Of Coups and Civil Wars

David Warren recently published an essay titled, "Looking Ahead," in which he sets out some of his thoughts regarding a future civil war in America. He writes:

One of the mass graves discovered in 

an excavation from July–August of 2014

 at Estépar (Burgos). Dating from the start of 

the Spanish Civil War, the grave contains 

twenty-six republicans who were killed by 

nationalists in August-September 1936. (Source)

     When the next American Civil War starts, I imagine it will look something like Hong Kong: a big melee spreading through all public spaces (I note that USA is bigger than Hong Kong). But there will be fairly limited casualties, at first, each of which will become the subject of unrestrained media outrage, until the media collapse under physical reprisals. Later, the better and better armed demonstrators, on both sides, will tactically “evolve.” The surveillance state itself will begin to disintegrate, and with it any hope of restoring public order, through agencies such as police, courts, and prisons. Things like border surveillance will be abandoned, with immediate consequences, but as the attraction of going to the States diminishes, no one will mind. More noticeably, the economy will break down. Because the American military was designed chiefly to defend against foreign powers, on a very large scale — and the threat will instead be domestic and scattered — the Army will be (at first) effectively neutralized. Isolated firefights between Democrat and Republican soldiers will escalate to firefights between ships and aeroplanes, but these will end fairly quickly as a Pentagon dictatorship seizes control. Within a year, I expect, though only a small part of their arsenal will prove useful, bullet-enforced curfews will restore relative peace to the streets. I don’t expect the death toll to be more than a few hundred thousand, at least from direct conflict as the guns come out. Interruptions of food supply, and the spread of disease, will cost much more — but possibly less (proportionately) than in the last Civil War, in which both sides were better organized.

     That it will spread to Canada, I cannot doubt, developing from the refugee crisis across “the world’s longest undefended border,” as snowflakes of all descriptions, by their millions, run for their lives, then resume their clashes up here. Mexico would also suffer from this “white flight,” except, the chaos from Mexican cartels’ energetic efforts to reclaim significant parts of Texas, California, and the Southwest, would have the paradoxical effect of ending the outbound refugee traffic there. For the most part, other foreign countries would avoid direct engagement. Instead, Islamist and Socialist regimes around the world would be busy consolidating their own local positions, sparking numerous “little wars” by their attempts at regional expansion. Each would be settled as the larger and more ruthless power won.

Eventually, he predicts, the United States would fall under the rule of a strong man--a military dictatorship--that will restore law and order.

     I would quibble with his final conclusion, because the United States is not a nation in the classical sense of the term that could easily be reconstituted, but is an empire of disparate peoples.* Once it falls, the disparity of peoples and cultures within the United States will fracture the country such that all of the king's men and all the king's horses won't be able to put it back together again. Islands of stability will eventually arise and these will become new nations or states. (See also Brian Dickerson's article at The Chicago Tribune, "Choosing sides in America's next civil war may be tricky," discussing the wide differences even within the Republican and Democrat blocs; and Martin van Creveld's article "White Trash" noting that the hatred of white men has become axiomatic among the bureaucrats, intelligentsia, and general society**). My belief, however, is that both the conflict, and the resulting "islands of stability" will be driven by and centered around cities and metroplexes. Except Washington D.C. Like other artificial cities that existed only as capitals of an empire, it will be largely abandoned when all is said and done.

      David Samuels seems to dimly see the difference between nation and Empire in a recent piece he penned for Tablet magazine.

       Yet it is possible to accept [that nations must be ruled by an elite in order to function], and to posit that the reason that the American ruling class seems so indisputably impotent and unmoored in the present is that there is no such thing as America anymore. In place of the America that is described in history books, where Henry Clay forged his compromises, and Walt Whitman wrote poetry, and Herman Melville contemplated the whale, and Ida Tarbell did her muckraking, and Thomas Alva Edison invented movies and the light bulb, and so forth, has arisen something new and vast and yet distinctly un-American that for lack of a better term is often called the American Empire, which in turn calls to mind the division of Roman history (and the Roman character) into two parts: the Republican, and the Imperial.

