America is Fast Barreling Down the Path to Civil War

To many, the shooting of Alex Pretti over the weekend in Minneapolis was a simple, avoidable tragedy, to some it was an act of collective aggression, and to others, it was perfectly vindicating and justified. In my own view, the truth is that none of it really matters now. Truth — in our time — is a wholly subjective concept, based on which of our numerous tribalized mobs you ask.

What has undeniably just occurred is a moment of generational polarization, and factionalization, throwing jet fuel on a delicate tinderbox which was already smoking and smoldering. There are great historical parallels to this tragedy in the Kent State Shootings of 1970, a moment of similar cacophony, and split second division. Contemporary historians, though it is barely even history, often agree that it was the day which irreparably sent America in two separate directions; and was perhaps the final nail in the coffin for reasonable discourse in our nation. This of course having taken place in a time where the US mediasphere was still dominated by newspapers, radio, and broadcast television.

With the now well established alternate reality of social media, the instantaneous delivery of viewpoint affirmative information, and the various ideological echo chambers which — ruled primarily by fear and emotion — have come to define the late 18th Century-esque mob rule of our current age, Pretti’s killing poses far more incendiary dangers for the future of the United States than the polarizing events of older Americans’ time, even if the violence of the 60s and 70s was numerically much larger.

Much like the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the catalyst of World War I, innocent people are now the innocuous pawns over which an actively heating, large scale political war is being waged. A war led by forces with far greater, albeit oblivious concerns than simply immigration policy itself.

Left wing resistance groups active today in the battlegrounds of Minnesota neighborhoods, more closely resemble organized insurgency forces like those we hunted down in Iraq, and Afghanistan in the 2000’s, than they do spontaneous protest movements of the past. The leap from such forms of relatively unarmed resistance, to direct, low intensity armed combat, is not a great one; and to the unanimated observer, much rhetoric has already been heard indicating such a thing is currently in motion.

The MAGA right, and the splinter cell of America First, seemingly to their own pleasure, are now inching towards similar readiness to fight in the streets. That is if the federal government will not carry out the task for them.

Within both coalitions, wealthy, and upper middle class whites, some animated by universal “empathy and kindness,” and others by the unflinching desire for social restoration, are blindly leading fellow Americans into a trap which our adversaries in the world are gleefully waiting to see snap shut; at a time where major power tensions are at an all time high, and the potential for some form of large scale conflict overseas is becoming inevitable. And, it is of no help that such inflammation of our body politik is occurring at the same time as we are on the verge of our own regime toppling war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Needless to say, whatever remained last week of Democracy in America, will be the greatest casualty of whatever eventuality blows this fire into the sky, so long as we are able to deter the advances of adversarial powers who would seek to capitalize on the opportunity for their own territorial expansions, and campaigns against Western Hegemony across the globe.

In the past, America has survived worse things than Donald Trump — Civil War may very well top that list.

I will conclude in saying this, Americans today are the most unaware, and entitled inheritors of a Great Empire in human history, one where domestic events uncontrollably ripple across the planet for good, or for bad.