Stepping back from civil strife
By Alex Gratzek
As I worked from home the other day, I called my dad who told me he was contemplating turning on the TV. I was a bit surprised because he isn't the kind of person to spend his day watching television.
Intrigued, I turned on the TV to suddenly recoil in horror as I watched a mob, incited by “President” Trump, ransack the Capitol building to protest his election loss from two months before.
Civil strife and insurrection are nothing new in America. Shay's Rebellion in 1786-1787 exposed the weakness of the Articles of Confederation and gave rise to the Constitution, which for now, still governs our land. The order established by the Constitution faced its own most serious rebellion in the form of the Confederacy.
The Confederacy held that since the Union was freely entered, so it could be freely exited. Confederate leaders, unable to stomach the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, put a match to the kindling by firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. The resulting Civil War killed over 600,000 Americans on both sides and wrought destruction, especially in the Confederacy as General Sherman famously made Georgia howl.
The war, although resulting in death and destruction, helped serve as a catalyst for the expansion of railroads, jump-started the exponential growth of America's industrial base, established it as a significant naval power and enhanced the power of the federal government. In today's world, the civil war many on the right so eagerly welcome would be nothing short of cataclysmic doom for America's domestic prosperity and international standing.
No doubt there are some who were there simply for the sake of burning everything down but there are many who seem to believe this attempted insurrection would magically result in a new perfect union I guess. No, any new civil war and its peace, and that's if the war ever ended, would be tremendously devastating. Let's take a look at a couple of historical cases.
The French Revolution of 1787 swept away the Ancien Regime, led to mob rule under Robspierres when too many heads detached from bodies. Eventually, Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor and was defeated after decades of war. A key thing to remember was that the French Revolution did not see members of society turning on each other and if anything the common bonds forged in the struggle helped cement the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity which govern France today.
When it was evident that the Confederacy was doomed in 1865, some Southerners approached General Lee, to sound him out about forming a guerilla insurgency to continue the war. Lee shot down the notion outright because he recognized that such an action would just prolong the misery of the nation and prevent national reconciliation. His prestige and authority meant his word was final.
However, in today's balkanized media market and the proliferation of paramilitary groups, there is seemingly no individual, other than “President” Trump who can control these terrorists, insurrectionists, and militias but Lord knows he won't do it. Societal trust and cohesion in America, never a strength to begin with, would collapse and likely never recover.
Any new civil war would likely just be a replay of Beirut in the 1980s or the Iraqi insurgency in the early 2000s. Different enclaves ruled by different sects and ethnic groups, a constant low level violence, bombings, shelling, and gunfire. As living with masks and the coronavirus became the new normal, so would checkpoints and dodging bullets on the way to work.
It used to be: your candidate lost, you sulked but soon went back to your daily life. However, apparently the new normal is to throw temper tantrums, disparage victors as illegitimate, or at worst participate in some casual insurrection. One ancient Roman wrote “deep are the wounds inflicted by internal strife.” Only after civil strife did the Roman Republic fall. Those words are truer today than ever before.
In the 1990s, there was a budding militia movement in America with events like Ruby Ridge and Waco coming about as government agents collided with far right militia groups. The culmination of this distrust of government was the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. The devastation and innocents killed, in a major American city, helped undercut the sympathy for the paramilitaries and the far right. However, that was a long time ago and largely out of the American national consciousness.
Even in the 1990s, America never went so far down the path toward another civil war as it is going now. I can only hope that the treasonous behavior and shocking images of the Capitol Building by the “Law & Order” Party will shock sane Americans into coming back to their senses and realizing how fragile this democracy we have is.
Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) are nowhere near the level as these insurrectionists. BLM is working for change within the system as witnessed in Georgia while antifa, by definition, only arises in opposition to facism. These MAGA supporters are traitors and have shown that for the sake of power, they are willing to burn down everything they claim to love.
I hope this serves as a wake-up call to Americans who are lukewarm and those who were wavering in their support of Trump. If the Rubicon is crossed, or Pandora's Box opened, there is no going back to the past and no guarantees for the future. We either unify or the most powerful country in the world falls victim to its own internal strife, becoming a “shithole” nation in the process.
Alex Gratzek (ajgratzek@gmail.com) is an American who has lived, studied and worked in South Korea. Check his website at alexfromabroad.com. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.