“I got nowhere else to go!” – An Officer and a Gentleman
I think I might have been the only person in my state where “Juan” was my nickname. I guess that makes me Juan in a million.
I recently bought the book How Civil Wars Start (And How to Stop Them) by Barbara F. Walter (2022, Crown). When I bought it, I bought it used to save a few bucks. When it arrived, The Mrs. looked at the title and noted, “Oh, as if you weren’t already on enough lists.”
After I read the book, I was really glad that I bought it second-hand because the last thing I would want to ever do is put money into the hands of the Leftist harpy who wrote it. I generally like people, especially people I haven’t met. To be frank, after reading Ms. Walter’s book, I really, really detest her for reasons I’ll discuss during and especially towards the end of the review.
Not that I have any opinions. There was, however, some interesting information. Because of that, I thought I’d give a review of the book so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. And, since I’m discussing 90% of the interesting parts, there’s no reason you should buy this book.
First, the way this book was written was through a series of emotionally loaded stories only then followed by the actual research. The book was 226 pages before the notes and acknowledgements, and could have been half that length, if Walter wasn’t writing endless bad-romance-book-level summaries of people who had seen civil wars. These weren’t interesting or useful like Selco’s Sarajevo experiences, but just stories (all with a Leftist bent) meant to make the reader feel. I am skipping discussion of any of these insipid parts that were meant to twist your emotions because you can watch network tv if you want to.
You can thank me for that in the comments.
What do Green Eggs and Ham and Fifty Shades of Grey have in common? They both encourage people who can barely read to try new things.
I hate being manipulated, and this book was just that, but it was manipulation at the level of a clumsy middle school girl level of soft puppy dog eyes. For example, the first segment was a breathless analysis of the kidnap plot against Gretchen Whitmer, complete with blame of the 3%ers, Qanon supporters, and the Proud Boys.
Missing?
The fact that the entire case against the “kidnappers” collapsed in Federal court because the FBI was responsible for it from start to finish. Yes. The kidnapping was the idea of the FBI. But Walter, despite having this information, is the CNN® of writers, skipping over actual facts to sell her feels.
Skipping to the parts that are interesting, she notes that there has been an attempt to classify where countries lie along a spectrum of governance: +10 is a full democracy, like Denmark. -10 is a full autocracy, like Best Korea. Very few civil wars occur when countries are close to the ends of the spectrum. Why would you have a civil war in Denmark? What, you don’t like pastries and hot Danish girls? And in Best Korea, the state has such control from cradle to grave of the citizens that the idea of revolt is nearly impossible. The country even has approved hairstyles.
From the book, page 22. How I got the weird light effects, I’ll never know.
So, -10 and +10 are safe from civil war. The danger zone is -5 (think, Czar Nicholas II) to +5 (think Putin/Zelensky/Biden). It’s a time where the state is generally moving from either democracy toward autocracy or vice versa. Due to the change, it’s weaker. The name they made up for a country in that zone is an anocracy. Examples provided include places where I’d never want to have a vacation:
- Serbia (1990s)
- Bosnia (1990s)
- Spain (1930s)
- Rwanda (1990s)
- Ukraine (2010s)
I found it interesting that the state being poor, unequal, heterogeneous, or repressed didn’t count as much as to where the country sat on the governance scale. The idea is that the countries are weaker – there is division, there are no social guardrails, and the state is therefore susceptible to a chain reaction due to an event – think George Floyd or cancelling Firefly – that will start the war.
The next condition increasing the likelihood of civil war is the creation of factions. These factions were often based on racial groups, ethnic groups, or religious groups, or some combination. The biggest sign of coming difficulty was the exclusion of these groups from power. Losing the presidency through changing all the rules into Biden’s favor (and perhaps some counting shenanigans) in 2020 is livable. 2024 loss? Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue.
But in this case, a particular group senses opportunity or demographic change (from the book). This results in increased tension, partisanship, and group identification. Chances double if there is a group tension. If the country is an anocracy? The chances of civil war go up by a factor of thirty.
Blacksmiths generally box in the smelterweight division.
Want it to get even worse? If the tension is ethnic/racial plus religion, class, or geography? That increases the chances of civil war by a factor of 12 versus a homogeneous society. In the United States in the 1950s (for example) the chances of civil war were nearly zero because the society was very close to homogeneous.
