when 18 year olds begin to discover the world.

“Yeah, now that you remind me of that, I remember it.”  I smiled

“Well, California voted solidly Republican, at least until 1992.  From then on, it became a lock for the Democrats.  And it happened quickly – within a decade.  Once Texas flips to voting Democrat, it’s over.”

Once it flips?  Will it flip?  The percentages voting Republican have dropped, and with the continual influx of Californians that are heavily collectivist as well as the rising proportion of Hispanic voters, which vote Democrat on a greater than two to one margin, it seems assured that as the Hispanic population rises in Texas, the flip to permanent Democrat control in Texas will be nearly inevitable.

Honestly, if Hispanic immigrants voted 2 to 1 in favor of Republicans, Democrats would have insisted on a 200 foot high wall topped with automatic machine guns.

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Looking at the map, it’s theoretically possible for a Republican to win the White House without Texas, but it’s unlikely.  Once Texas becomes Democratic the presidency will become, like California, permanently Democratic.

What does that even look like?

We can see hints of it, even now.

Control of The Microphone – We Will Shut You Down

Alex Jones is many things, but the fact that the Left thinks he’s dangerous enough to silence?  It’s not a great strategy.  I’m frankly amazed.  But it’s not just him, the Left is looking to shut down every opinion that they disagree with.  The old Libertarian in me would have said, “but they’re private companies, they can do anything they want.”  Well, yes and no.  If they start selectively banning people, they’ve opened their companies up to liability.  And it’s been proven that they’re in the business of selectively banning racist posts, most recently when Candace Owens just changed a single word from a Tweet by Sarah “Got Dumped by a White Dude and Is Just a Bit Bitter” Jeong.  I won’t post the Tweet, mainly because Sarah has a potty mouth.  You can read about it here (LINK).

Worse?  Who is next?  What is the trip wire?  I’ve heard Jones say lots of things.  Some of them incredibly silly.

But none of them deserving censorship.  The one common ground I used to be able to find (nearly 100%) with people of the Left was freedom of speech.  Now, speech has to be stopped has become their creed.  Why?  Here’s a hint:

Your Speech is Violence, and My Violence is Speech

Yeah, it’s like something you would read in 1984.  But the violence from Antifa® has been justified because burning things and hurting people is the justified speech of a downtrodden class and or ethnicity.  Check out the sentence for an Antifa™ member who hit multiple people with a bike lock at the end of a chain.  A link is here (LINK).

But it’s fine that Antifa© attempts to shut down a never-Trump conservative speaker, and Berkeley has to spend $600,000 to stop violence.  You can read about it here (LINK).

Your Money is Theft, My Money is Earned

The Clintons earned $240,000,000 between 2001 and 2015.  All earned, right?  Obama earned $20,000,000 between when he was elected to the Senate and when he left office.  Al Gore went from $274,000 in 1992 to $300,000,000 today.

This is considered fair.

A dentist makes $350,000 a year is part of the 1% and is an example of the enemy.

All Animals are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

Even more important is intersectionality, which is making it more important to be part of an even more marginalized group by being parts of LOTS of marginalized groups, say, a deaf and blind gay transsexual quadruple amputee of aboriginal Australian and Hungarian descent.

I read an article where a Native American woman described when would go to leftist meetings.  Generally after her first showing up at a meeting, she would be nominated for some sort of leadership position, up to and including the presidency of the group.  It amused her (but not in the good way) that they didn’t even know her name on some occasions where she was being nominated to lead the group.

And Other Things Not Good

I’m not sure how socialism ends in the United States, but it really isn’t good.  There are exactly zero socialist countries that have produced the level of freedom and wealth that the United States has produced.  Sure, we’ve messed stuff up, but we’ve gotten far more of it right.

Back to Texas

Texas has always considered itself of outsized importance.  I once worked with one of the kindest, most humble men that I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.  Except when it came to Texas.  If you made fun of his height (he was short) or his wife or his dog, it was okay.  But if you made fun of Texas?  It was personal.

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I think Da Cruz was right – Texas is crucially important to the future of the United States.  Almost as important as Texans think it is.

Civil War, Cool Maps, Censorship, and is Fort Sumter . . . Happening Now?

“We might find the abandoned furnace room, or the old Civil War amputorium!” – Malcom in the Middle

freemap

No problems in this map.  None at all.  Everything is as right as rain . . .

The following is (more or less) a discussion that occurred over several days as we sat in the hot tub.  I’ll note that our speculation reflects things that we as observers and students of history and current events think are might happen, not what we want to happen.  It’s edited for clarity and readability – it’s not a transcript, it’s a blog post.  In some cases a half an hour of conversation is only a sentence or two.

Honestly, this speculation is chilling enough to use as an air conditioner on a hot day . . . .  Previous posts similar to this can be found here at The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths, The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar,and Immigration, Freedom, Wealth, Corruption, and More Cool Maps.

