When you think about it, the American Civil War didn’t have to happen. President Lincoln had no intention whatsoever of interfering in the institution of slavery. But many Southerners saw in Lincoln the potential for Northern abolitionists to use him to end slavery. They believed there were latent dictatorial impulses in Lincoln and were terrified he would somehow be able to free their slaves.
This was nonsense. Lincoln was not about to commit economic suicide in both North and South by forcibly ending slavery. This is something the Southern states never understood and they might not have started a war if they had realized how intimately slavery was tied to the prosperity of both sections.
Today, the American left sees Donald Trump as a potential dictator. They see his re-election as the biggest catastrophe that could ever befall America. So they are preparing to fight.
A group of radical-left organizations met on Zoom to make post-election plans for a civil war.
Over the course of two hours, participants broached the question of what the progressive political ecosystem can functionally do in a series of election scenarios. They began charting out what it would take to stand up a multi-state communications arm to fight disinformation, a training program for nonviolent civil disobedience, and the underpinnings of what one official described as “mass public unrest.” And they pored over a report from the Transition Integrity Project, a bipartisan group formed in 2019, that analyzed various election season scenarios and made clear the type of ratfu**ery, corruption, and chaos that potentially was ahead.
“The potential for violent conflict is high,” the report noted.
The connecting thread in this argument is that the radical right is armed and wants to kill them — kill blacks, kill Jews, kill their political opponents.
Of course, they don’t seem to recall the left-wing militias that are also heavily armed and want to kill Trump supporters and others on the right.
You can see where this is headed.
There are practical problems in starting a war and the radical groups pondered their alternatives.
Some of the hurdles were straightforward: how you “occupy s**t, hold space, and shut things down, not just on Election Day but for weeks,” explained one source familiar with the Democracy Defense Nerve Center operations. Others are more complicated, like what quick transportation options can be in place should poll locations mysteriously close. Others have been simply impossible to plan out.
“I don’t know what the strategy is when armed right-wing militia dudes show up in polling places,” the same source said. “This [Kyle] Rittenhouse guy is being lionized on the right, right now. If it is being unleashed that you can shoot people and be a hero, I don’t know what preparation we can possibly do for that.”
Shutting things down for a couple of weeks and occupying “s**t” would be an invitation to war.
Will Trump dispute the election? Would Lincoln have tried to free the slaves?
“It is very obvious that Trump is laying the groundwork for claiming victory no matter what,” said Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, and a participant in the FBT call. “Progressive groups at the end of the day believe in our democracy and, while it is not perfect, believe in building upon it and strengthening it. And we will fight to protect it from what we truly see as a president who has gone off the rails and taking this country down an authoritarian fascist path.”
Against such hysteria, logic doesn’t work, reason doesn’t work, and given the non-enforcement of civil unrest on the streets, the law won’t work.
The left is talking itself into a civil war. Civic order is breaking down and, like in 1860, Americans on opposing sides are seeing an enemy across from them and not a fellow countryman.
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