American society has been near or at a level that could be called a civil war for awhile.
The components include:
1. The so called culture wars. These have generally arranged themselves around a fault line separating liberal and conservative world views. At their heart, these two world views represent a psychological divide. It is literally a difference in how people respond to life. And the era where there could be compromise by the largest group on either side, those to one side or the other of the middle, has been seriously eroded by such developments as:
A. The growth of cable news networks supportive of the points of view represented by the extremes of these world views. Two examples are MSNBC on the Left, and Fox News on the Right. The core beliefs of each separate liberal/conservative psyche have developed a strident narrative within these new venues, viewable both on traditional TV, and as apps and sites on PC's and mobile platforms. And to these venues gravitate respective audiences seeking out the echo chamber that reflects their core beliefs. Here the respective groups nurture their sense of being on the correct side. Here the respective groups learn to despise and mock the other world view. This development alone will and likely has made the fault line wider, made the charm seperating people all the wider.
B. Concominent with the growth of agenda driven cable news has been the growth of social media in the internet age. Within this landscapes people have found their voice, both in full dsclosure public venues, by full disclosure meaning people speak and post under their actual names, and as well anonymously, by screen names that shield the true identity of each to all. Within this latter group, vitriol has grown by leaps and bounds, as anonymity can both cause and allow individuals to voice their anger at the other, and really pay no true social consequence. In the former group, where identity is not really hidden, the vitriol and caustic critique of Left toward Right and Right toward Left is also apparent, though it does not usually descend into the ugliness of comments that represent mean spiritedness to the nth degree, and which is seen in social media venues of the anonymous. Like Internet forums. Like the comment section of news articles.
C. The growth of echo chamber venues for delivering the respective Right/Left world view and the population explosion within social media landscapes as the places where people communicate, virtual landscapes, have also by their virtual nature, made it far easier to slam the other side. Just in terms of conversation, if I am in a real time, physical gathering of people in someone's living room, do I speak to the other side in quite the manner I may do so in a virtual gathering? Maybe most of the time, but if you cannot see the other person, as in most social media settings, are you always as humane in how you treat them? The temptation to be less then civil is more likely in the virtual setting.
2. Violent clashes in public squares. This component is spotlighted by the media, and each respective echo chamber will focus on incidents that support the narrative that the other side are violent, instigators, and driven by hatred. This is the venue of competing demonstrations, which have been present in other eras of divisiveness, such as the Vietnam Era.
Today we have anti-Muslim activists, the recent anti-Sharia protests, for example, clashing with Antifa squads from the extreme Left. A look at these growing clashes:
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/f...ascists-alt-fight-squads-170604082612058.html
And please, a link from aljazeera does not make me a sympathizer of Islamist terrorism.
3. Hate crimes and lone wolfs attacks. Hate crimes are up across the board. The Right will seize on the Alexandria incident as proof the Left is leading the hate. In this way, anybody on the Left can be cast as a potential murderer. But, it is the Right that is attacking Muslims and vandalizing Mosques, willing to cast any Muslim as a potential terrorist, and the Left will seize on these incidents as proof the Right is leading the hate. In fact, however, in actuality, hate begets hate.
I do not condone far Left black clad goons attacking white supremacist demonstrators. But neither could I condone Trump railing against protestors at his rallies as "the worse Americans", or how he would like to "beat the crap out of them", or waxing nostalgic over how in the old days one would remove them "on a stretcher". Hate begets hate, and this being acted out in demonstration and violent crime is a component in this developing civil war.
All of the above describes some of the roots of and venues for civil divisiveness in America 2017. When people think civil war,
they don't necessarily look at the above conditions as representing that state of affairs. Yet, what all of the above has done is
widen the chasm between liberal and conservative mind sets/world views. And that represents a deep threat to the social fabric of the United States. The more that social fabric is frayed, the worse things will get. It isn't just Congress that can no longer tolerate compromise. The populations of the echo chambers, the competing demonstrators, the nuts from each side, cannot tolerate the other, and that is a form of civil war. All the Kings men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again. And as hate begets hate within America, we are going to have one hell of a difficult time finding peace in our time. We're tearing the country itself asunder when we allow hate to call all the shots. We're taking partisanship to dangerous levels.
I have not lost sight of knowing only compromise and respectful dialog can overcome this divisiveness, but a person also believes what he or she believes, and speaks as strongly as possible from that belief, and so it is that I've always been confident that I could read Trump like a book, and I believed he would drive hate from the Right. His words have spelled that out plainly to me, but as the Right responded to the Left with cries of "fake news" and described the free press as "the enemy", so I've allowed my own anger to nurture and grow. And by calling Trump a driver of hate, I'm well aware that the people on the Right instead see people like myself as "the worst in America", instead see people like myself as the deranged drivers of hate and division in America. And therein lies the bottom line. Each side believes they are on the right side of history, each side believes they must win this war to save America. We're not used to seeing this as a war, but if you believe you are right and believe you must win, what else are you going to call it but a war? It's certainly not a game, is it? It was not a game to the man who shot Congressmen because they were Republican.
