Our Vacuous Civil War
With all the talk of a civil war after the FBI retrieved government documents from Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, The Atlantic's Tom Nichols writes about what we can expect from this new era of right wing political violence.
Nichols argues that because the current civil war talk centers around a cult of personality and resentment, meaning nothing of any importance or based on reality, there is not likely to be a civil war like we think of the Civil War. The South may have been fighting for their awful right to enslave people, but they were fighting for something. Including something 11 states thought it necessary to band together and secede from the Union over. But because this new push for civil war is based on "personal grudges, racial and class resentments, and a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives," it is unlikely to go much farther than occasional mobs like what we saw on January 6.
It is undoubtedly good news that we are not entirely likely to enter into a full-blown civil war similar to the 1860s. However, it is altogether depressing to think that there may be no end to the current bout of political violence so long as Trump and his pals are stoking the flames of their resentment. And based on what we have seen in the wake of the FBI and DOJ reclaiming papers that rightfully belong to the government, plenty are still willing to pour gasoline on that fire.
All is not lost, though. Nichols points out that the only way to defeat this cult of personality centered around Trump is to demand and ensure that "Trump and his enablers face the consequences of their actions." To be clear, this is not a call for vengeance. So long as anyone is free to attack democracy and come away unscathed, our national fabric will continue to fray at the seams.
But even if, due to his Teflon nature, Trump does come away from the mess he has made of government and country without so much as a scratch, those of us who know the truth must continue to hold to it. We may not influence anyone other than those in our immediate circles, but even that is good and necessary work. If there is just one less family like Guy Reffitt's (whose story of storming the Capitol and the fallout that had on his family is told as part of an investigation into January 6 on the Wondery podcast Will Be Wild), that is cause for celebration. It is never wrong to stand for the truth, especially if those speaking against you are also calling for violence.
3 More Things:
1) Bonnie Kristian, who will speak at our next pastor's conference on September 1, ponders for Christianity Today how we might resurrect expertise. Kristian makes the case that while the death of expertise is not the reason why our politics is currently a mess, it has undoubtedly aided the mess. So long as people feel comfortable taking Google's advice over that of actual experts, we should expect to see things get worse. The way out, Kristian argues, is to accept that even experts are fallible but better than the alternative of trusting non-expertise. We must all adopt a posture of humility that helps us admit our limits and trust in experts again.
2) Current has a round-up covering the extent to which Charlie Kirk and Eric Metaxas "went crazy after the FBI executed a search warrant at Donald Trump's home in Palm Beach." This video is par for the course for Kirk, who has always been more than willing to trade away morality for showtime. Metaxas continues to squander any promise he once had as a quasi-intellectual and voice of reason.
3) Amy Gardner's latest for the Washington Post covers which election deniers could control future elections in crucial battleground states, such as Kari Lake in AZ, Kristina Karamo in MI, and Doug Mastriano in PA. If they had been in charge in 2020, it is likely that all of these candidates would have aided Trump’s efforts to steal the election.