When Americans are divided and fight one another, who wins? It is not America for sure, but rather a lot of regimes who want to set a divergent world standard.
Are we running towards a new American Civil War?
If you have been familiar with the pages of world history – to include American history, then you would not be surprised to realize that indicators leading to a civil war tend to be very consistent. I cannot begin to explain how disturbing and dangerous this situation is at this very moment (as I type these words) for American history – and by extension the world.
There is a lot to say and praise about American exceptionalism. Agree or disagree, like it or not, the United States of America is still the most influential country in the world. Why is that? The answer is complex, but it can be summarized in the fact that we are a conglomeration of every culture and heritage spanning the entire world. There are American citizens who were literally born, or have ancestry linked to every corner on this planet.
Our diversity is our strength as a Nation. Of course, being an influential nation that sets the standard for equal treatment to all people is inconvenient to a large slew of regimes. In fact, it is a lot more insidious than that, but we’ll talk more about it in in a little bit – let’s put this thought in context first. When you have a lot of diversity, it is a lot harder for “group-thinking” and “bubble mentality” to blind people from reality. In other words, the dialog (or sometimes disagreements) will pose a different point of view – and spark a larger [actual] conversation. That does not imply that an agreement might be reached, but it will show empirical evidence that there is more than one way of thinking. That is inconvenient to regimes who require unilateral obedience.
In a civil war there are many factors that play crucial roles in the process leading to conflict. I call them factors because they are multipliers. Unrest does not tend to start suddenly, it tends to brew for a long time, and once there is enough dehumanization from one another, the new perceived foe becomes a target, while also forgetting their own humanity. It is this group thinking that keeps adding to this “us against them” mentality. Once the communication breakdown is inevitable, then being reasonable becomes a moot point. The anger and visceral response take full control of each individual person, and it just goes downhill from there.
This is happening in America right now. And I cannot begin to tell you how painful it is to realize it. And what makes it even more dangerous – is that there are plenty of people who are blissfully unaware of this danger, and likely won’t realize it until it is too late. That is unless we can wake up people and diffuse this whole catastrophe from occurring in the first place. But even if this gets diffused, the less informed segment of the population would remain unaware or even annoyed about “what was the fuzz all about,” or “what people were talking about.” Sometimes being lucky is not a blessing, it can be a curse of apathy and ignorance.
The lack of dialog in the political discourse, the current cult of personalities for particular people in office is a very disturbing trend many people ignore. However, for a segment of the population, what was one a solemn institution – regardless of whether you disagree about policy – has become a circus where there is a non-insignificant number of “elected officials” who are constantly spewing divisive points which also happen to be propaganda points from other regimes, specifically designed to divide Americans. This is a problem, because we are instigated and therefore getting attacked from the inside out.
The difference between the catalyst for this potential new American Civil War and the last is that those who are been enticed to start fighting are not even aware of what they are fighting for. For the American Civil war in the 1800s it was fought because many people were perfectly ok with slavery. Many states severed themselves from the United States in order for these “states’ rights” to have people keep other human beings as property. The mere thought of condoning owning other human beings as property is despicable, and it was a terrible part in world-history, to include American history. We can’t change the past, but we [collectively] can certainly be responsible for our futures.
And hence, that is what the crux of the matter gets muddied up. There are countless people who are perfectly fine with trying to destroy other people’s lives – Americans killing other Americans. Some have not even realized it yet. But the divisive rhetoric is making it more and more incendiary with every passing day. I’ve been seeing this situation deteriorate more and more in real time. And while some are speaking up about it, the solution seems ever so elusive. Talking with no viable action can perpetuate a problem. And no, the action I’m speaking about does not imply getting violent against the dissenting group.
What are the actions needed to diffuse a civil war?
Let’s start with some context. Civil wars have something in common. Somebody wants to keep or raise to power. They achieve this by dividing people under the specific regime, and have them kill each other to keep only loyalists alive so they can pander towards the dear leader for as long as it is convenient to this dear leader.
Did that happen during the American Civil war? Yes, it did. There were many poor Southerners who were convinced that anybody with a darker skin tone was inferior to them, and should remain subservient to those with a non-dark complexion. However, there were very rich plantation owners and other people who actually owned human beings – not every southerner was a slave owner. In fact, the great majority didn’t. But those who did own slaves derived their incredible wealth out of the literal exploitation of human beings, who were originally captured overseas and sold as property in the United States.