When a group is left out, and no longer has a chance of winning, no access to government, no access to political power, that tension is formed. It’s even larger if that group used to be in control and lost power. One researcher called these people, “Sons of the Soil”. The characteristics of this group were:
- They lived on territory they conquered or settled
- They consider themselves “native” and the rightful heirs
- They were or had been the majority
This group is likely to rebel at twice the rate of others, and are generally a much more capable foe.
What sets these Sons of the Soil off? They see their:
- Culture,
- Language,
- Holidays, and
- Religion replaced.
Outsiders swamp them. Walter quotes David Horowitz, “Numbers are an indicator of whose country it is.” Of course, by that standard, California is Mexico, and immigration is often a flashpoint to civil war.
Yes, this is a thing that’s happening. But by “back” they mean Texas. Silly cosmopolitan elites!
Finally, loss of hope is a precipitator for civil war. If there is no route to power, hope disappears, just like happened to the South during Civil War 1.0. What is a loss of power? As we discussed previously, in real terms, two losses in a row at the national level is a loss of power.
One thing Walter doesn’t like is social media, and the voice it provides people. She notes that it heightens ethnic, social, religious, and geographic divisions. My general take from reading her was, “we control the media, and if you don’t like it, too bad, racist.” Proof? She’s upset that Swedish people are running on the idea of “restoring their national home” and stopping the never-ending influx of rather lawless refugees that are anything but Swedish. For the Swedish people to want a national home is apparently racist.
Walter categorizes the Right as appealing to the “primitive” (her word) ideas of nation, protection, The Other, anger, and fear. I mean, why shouldn’t the Swedes want to an import a group of people that rape so much that the police stopped reporting demographics of the rapist because they didn’t want to support hate?
I mean, really, why would we want to make Sweden more Pakistani?
On Ms. Walter’ chapter, “How Close Are We” she:
- Spits out a litany of Leftist talking points about January 6 and Michigan, ignoring entirely the George Floyd protests.
- Notes that “Global trade agreements were signed that benefited coastal elites (her words!) at their (working class whites) expense.
Open insurgency is the last phase. Where are we now? Here is Walter: “We are a factionalized anocracy that is quickly approaching the open insurgency stage, which means that we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.”
Walter has a chapter on, “What A War Would Look Like”. I’ll summarize it this way: it’s the same sort of thoughts that a bright six-year-old might have about drinking beer at a frat party. Sure she might be able to describe it in vague terms, but, let’s face it, until you’ve carried your drunken buddy upstairs to pass out near a trash can, it’s all academic. She’s bizarrely fixated on 4chan, to the point that she thinks the Boogaloo Bois weren’t just a meme. Imagine, an academic trolled by /pol/ by pretending that the civil war will be led by people in Hawaiian shirts? Again. Like it hasn’t happened about 200 times at this point.
Also, the book was written before the chip implant change. She thought that the Right would flock to Ukraine to fight on the side of the Neo-Nazi Azov group. Huh. Guess that idea aged like milk.
Her final chapter is on how to prevent a civil war. It’s simple! Just do anything that AOC says!
Really. This chapter is nothing more than list of “do everything on the main list of Democrat objectives in 2021, and the world will be awesome!” This particular chapter raised my blood pressure high enough that when I started sweating my handkerchief came away pink. Sample line: “Countries that try to stop immigration will slowly die . . . “ Yeah. It’s chock full of lies.
This is also when we found that Barbara’s parents were both immigrants to the United States, and Barbara, though born here, seems to hate here. She wants to change the United States that drew her parents here (89%+ white, homogeneous, far-Right by her standards) into a nation that resembles the mess her parents fled from. Her husband seems even worse – he’s a dude that doesn’t have the guts to have his wife take his name, was born in Canada from immigrant parents that fled Soviet-era Hungary.
And it sounds like Barbara would be happier living in the approaching Soviet Canada than in the United States that she and her ilk helped create through their ideology since they discussed moving there. She’s an American because of a piece of paper issued by a bureaucrat, has no roots here, and will happily move on to the next country to destroy.
Shocking, that. Walter thinks that people with the values of the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s are now “Far Right” and wants them out of the military. In reality? It was always, always those guys who made up the military.
Barbara F. Walter is a member of the cosmopolitan elite (her quote, not mine!) and is a rootless blight on the world and is no more American than that Chinese kidney I bought off of Ebay® the other day. Since she and her gutless husband wanted to run and hide at the slightest bit of trouble in her Leftist dreams, she and I?
We are not the same. I am American, I’ve got nowhere else to go.
Matt: Tell me: what’s the difference between us and them?
Jed: Because . . . we live here.