      While containing the ghosts of the American past, the American Empire is clearly a very different kind of entity than the American Republic was—starting with the fact that the vast majority of its inhabitants aren’t Americans. Ancient American ideas about individual rights and liberties, the pursuit of happiness, and so forth, may still be inspiring to mainland American citizens or not, but they are foreign to the peoples that Americans conquered. To those people, America is an empire, or the shadow of an empire, under which seemingly endless wars are fought, a symbol of their own continuing powerlessness and cultural failure. Meanwhile, at home, the American ruling elites prattle on endlessly about their deeply held ideals of whatever that must be applied to Hondurans today, and Kurds tomorrow, in fits of frantic-seeming generosity in between courses of farm-to-table fare. Once the class bond has been firmly established, everyone can relax and exchange notes about their kids, who are off being credentialed at the same “meritocratic” but now hugely more expensive private schools that their parents attended, whose social purpose is no longer to teach basic math or a common history but to indoctrinate teenagers in the cultish mumbo-jumbo that serves as a kind of in-group glue that binds ruling class initiates (she/he/they/ze) together and usefully distinguishes them from townies during summer vacations by the seashore.

       The understanding of America as an empire is as foreign to most Americans as is the idea that the specific country that they live in is run by a class of people who may number themselves among the elect but weren’t in fact elected by anyone. Under whatever professional job titles, the people who populate the institutions that exercise direct power over nearly all aspects of American life from birth to death are bureaucrats—university bureaucrats, corporate bureaucrats, local, state and federal bureaucrats, law enforcement bureaucrats, health bureaucrats, knowledge bureaucrats, spy agency bureaucrats. At each layer of specific institutional authority, bureaucrats coordinate their understandings and practices with bureaucrats in parallel institutions through lawyers, in language that is designed to be impenetrable, or nearly so, by outsiders. Their authority is pervasive, undemocratic, and increasingly not susceptible in practice to legal checks and balances. All those people together comprise a class.

      Another thing that residents of the broad North American expanse between Canada and Mexico have noticed is that the programs and remedies that this class has promoted, both at home and abroad, have greatly enriched and empowered a small number of people, namely themselves—while the broader American population continues to decline in wealth, health, and education. Meanwhile, the American Empire that the ruling elite administers is collapsing. The popularity of such observations on both the left and the right is what accounts for the rise of Donald Trump, on one hand, and of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the other hand, among an electorate that has not been historically distinguished by its embrace of radicalism. Add those voter bases together, and perhaps 75% of Americans would seem to agree that their country, however you think of it, is in big trouble, and that the fault lies with the country’s self-infatuated and apparently not-so-brilliant elite.

       Every student of history has their own theory about how and why empires fall. My theory is this: The wealth of any empire flows disproportionately to the capital, where it nourishes the growth, wealth, and power of the ruling elite. As the elite grows richer and more powerful, the gulf between the rulers and the ruled widens, until the beliefs and manners of the elite bear little connection to those of their countrymen, whom they increasingly think of as their clients or subjects. That distance creates resentment and friction, in response to which the elite takes measures to protect itself. The more wealth and power the elite controls, the more insulation it must purchase. Disastrous mistakes are hailed as victories or are made to appear to have no consequences at all, in order to protect the aura of collective infallibility that protects ruling class power and privilege.

      What happens next is pretty much inevitable in every time and place—Spain, France, Great Britain, Moghul India, you name it: Freed from the laws of gravity, the elite turns from the hard work of correct strategizing and wise policymaking to the much less time-consuming and much more pleasant work of perpetuating its own privileges forever, in the course of which endeavor the ruling elite is revealed to be a bunch of idiots and perverts who spend their time prancing around half naked while setting the territories they rule on fire. The few remaining decent and competent people flee this revolting spectacle, while the elite compounds its mistakes in an orgy of failure. The empire then collapses.

But there is much more to elite stupidity in our current case. As J.R. Nyquest recently wrote, "[t]he deep state is the communist fifth column, and the communist fifth column is the deep state." Their strategies are those of class division as informed by Cultural Marxist theory. Hence the elites are purposefully attempting to set certain groups within the country's boundaries against other groups in order to garner the votes necessary to stay in power.

