Jeff Sharlet's travels through post-January 6th America reveal a nation sliding toward catastrophe, or is it catharsis? Plus more parsing of AI hype and digital fundraising scams.
"We shrink from the separation of the States as an event fraught with incalculable evils; and it is among our strongest objections to the present course of measures that they have in our opinion a very dangerous and alarming bearing on such an event. If a separation of the States ever should take place, it will be on some occasion when one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate, and to sacrifice the interest of another; when a small and heated majority in the government, taking counsel of their passions and not of their reason, contemptuously disregarding the interests and perhaps stopping the mouths of a large and respectable minority, shall by hasty, rash, and ruinous measures threaten to destroy essential rights and lay waste the most important interests. It shall be our most fervent supplication to Heaven to avert both the event and the occasion; and the Government may be assured that the tie that binds us to the Union will never be broken by us."
Daniel Webster, quoted by Henry Adams in A History of the United States under the Administration of James Madison
I agree we are absolutely coming apart at the seams, but the thing no one ever explains when they discuss the possibility of civil war is who exactly the sides are, and what kind of war it would be when one side has most of the guns - and indeed, local state-sanctioned-and-armed militia on their side, in the form of police? Is the idea that the US military would be deployed on the side of democracy? I find that extremely hard to imagine. I'm "optimistic" we'll avoid an actual war but only because the anti-MAGA political majority in this country is so disorganized and utterly unprepared for the possibility of organized armed struggle.
I had the same reaction to Sharlet's book as you did. Maybe even more profound. Much of t came as no surprise to me as there are so many fascist adjacent folks up here in the PNW. Much of eastern Washington and eastern Oregon might as well be rural Alabama. I do not think we are headed for a set piece civil war. But we are going to see more chaos and violence from those sectors who are divorcing us.
"We shrink from the separation of the States as an event fraught with incalculable evils; and it is among our strongest objections to the present course of measures that they have in our opinion a very dangerous and alarming bearing on such an event. If a separation of the States ever should take place, it will be on some occasion when one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate, and to sacrifice the interest of another; when a small and heated majority in the government, taking counsel of their passions and not of their reason, contemptuously disregarding the interests and perhaps stopping the mouths of a large and respectable minority, shall by hasty, rash, and ruinous measures threaten to destroy essential rights and lay waste the most important interests. It shall be our most fervent supplication to Heaven to avert both the event and the occasion; and the Government may be assured that the tie that binds us to the Union will never be broken by us."
Daniel Webster, quoted by Henry Adams in A History of the United States under the Administration of James Madison
I agree we are absolutely coming apart at the seams, but the thing no one ever explains when they discuss the possibility of civil war is who exactly the sides are, and what kind of war it would be when one side has most of the guns - and indeed, local state-sanctioned-and-armed militia on their side, in the form of police? Is the idea that the US military would be deployed on the side of democracy? I find that extremely hard to imagine. I'm "optimistic" we'll avoid an actual war but only because the anti-MAGA political majority in this country is so disorganized and utterly unprepared for the possibility of organized armed struggle.
I had the same reaction to Sharlet's book as you did. Maybe even more profound. Much of t came as no surprise to me as there are so many fascist adjacent folks up here in the PNW. Much of eastern Washington and eastern Oregon might as well be rural Alabama. I do not think we are headed for a set piece civil war. But we are going to see more chaos and violence from those sectors who are divorcing us.