Dispatches from the American Future
Theories abound as to whether, or how the United States may come to war and/or dissolution. Stephen Marche’s book looks into the near future and envisions a scenario where American democracy implodes. He cites an interesting fact from the Study of Civil War at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway.
The definition of a civil war, “is where a thousand combatant deaths occur within a year.” The definition of civil strife “starts at twenty-five deaths within a year.” In America in 2019, domestic anti-government extremists killed forty-two people, in 2018 they killed fifty-three people, in 2017, thirty-seven, and 2016, seventy-two, seventy in 2015. By their definition, America is in a state of civil strife, on the threshold of civil war.”
No one can accurately predict the future, however predilection aside, being able to see the signs and symptoms of societal discord and its long-term effect on policies, the law, polarization, anger, and tribalism, are somewhat evident, if you pay attention and open your eyes.
As a Canadian, Stephen Marche, like many viewers of America’s increasingly intolerant public, sees signs that are clear indicators of an impending collapse. He illuminates a potential outcome by the way of ‘dispatches’, with which he spins a tale, based on observable facts about how the next American Civil War will occur and its final effect on America.
Marche explains how his unique position, both geographically and politically enables a vision that provides some clarity. “Confusion precedes civil conflict,” he writes. “Being Canadian, I am outside that particular confusion.”
Marche works in America, has lived in the United States, and loves the United States. Liberal politically, it is a position often taken for granted in a country where socialized medicine and gun control are not in dispute, even by conservatives. His writing attempts to synthesize a diverse political spectrum.
He sees Trump, as a distraction, as simply a symptom, not a causal factor. He suggests that there is simply a ‘red’ America, and a ‘blue’ America and that the division has been there for a very long time. What is becoming readily apparent, is that the U.S. system of power is “an archaic mode of government unsuited to the realities of the twenty-first century. It needs reforms to its foundational systems, not just new faces.
Today, the American political system has become overwhelmed by anger. Even the most basic tasks of government are increasingly impossible. Trust in government is in free fall. Congress has approval ratings of around 10 percent. As Marche states, “Inside the ruins of the old order, bright flames of pure rage are blossoming.”
Marche wrote his book, not as predilection, but as a warning.
He believes that the unwillingness to see what is coming is one of the exact reasons why it will occur. He suggests that is easy to pretend that it will all work out since nobody wants what is coming. He states, “At critical moments in history, the future stares us right in the face. We can never manage to look it in the eye.”
I am not a conspiracy theorist or a doomsday prepper. I am a realist, one who requires the gathering of data, its analysis, the search for a hypothesis, testing, validation, and verification, combined with rigorous review and replication. Today, we may not have enough time left for this to occur.
Reality is outpacing even the most alarmist predictions. Today, Americanism craves a violent resolution to its political fantasies. Today, America’s faith in democracy is shattered. A YouGov poll in 2022 found that 88% of Republicans do not believe that Biden won legitimately.
“Intelligence services of other countries are preparing dossiers on the possibilities of America’s collapse. We need to prepare for a post-democratic America, an authoritarian and hence a much less stable super-power. We need to prepare for a lost America, one consumed by crises, that it cannot manage to conceive, much less to enact, foreign or domestic policies.”
Marche claims that “the next Civil War isn’t science fiction anymore. The plans for the first battle have already been drawn up. And not by novelists. by Colonels.”
When I was in graduate studies at University, I had a professor and Dean of Social Sciences who was without a doubt one of the brightest minds that I had ever encountered. We had long conversations about American Foreign and Domestic Policies. Now 18 years have passed since those discussions. She had a unique insight into America, having served in John Kennedy’s inner circle as an advisor after having graduated from Claremont University with her Ph.D.
Our discussions almost always ended in positive assertions of the future, with one exception. That was about the future of the United States. She had left politics and decided to seek both Academia and a life in Canada for her future. She saw conflict and strife in America’s future, and she was quite open about the reasons.
She passed in 2016, and I miss our conversations. I would like to have had the ability to ask her opinion and listen to her prognostications for the near future. She was candid and incredibly well-versed on what the history of those causes and precursors to America’s disintegration were, and how they would likely rise in the future. She believed that the causes were deep-seated and entrenched, going back to the events that brought America into being and progressed through and after the Civil War.
She also had a unique perspective. She was black.
I leave the final thought to Marche himself, who states;
“The crises the United States now faces in its basic governmental functions are so profound that they require starting over. The founders understood that the government was supposed to work for living people rather than a bunch of old ghosts. And now their ghostly Constitution, worshipped like a religious document, is tangling the spirit that animated the enterprise, the idea that you mold politics to suit people, not the other way around. Does the country have the humility to acknowledge that its old orders no longer work? Does it have the courage to begin again? As it managed so spectacularly at the birth of its nationhood, the United States requires the boldness to invent new politics for a new era. It might do so. America is, after all, a country devoted to reinvention.
The situation is clear: the system is broken, all along the line. Once again, as before, the hope for America is Americans.”
The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, by Stephen Marche, Avid Reader Press, 2023.
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