The other day when we were in the hot tub, I rudely interrupted The Mrs.

John Wilder:  “That’s enough of what you want to talk about.  I have something to discuss.”

The Mrs.:  “Well that was rude!”

John Wilder:  “And that’s exactly how I’ll describe it in my post.”

And yes, Internet, this was pretty close to the real conversation, but The Mrs. is used to it after being married to me for what she calls “an eternity.”  I guess time flies when you’re having fun, right?  Wait a minute . . . that eternity comment might not be a complement?

Anyway, as we luxuriated in the warm swirling waters of the tub, I threw out my discussion topic.

John Wilder:  “As we look at parallels from today’s developments to the last Civil War, I know that events, places and people won’t be exact matches, but they seem to rhyme.  If you look at the contentiousness of, say, the presidential elections, that’s a pretty big parallel.  Lincoln got only 40% of the popular vote, and that was against the first female candidate for president, John C. Breckenridge.”

1860_Electoral_Map

I think this map was influenced by the Russians since they wanted to sell us Alaska and knew only Lincoln was stupid enough to buy it.  Thankfully the Russians seem to want it back.

“If you look back in the past, Abraham Lincoln was elected president by a party that was only six years old after an election that was so divided that one side actually refused to acknowledge the results.  If that’s not a hallmark of a society unravelling, I’m not sure what is.”

“But,” I continued, “the people didn’t just drop everything one morning and yell at their neighbor and say ‘THAT’S IT!’  There were a series of escalations that society went through that made it seem like it would be a good idea to blow up Virginia.  And one of those events was Bleeding Kansas.”

Bleeding Kansas was that period when violent groups (on both sides) ended up fighting each other over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state where slavery would be illegal or not.  Things got heated.  On the floor of the United States Senate:

“Sumner ridiculed the honor of elderly South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, portraying Butler’s pro-slavery agenda towards Kansas with the raping of a virgin and characterizing his affection for it in sexual and revolting terms.” (Wikipedia)

The next day, Butler’s cousin (A congressman named Preston Brooks) showed up and nearly killed Sumner by beating him with a cane.

So, if you’ve never been “beating a guy nearly to death with a cane mad,” maybe Congress wasn’t the place for you in the 1850’s.

preston

This was originally published by CNN – the Cane News Network – all canes, all the time.

Eventually Bleeding Kansas ended up as a big mess, with multiple battles (death toll total of 56, per Wikipedia), with there being multiple elections, crazy vote manipulation, and at least four territorial constitutions sent to the United States Senate for approval.  And it gave us the album cover for the debut album of the prog-rock band Kansas®, which might make up for the death toll?

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Tragic Prelude, by John Stewart Curry – John Brown is the crazy looking dude with the ZZ Top beard and Eraserhead hair in the middle.  True fact:  John Brown was really 12 feet tall, and the reason that basketball was invented in Kansas was so he could have a sport to play.

So, back to the hot tub.

John Wilder:  “I’m thinking that Ferguson® and Black Lives Matter™ is the Bleeding Kansas of today?”

The Mrs.:  “I don’t know.”

John Wilder:  “Maybe Antifa©?

The Mrs.:  “Yes.  Antifa©.  The level of violence that they initiate is amazing, and they think that their violence is justified.  Their violence isn’t real violence because they think they have a good reason to be violent.  Just as Antifa’s® racism isn’t real racism because they have a good reason to be racist.”

I nodded.

The Mrs. continued, “But I wonder if a civil war is possible at all.  There isn’t the same geographic concentration that there was during the 1850’s.  You don’t have a group of industrialists in the north competing against the agricultural south.”

John Wilder:  “But you do have the rural-urban divide.  Heck, our county here went 80% for Trump.”

The Mrs.:  “And our county has all of the guns.”

John Wilder:  “We do now.  But groups like Anitfa™ have shown that they’re not afraid to use violence.  In our county we don’t even lock our doors because either we’re too nice to steal much or the thieves know that behind every door is a 12 gauge shotgun or an AR-15.”

The Mrs.:  “True.”

John Wilder:  “Guns aren’t that hard to get, or hard to learn how to use.  Oh, sure, you have to really work at being able to do a 500 yard shot with a 20 mph crosswind (15 kilometers with a 20 liter crosswind for the metric-impaired) but half of Africa was conquered by revolutionaries who couldn’t even read with AK-47s that were built in factories in Bulgaria whose idea of a precision tool was a sledgehammer.”

The Mrs.:  “I can see that.  But we’re not as concentrated as we were back then.”

John Wilder:  “Have you seen this map?  We are divided geographically – and one side lives in a really small area, while the other side lives in the country.  Coincidentally, that’s where all the soldiers come from – rural places like where we live.  And we make all of the food and most of the energy.”

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The Mrs.:  “Yeah.  Non-Trump counties make television shows and Teslas®.  Oh, and they lead the country in corruption, poverty, and crime.  So I guess it could happen, but it would be a lot more chaotic than the first Civil War.”

