The Coming American Civil War

Statehouse control by party as of 2018.

There are a lot of people saying that events are moving fast, and the US is on the verge of civil war. A poll shows that a third of Americans believe this. Who would have thought this five years ago? Not I.

But it is not going to happen. Or if it does, it will be a very short war.

To begin with, the Republicans control all three branches of the federal government. So the Republicans are not going to start it. It has to be the left. And the left, conversely, has no legal federal power base, then, does it? It cannot start as a dispute over power between the executive and the legislature, as civil wars have generally started in England or France.

Nor does the left have a decent power base in the statehouses, as was used to start the last US Civil War. Republican domination at state level is also overwhelming. The only area of contiguous states where Democrats are dominant and so conceivably might vote to separate is the West Coast: California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Hawaii.

Not a large base geographically; much smaller proportionately than the Confederacy. And they could be brought to heel in southern California pretty quickly by turning off their water, which largely comes from the interior. The rest is perfect for blockade.

There is a geographically smaller Democratic pocket in the Northeast: New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont—and not New York. Any part of it could probably be sliced through to the sea by a tank column in a day. Sherman never had it so good.

So there is no territorial base from which to launch a Civil War.

Someone suggested the dissident left coast might help themselves by joining Canada. This would be a suicidal move for Canada, so surely Canada would not consent. To begin with, the US West Coast would demographically swamp Canada, so that, being a democracy, Canadians would thereby lose control of their country. Secondly, it would give the rest of the US license and justification in international law to invade and take over Canada--something they could probably do militarily in a week. Canada as a communications and transportation network is one long thin ribbon that could be snipped by a force from below the border at any point.

The big cities might rise up in revolt, as municipal governments, at the municipal level. This can cause havoc in a nation like France, with One Big City and the government in residence. It is not going to hold up in a country like te US, with many large cities and none very dominant. If New York rose, Washington could respond in force. If Washington rose, New York could respond. If both rose, and Chicago and LA too, some of the ten largest cities are pretty conservative: Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio. Even if all the biggest cities rose at once, they could not coordinate. They could not supply. Each could be cut off and picked off fairly easily in turn. Any city, sans hinterland support, is easily subject to siege. The American Revolution was won with New York firmly in British hands.

The only way it could happen, therefore, is by someone on the left first staging a coup, or a revolution. Someone would have to illegally seize the levers of power in Washington. And hope, improbably, that others accepted this and went along, obeying orders.

Most times, when that sort of thing happens, it is the military who does it. Because it must be done by force, and force is more or less a militay monopoly. If it is not the military, if, for example, it is some angry mob, the military must at least stand down and not defend the government. This is always the critical point in any revolution: the government calls in the troops, and the troops refuse to fire on the demonstrators. Or, as in the case of Tiananmen, they do show themselves prepared to fire, and the revolt is over.

In the US, the military, and the police forces as well, can be assumed to have mostly Republican sympathies—both the brass, and the average man on the ground. The left has long been hostile to the military, and to the police, and now very vocally to ICE. If one faction or one cabal of officers tried anything, they would probably soon be crushed by the larger part of the force.

Okay, it is true, in the US, the military has less of a monopoly of force than in most countries. Thanks to the Second Amendment, America has an armed citizenry, able to protect its rights in extremis.

And what are the political sympathies of most US gun owners? Who is bigger on defending the Second Amendment?

Even if the military stood down, in the US the armed citizenry would likely rush in to defend the government.

Perhaps the civil service could try to seize power—the “deep state,” with their military arm being the secret service, the FBI. There are rumblings that the FBI has gone rogue, and has been acting illegally.

Yet if it came to that, FBI agents are basically cops, and many if not most will have shared sympathies with the cops on the beat, who tend Republican. Nor,even if united against them, could the FBI or civil service stand against the actual military in any open confrontation. Any more than Beria could have stood against Zhukov in the lunge for power after Stalin died. It would be handguns against tanks and bazookas and aerial bombardment, in effect.

So no, we are not going to see a civil war.

What we are seeing, accordingly, is hysteria on the left. Because they are acting violent, calling for violence, and talking civil war despite the fact that they could not win one.

They have visibly lost touch with reality.

And it looks as though the general public has begun to notice: this emperor is exposing his nakedness, and folks are starting at last to point and snicker. There seems to be a big movement in just the last few days or weeks, on YouTube, of people videoing explaining why they are “walking away” from the left.

Soon, I suspect, it will no longer be socially acceptable to be openly leftist: it will be like publicly declaring immaturity or stupidity.