Imagining a new civil war

Today's ill-considered remarks by Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder have me reconsidering my previous thoughts about a new civil war.

I still find the left to be utterly cowardly, but those explicit calls to violence coupled with the disturbing decision of the Portland, Oregon police to simply hand over the streets to Antifa make me wonder if something at last approaching an insurgency may be on the way.

Certainly the Democrats seem willing to flirt with it, and their followers are increasingly unhinged.  As I pointed out two years ago, one way to flip control of the legislature is to simply kill your way to a majority.

This is why a second American civil war would be very unlike the first.  For one thing, there aren't homogenous geographic regions that balance each other.  Instead, we have a patchwork of polarized enclaves.  A better model would be Spain in 1936.

There are of course considerable differences between Spain's political situation and our own.  For one thing, Spain's institutions of government were far weaker than ours are now.  Spain had recent experience of a successful military coup and had gone from dictator to monarchy to republic in the space of 20 years.

Yet the political ferment is very much similar and social division every bit as profound.  One can easily see American leftist radicals happily butchering priests and desecrating churches much in the way their Spanish counterparts did.

And while our institutions are stronger, they are rapidly being eroded.  Nominally respectable political commentators are calling for the effective overthrow of the existing Constitutional order.  That's very close to what was going on in Spain.

I don't there we're there yet, but we are a lot closer than I ever thought we would get.  I really did figure that after a while, Hillary, her husband and her flying monkeys would go off into retirement - likely in a place with weak extradition treaties and permissive laws regarding child prostitution.

What I don't fully grasp is why so many on the left are determined to go down with her.  The Clintons have been a disaster for the Democrats, and Barack Obama finished their demolition job.  Even if Democrats manage to gain political control, they no longer have a governing coalition united on issues.  Instead they have a Popular Front united only by hating the same groups.

That may help hold people together, but at some point one can't paper over the inherent contradiction between - for example - demanding absolute protection of women while also demanding that they allow men in drag to enter their locker rooms and watch them shower.

The only thing that amuses me in this scenario is the likelihood that if things really do heat up, the first ones to go down will be the Quisling Never Trumpers since they will have become useless to everyone but themselves.

That also happened in Spain, with the leftist factions repeatedly turning on each other.  That in turn gave Franco the win.

Those hoping that the cold culture war gets hot ought to read up on the Spanish Civil War if they want an idea how nasty things can get.

Comments

[K.N. McBride]

Alk, your comments are remarkably lame. I know you're LARPing being a conservative, but you need to try harder.

[aNanyMouse]

I'll quite bet, that almost no Lefties can face any of the considerations you lay out, about the real prospects of such a war.
They've always had the MSM at their backs, and it had always carried the day for them, until 2016.
They're still banking on this Russian hacking stuff, a Blue Wave next month, or some such, to bring him down, and return things to "normal".
If there's no Blue Wave (i.e. if no Houses change hands), or if Trump creams their leaders with indictments/ convictions on FISA etc., then they'll start to face the music of which you write.

BTW, Franco also had help from the Luftwaffe, while the Left got zip from the Red Air Force.
Spain's food supply didn't depend on a super-vulnerable high-tech, JIT delivery system, so, that war will be paradise, compared to what we'd see.

It was your vivid comments at the Treehouse that brought me here.

[Alkiabades]

Who will stand up to be our Franco?