Wargaming the Second American Civil War

While I would have scoffed at the idea a few years ago, the logic of the current situation in the US seems to raise the possibility of civil war. This idea does not originate with me; a lot of people are saying it on YouTube. The left has decided to deny and shut down public discourse. They have decided to impose their will by force. Those disadvantaged or oppressed by the demands of the left are then obliged to respond with force in turn.

This seems to have begun to happen with the current rioting. Guns and counter-demonstrators seem to have emerged.

The insistence by the left on untried mail-in balloting means that, unless one side or the other wins by a compelling margin, half the country will not see the results as legitimate. Again, if confidence in voting is subverted, violence will look like the only resort.

It seems to me the left is most likely to lose a civil conflict. They have thoroughly alienated police everywhere, surely, by scapegoating them and demanding they be defunded. Even assuming they succeed in dissolving or defanging police everywhere, they are still going to have a cadre of ex-policemen, trained and probably privately armed, with few warm feelings towards them.

Their power base is their control of the media and of education. But their control of the media is rapidly slipping, thanks to everyone now effectively having a video camera and a printing press. Their control of education is also vulnerable to the new technologies.

The brawling and rioting in the streets can go one of three ways: either it gets crushed by the authorities or the counter-protestors; or it overthrows the government; or it settles into a civil war. In the USA, with its traditions, and with an armed population, an undemocratic overthrow of the government does not seem possible without a prolonged civil war against it.

For a civil war, we need some geographical separation of sides. The left forms no natural contiguous territory: they are divided, on both coasts. Should both coasts rise in arms, they would not be able to coordinate. The right, naturally holding the central position, could pick off either in turn, able to shift their forces as needed. The right would also be sitting on the energy and the food supplies. The left, if it took the government, would still probably only hold sway in the cities. The situation would be like that of the Paris commune: they might nominally be in occupation of the government institutions, but they could be cut off from power, food, and communications.

Given these factors, I would have predicted that the left would not want to risk letting things come to blows. Yet they seem to be the side pushing hard to do so—the side that has begun to be violent. I can account for this only as a suicidal tendency. They are seeing their power slipping—they have lost their control over the media, and are perhaps in danger of losing their control over education. Not getting their will, they are throwing a self-destructive tantrum.

All that is necessary then for the good to succeed is that leaders on the right stay resolute, and not be frightened into appeasing without a fight. Sadly, this is looking like too high a bar for them.

Are the Schools the Root of All Evil?

Scott Adams is the cartoonist who does “Dilbert.” He has nothing to do with education. Today, however, on his YouTube channel, he declared his conclusion that all our current problems, which seem to him as to me to be spinning out of control, are really just one problem: teachers’ unions.

As I understand him, he makes two points. First, the mobs out tearing down statues and looting are demonstrating that they have not learned how to think: at best, their actions are not addressing their real problems. They seem like children having a tantrum, smashing their toys, demanding that some adult step in and make everything right. If the problem is racism, as they commonly say, nothing they are doing is addressing the problem.

Second, all the current anger over “racism” is deluded. As the system is currently set up, a young black man with a good education actually has better opportunities than a young white man. Government and corporations are climbing over one another to hire him. Therefore, the problem is education—getting those young black men the skills to make then hireable. Better schools, especially in poor and in black neighbourhoods, would fix this supposed “racism.”

And by the way, didn’t we always think this? Remember desegregation? That was primarily desegregation of schools. Getting the black kids into the same schools as the white kids was supposed to end the problem. It was deficits in education that were holding blacks back.

Instead, now the schools are failing black kids and white kids equally.

And Adams sees all attempts to make the problem better blocked by teachers’ unions.

So, he concludes, the solution is to ban the teachers’ unions.

I agree with him that the teachers’ unions should be banned. I agree that if they were, education would quickly improve, and the costs would go down.

But I also think the problem is bigger than he realizes. Get rid of them, and we could experiment with other approaches. But we would also have to get rid of teacher certification, and the teachers’ colleges. Because, given the current state of educational theory, we still would have no idea how to make schools better. The academic field of “education” is bankrupt.

For that matter, all academic fields in the social sciences, and now most of the humanities, are bankrupt.

The deeper problem comes from the consecration of science as our new religion, beginning in the nineteenth century, and reaching the schools in the early twentieth century. On the model of science looking at the physical world, humans were redefined as objects. And schools were redesigned as factories.

I agree with Adams that education is critical. The essential task of civilization is education: passing on the culture to the next generation. Our system of education is clearly not now passing on the culture. This means, within a few short generations, civilizational death. And we have been failing to pass on the civilization for at least a couple of generations now. It should be no wonder that suddenly all the systems seem to be failing. The civil service can no longer be relied upon; the press can no longer be relied upon; the church hierarchy can no longer be relied upon; the academy can no longer be relied upon; the courts can no longer be relied upon; the parliaments can no longer be relied upon; even things like dictionaries are no longer reliable, as the meanings of words change rapidly for political advantage. Everyone is suddenly pursuing what they see as immediate self-interest.

It is also striking how almost everything we see now in the media, in academics, in civil discourse, is based on simple logical fallacies. Nobody indeed knows any longer how to think; for nobody is taught how to think in the schools—the one skill everyone needs.

But since people were redefined as objects, the implicit assumption must be that thought itself is impossible, or purely an illusion. Machines can’t think.

Nor, of course, is there any longer such a thing as right and wrong. There is only wanting, and then trying to get.

There is only looting or smashing things.

Wild in the Streets

It really is fascinating to follow my Facebook feed these days. The left lost the election, and that was a surprise. But it is even more surprising to see how they are reacting to it. And, if they lost the election, they are really losing the post-election. They seem to be disqualifying themselves for the foreseeable future.

A lot of them are saying they must not accept the election result, but go out into the streets to protest. This is an open declaration that their political goals take priority for them over the democratic process itself. In other words, if they ned to lie, cheat, break rules, break laws, in order to get what they want, they will, and won’t think twice about it.

This presents the rest of us with a painful choice. Can we allow people to participate in the electoral process who refuse to respect the electoral process? This was the argument for outlawing the Communist party: it called for the overthrow of the constitution by violence. That is just about the line that a large number of leftists are now crossing with alacrity.

One of my acquaintance says this is justified because Trump is a “potential Hitler.” But anyone acquainted with history knows that Hitler came to power largely because of rioting in the streets, brownshirts versus Communists. And that the Communists were the first in. Just as leftists are demanding happen today.

Moreover, if it is justified to riot in the streets because Trump is a “potential Hitler,” is it justified for a similar mob to lynch someone as a “potential murderer”?

Moreover, when some leftists advocate impeaching Trump—never mind that impeachment is supposed to be for high crimes and misdemeanours, not for political reasons—others invariably reply that, no, they fear Pence even more. A traditional conservative.

These guys have seemingly deliberately read themselves out of the democratic project, and pretty much out of the culture. Worse—out of the realm of sanity and respect for moral right and wrong.

Maybe they are just being hysterical. If so, it is obviously not a good idea to let them near the levers of power. They are unsound of mind. We are lucky if they are now to some extent removed from it.

Or maybe--I think more likely—they are expressing what they really think. If so, it is obviously not a good idea to let them near the levers of power.

It is almost like watching the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. Or the Wicked Witch of the West melting in the Wizard of Oz.