This is Not the Brink

Despite threats and claims and rhetoric from both political parties about a looming Second Civil War, such chatter is ultimately dubious. We might be riled up and angry and frustrated and exhausted by the soundbites of political animosity, but here are three reasons, IMO, why the present situation neither warrants, nor provides the apparatus for such a violent war to take place:

1. No one really has a sound reason to be at war. Ask anyone who talks about or worries about war why they, or the people they fear, would be willing to take up arms against their neighbors. Obamacare? That piece of processed legislation that gave a few million Americans access to healthcare? The 2016 election? That electoral process our Founders once set up? A Twitter argument they had with someone over illegal immigration? Because, well, that’s always productive. Or do they rationalize the possibility of a second civil war because every idiot thinks someone else is a bigger idiot? Really? There’s absolutely no justified reason on any side to be at war. Reason to argue, at times vehemently yes, but that’s not war.
2. There are no clear boundaries to our political angst. This is not 25 states against 25 states. This is not 32 counties against 15 cities. This is not one neighborhood against another neighborhood. But for the sake of argument, let’s imagine a few pockets rising up, with neighborhoods literally pulling guns on people in their own neighborhood and across the highway to another neighborhood, over politics. These are called riots. They eventually and inevitably get crushed by their illegality (and people would be arrested and tried for inciting violence). Again, there are no clear boundaries that could classify any such violence as a war. Just violence for violence’s sake.
3. There is not a collective will for war. Again, pockets might be talking themselves into armed militias, and proud gun owners might polish their guns in public, but any act of violence, over political differences, would be a foolish and localized endeavor, bound to go absolutely nowhere without the support of their larger state governments. And let’s be clear. Precisely zero state governments are engaging in any serious conversations about ceding from the union or taking up arms against other states.

It’s an extremely hot and testy political environment and such volatility may linger for many more years until we can tap into our better angels, our capacity for a reasonable, informed conversation in which we seek the best in and from each other. But rest easy my friends. Your house will not become the garrison at Fort Sumter and the sidewalk in front of your house will not likely become the bridge of Concord. Not in the near future, at least.