Slavery, unfortunately, was not only relegated to the South, there were many people in other states who were perfectly ok about owning slaves too. The American Civil War started because when slavery was to be abolished, many states – who happened to be in the South, wanted to keep human beings as property, then created the Confederacy and severed themselves from the United States. Which is technically treason, and brought four years of bitter fighting among Americans. The Union defeated the Confederacy, but this division among Americans has never really healed up.
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The reason is because many of them have been lied to, and even though most non-wealthy Southerners fought, they were lied too as well. I’m not sure they would have been super wired up to fight if they would have been told the truth – which would be akin to the following: “hey you’re fighting and likely dying for these very rich people who want to keep slaves to get richer, and by the way are not fighting themselves in the front lines against the USA, they will mostly be giving orders to you – but YOU, will be doing the fighting and likely dying, while their wealth is being protected by YOU.”
Some southerners did figure that out in the middle of the battle, and the Confederacy had a lot of attrition and desertion. They realized that the rich folks wanted to have the poor-white folks fighting on behalf of keeping their wealth. For example, owning slaves was also expensive. Therefore, there was no shortage of white people who made a meager living doing manual labor. And because slaves were giving housing and food – however squalid the conditions, the non-wealthy southerners probably perceived that the slaves had it “easy” – which is of course cognitive dissidence.
Considering this, several scholars have come to the agreement that only ~1% of southerners actually owned slaves. And it was THIS 1% who set America on a bloody four-years’ war – which they ended up losing anyway. How where they able to make the 99% additional group of people to fight to the death for this 1% of super rich folks’ economic interests? Sadly, lies and racism. They convince them that folks with dark skin were inferior. By dehumanizing a group, and dehumanizing those who accurately considered people with darker skin human beings. And of course, feed a narrative that the union was being aggressive. Hence, still many southerners call the civil war, a “war of northern aggression” – despite the fact that most of the Confederate soldiers were fighting against their own best interests.
In any battle mobilizing people on lies, there has to be a foe. This foe has to be formidable – yet inferior (in any way they can consider it as such – even the despicable ways). Once it becomes an “us against them” issue – it is very easy to fall in the trap of cognitive dissidence. People tend to galvanize against what they consider a common threat. And those who want to manipulate people vulnerable to exploitable biases are very much aware that those obedient fools are disposable, but that they would break their backs or fight and gladly die for a cause that was manufactured. However, those fighting and dying are very much convinced it was for a worthwhile cause. That is why it is so dangerous.
We’ve seen this happen in other countries. For example, suicide bombers, they are lied about heavenly rewards and other perks. This narrative is indoctrinated for a long time… it is not like they tell today to join a group and tomorrow they will be asked to be a martyr. The ones in the higher echelons never do the suicide-bombing themselves, bizarre, huh? However, these martyrs are very much enamored with the idea that they are doing something bigger than themselves – despite the fact they are just disposable fools who are convinced that ending their lives and the lives of others is an honorable cause. Well, when it comes to civil war rhetoric, although a bit different in semantics, has very similar mechanics – and produces similar results.
What are those mechanics? Let me summarize them this way:
1. Find a foe, whatever or whoever it might be.
2. Disparage this foe until they become dehumanized (if people)
3. Ramp up violent ways to eliminate said foe, and convince that eliminating this foe (even through violence) is not only the right thing to do – but it is an honorable cause.
4. Send the most disposable fool to the front line to do the hard work (even if it is a suicide mission), by promising them some sort of reward for them or anybody they leave behind. It is not like they can come from the afterlife if the reward never indeed happens.
5. Repeat the process until there are no more disposable fools to send to do errands for them. Which might happen sooner or later – that is why authoritarian regimes tend to end at some point. Or are big in indoctrinating new generations, so they can be those next disposable fools.
This process, as despicable as it sounds – it is all too real, and it happens around the world. It has certainly occurred in America. There are larger geopolitical intricacies. Why? Because although the American Civil War in the 1800’s was very much domestic in the sense that some rich American folks wanted to get richer. This new [potential] Civil War is a lot more complex. This time is about entities outside our borders who want to destroy the USA from the inside out. And they have been achieving this with spectacular results.
