Thursday, December 16, 2021

NY Times Beating the Drums for Civil War

I hope we find a way to avoid civil war, but the mainstream press sees it as more likely all the time.

NY Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall writes:

Political analysts, scholars and close observers of government are explicitly raising the possibility that the polarized American electoral system has come to the point at which a return to traditional democratic norms will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. ...

On Dec. 10, The Washington Post published “18 Steps to a Democratic Breakdown,” which warned:

Democracy is most likely to break down through a series of incremental actions that cumulatively undermine the electoral process, resulting in a presidential election that produces an outcome clearly at odds with the voters’ will. It is this comparatively quiet but steady subversion, rather than a violent coup or insurrection against a sitting president, that Americans today have to fear most.
We have already had a Presidential election, in Nov. 2020, that was clearly at odds with the voters' will on Election Day.

And columnist Charles Blow writes:

I see too many uneasy parallels between what was happening nearly 200 years ago and what is happening now. I see this country on the verge of another civil war, as the Calhounian impulse is reborn.
Right-wing and conservative opinions have not changed too much. A large faction of the Democrats have jumped radically to the Left, and show no interest in compromising.

Update: Wash. Post columnist Dana Milbank writes:

“Indeed, the United States has already gone through what the CIA identifies as the first two phases of insurgency — the “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” phases — and only time will tell whether the final phase, “open insurgency,” began with the sacking of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6. …

The enemies of democracy must not be allowed to prevail. We are on the doorstep of the “open insurgency” stage of civil conflict, and Walter writes that once countries cross that threshold, the CIA predicts, “sustained violence as increasingly active extremists launch attacks that involve terrorism and guerrilla warfare, including assassinations and ambushes.”

It is no exaggeration to say the survival of our country is at stake.”

I think that i t is an exaggeration, but it is worthwhile noticing that liberal news media see it this way.

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