John Wilder:  “Sure, I think the chaos is pretty much a given.  No way to predict where will be safe.  So, what’s our Uncle Tom’s Cabin?”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that was instrumental in setting the stage for the Civil War was the most popular book in the United States (besides the Bible) in the 1800’s.  However, not long after it was published, it was strictly censored across the many Southern states.  One man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for owning a copy of the book, and that was before the Civil War started.  The book would be wholly censored across the Confederate States during the Civil War.

John Wilder:  “Is it Alex Jones?”

The Mrs.:  “Yes, that feels right.”

Alex Jones is a radio talk show host that specializes in fringe news stories – news stories the regular media doesn’t cover, and news stories that are at times thinly checked (at best) and at times far in advance of “mainstream” news.  And Jones has been an equal opportunity political poo-flinger.  He’s gone after Clinton, Bush, and Obama.  Republican or Democrat?  He doesn’t seem to care.  To be fair, Jones has been a fairly consistent proponent of Trump.

Free speech is important, it’s written in Silicon Valley’s DNA, right?  No.  On a single day, Jones was banned or punished in some fashion from Facebook®, YouTube©, Spotify®, Amazon™, and Pinterest©.  Soon enough LinkedIn™, YouPorn® (huh?) and MailChimp® (whatever that is) followed.

No one in the hot tub felt that Alex Jones represented the gold standard for journalism, but his silence was a sign that ideas outside of those of the gatekeepers could simply not be tolerated.  I spent some time looking for examples of “hate speech” that was supposedly the cause of his being banned.  I found nothing worse than the usual hyperbole of the left, and certainly nothing as personally threatening as many things celebrities and journalists said in the heat of the moment following Trump’s victory in November of 2016.

The concept that he was censored amazed me.  Bombastic?  Yes.  Over the top?  Sure.  The WWE™ of news?  Absolutely.

Something to be suppressed and censored?  Wow.  Speech an entire party (nearly) agrees should be banned?  Double wow.  But free speech seems to have few fans on the left now. alex jones

Now I know where my wallet went . . . George Soros has it!

But back to the hot tub.  By this time, The Boy had joined us.  I think Pugsley was inside napping, or maybe working on connecting his brain directly to the Internet through a device he was making based on a YouTube video.  Pugsley had been looking for a drill, some hydrogen peroxide, and an N-size battery, so he might by a cyborg by now.

John Wilder:  “What other events were there on the way to the Civil War?”  Since The Boy had taken US history most recently, perhaps some things were fresher in his mind, and since we were in the hot tub, it was easier to ask him than to Google® it.

The Boy:  “What about the Dredd Scott decision?  That was a biggy.”

John Wilder:  “Yes, even the courts were involved in the unravelling before the Civil War.  But with the people divided as they were – Dredd Scott could have been decided either way and would have inflamed one side or the other.  In this case, it drove the North nuts.  If they had decided the other way?  It would have driven the South nuts.  A no-win situation.  The sides weren’t even talking the same language at that point.”

The Boy:  “Well, I guess that leaves Fort Sumter.”

John Wilder:  “So what does our Fort Sumter take place?  Or has it already?”

Fort Sumter was the spot, on April 12, 1861, at 4:30AM, Confederate soldiers fired on the Union Fort.  (Spoiler, they won.)  Fort Sumter is notable because even after Southern secession, several months passed before the first shots were fired there.  It was as if there was a hope that things could be brought back together, that there was some alternative to war.

John Wilder:  “So what is it, what does it look like?  Does it occur after a Trump 2020 victory?”

The Mrs.:  “Well maybe sooner.  If the Republicans continue to hold the House after the 2018 election, I think that might make California secede.  From what I seen on Facebook®, they’re in a frenzy already.  They can’t even stand the idea of Trump finishing a single term.”

John Wilder:  “What if . . . what if Fort Sumter is going on right now?  Let’s look at it:  there was a part of the government, in that case the states, which denied the legitimacy of the sitting president.  Okay, they might have thought him legitimate but they decided that they didn’t want be a part of it.  Isn’t that’s what’s going on right now with the Deep State?  Insurance policies?  Investigations into people not because of a crime, but investigations of people to find a crime to prosecute them for because they don’t have the right political belief, that they’re not part of the right club that gets bacon-wrapped shrimp at the Friday get-togethers?”

The Boy:  “Not sure if that fits.  Maybe.  Maybe.”

John Wilder:  “An attack doesn’t require that the militia brings out cannons and shells Dallas.  No, if you look at that, plus the sanctuary cities, plus the judiciary routinely ruling against Trump on things that they would have rubber-stamped for Obama?  Is this open insurrection right now, just not with cannon?”

The Boy:  “I’m not sure.  But I do think I know the end point of all of this.  I’ve been thinking . . .”

And he had a pretty insightful observation.  More on that next Monday, I think.