Even people with good intentions are falling victims of this sick game. And yes, it is designed to be that way. Therefore, for any reader who has a realization they have been lied to, don’t worry – DO something about it! DOING means stop perpetuating the falsehoods of those who lied to you, and use this new found knowledge to tell the [actual] truth to others who were also lied to. Just remember that you might find pushback – just like you were pushing back before the epiphany. Again, this was designed to be that way.
It is very easy for lies to gain traction because they are designed to be easily digestible – and have just enough “accurate” information in order to pass a shallow fact-checking level of scrutiny. But of course, this is not going to last if a higher level of scrutiny is ensued to seek the truth. A lot of people who are not inside the bubble when this information is being pushed onto unsuspected victims won’t fall for this trick. However, for those inside this bubble, the actual reality of being bamboozled will seem counterintuitive. As I keep saying it, it is designed to be that way. And it has been working for a long time.
Case in point. Social media – especially Tweeter (X) in the last several months. At some point there was some fact checking or at least some sort of deterrent from cyberbullying, hate speech, and other types of harassment to users. Nowadays, it is a lot harder to report to a person than to endure the extremely offensive and divisive things many anonymous keyboard warriors spew all over the platform. We see something similar in other platforms, but they tend to be regulated in a different manner, not only by the actual people running the platform, but by the users themselves.
A good example of accountability as described is Threads, the vibe is a lot better than Tweeter, according to the consensus of most Threads users. I happen to agree with the Thread users. But of course, even social media sites are being used as a polarization of who is subscribing to what world view. Particularly, people on Tweeter (X) tend to be a lot more aggressive. And that includes people from either side of the political spectrum, and religion.
Surprisingly (and heartbreaking enough), I’ve also seen many people who claim (claim being the key word) to be atheists who also happen to be extreme right-wing, LGBT, Ultra MAGAs, but also tend to spew all kinds of hate speech against LGBT, and repeat ultra-conservative talking points. Of course, anybody who has been familiar with and studying sociological factors would also find it surprising as I did, because that is very much out of character for those groups. And of course, unsurprisingly, most of these accounts spewing divisive rhetoric have avatars that are not an actual person – and there are no links to any actual social presence. In other words, they are cowards hiding anonymous accounts, giving them the opportunity to harass others while hiding in the obscurity of the internet. I’ll be writing additional articles about that, and I have talked about that in my blog as well.
I’ve challenged many of those, with this very line. I point to them that it is cowardice to attack people online. And further, they would not be doing the same thing if this was face to face with them showing their real name and identity. They claim that those who they harass would go after them -claiming the other [users] to be somebody like the gestapo during Hitler’s times. Which is interesting because these anonymous accounts cowards are doing the same level of harassment, only in a virtual scenario – yet in their sophomoric minds they feel justified; it seems they are lost in the irony.
Trying to reason with many of these minds who are clearly compromised can not only be challenging but incredibly frustrating. I have to admit that although it can be tragically amusing and entertaining, it is also exceedingly sad. And by sad, I mean it is sad to see how deep propaganda has made it almost impossible for them to see how deluded their arguments really are. And of course, there is a non-zero chance that many of these trolls are perhaps high as a kite when they are spewing nonsense in social media.
But the most important point I want to put across with this article is that good people (not just in the USA but around the world) fortunately are the majority. I keep seeing more and more people talking about a potential civil war in the United States – although I’ve been talking about these indicators for a lot longer than they have. But the point remains, what are we going to do to stop this from happening? The simple – yet complex answer is: EDUCATION! And by that I don’t’ mean schools – I mean turning propaganda on its head. The same tools being utilized to divide us can be reversed engineered.
I will be writing a series of articles in the coming weeks about this particular topic, because it is complex. Meanwhile, I have been talking about that in any platform I can get a hold of. For example, in the Festival of Story Tellers, I spoke about propaganda and how to defeat it. You can view that video at the following link
Link to Video About Turning Propaganda on Its Head.
But the fact is that I may be idealistic all I want – but I cannot do this alone. I’ll keep doing my part to spread awareness and provide solutions through my writing – and any other platform I can find. I just hope that my message won’t resonate when it is too late. HLC
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