     In his piece, Samuels went on to interview Angelo Codevilla, who not only made a point of the fact that the elites actually know very little about the people over which they lord, but that the elites have been stoking grievance politics to capture votes. Codevilla notes, for instance, that the elites "are not manufacturing a class," but, rather, "are exploiting that class’ weakness to turn that class into clients." He continues:

      Most of all, what you are giving them—which really in a sense they crave more than anything else—is a sense of grievance against the rest of America. Grievance is the handle by which you push these pawns into your cultural wars.

* * *

      Whatever they have to be aggrieved about, that grievance serves your instrumental purpose. Their grievance is your happiness. If they didn’t have a grievance, you’d try to manufacture it. Their having a grievance is an occasion for you to, to sharpen it, to scratch it, and to make it more relevant to them than it otherwise would be.

The revolt of the masses, however, is more basic than this according to Codevilla:

       The basis of the revolt is simple. We realize that you hate us and therefore we hate you back. And we will take anybody, not that we found this man who fits our description, because Donald Trump didn’t fit anybody’s description of what they wanted. But we will take anybody who’ll take a swing at you.

     Which is why I originally wrote at the back of that essay, that this revolution would be for the better or the worse. Because of the urgency that the country class felt. For getting out of all of this.

     But a peasant's revolt will never be tolerated. Thus, the elites seem hell-bent on causing a civil war by foolishly pursuing a soft-coup against President Trump. (If you think the term "coup" is too strong, then you haven't been keeping up with the news: "Mark Zaid, one of the attorneys representing the intelligence community whistleblower at the center of the Democrats' ongoing impeachment inquiry, tweeted conspicuously in January 2017 that a 'coup has started' and that 'impeachment will follow ultimately.'").

    David P. Goldman recently observed the absurdity of the whole impeachment theory:

[The whole matter meets] the canonical definition of chutzpah -- shameless effrontery -- and it summarizes the Democratic position on the attempted impeachment of President Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier, assembled out of bits handed to ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele from his Russian intelligence sources, and the FBI used this concoction to obtain FISA warrants to bug the Trump presidential campaign. Now, THAT'S foreign interference. And those facts aren't in dispute. When the Trump administration tries to get the truth out of foreign governments about their involvement in nefarious activities in the U.S., the Democrats scream, "Impeachment!"

And, as I've warned before, even though the most wealthy stand in the shadows, the most dangerous actors in all of this are the members of the intelligence community. Goldman agrees, stating:

The power and capacity to abuse the power of America's intelligence services has grown to the point that it endangers our freedoms. Make no mistake: If they can railroad the president of the United States and members of the cabinet, they can do pretty much anything they want to you. Defend your freedoms. Support President Trump.

And this is from someone that has almost been a "never-Trumper" for the past three years.

       More dangerous over the long run, however, is the support the anti-Trump crowd is getting from former military members. For instance, in his article, "Who the Hell Do They Think They Are?," Codevilla discusses one of the primary actors in the ongoing coup: retired admiral William McRaven. Codevilla writes concerning McRaven's recent New York Times op-ed:

       McRaven concludes, “it is time for a new person in the Oval Office—Republican, Democrat or independent—the sooner, the better.” At the very least, McRaven called for impeachment ahead of an election, or perhaps for a coup, and pretended to do so on the military’s behalf. In fact, his was just one more voice from an establishment that has squandered the public’s trust, senses that it can no longer win elections honestly, and is pulling out all the stops.

      It pretends to be trying to take down Donald Trump. In fact, it is trying to do something much bigger: Invalidate the votes of the “deplorables” who oppose them.

      I suggest that the just response from self-respecting Americans to McRaven and others like him is: “Who the hell do you think you are?”

 And he adds: "McRaven really does speak for a substantial percentage of senior military officers. Their views are on display nightly on Fox News. It is time for the American people to realize that these, like their counterparts in the intelligence agencies, are no heroes."

Additional Reading:

• "The amazing Trump-Ukraine-Whistleblower story in a nutshell" by James Howard Kunstler

      Everyone and his uncle remembers the infamous threat issued to Mr. Trump by Senator Schumer during the transition period, on 3 January 2017: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community – they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you[.]"

       Perhaps Senator Schumer should have kept his pie-hole shut on that. He made it official that the Intel Community would act as an adversary and antagonist to the President, and that appears to be exactly what has happened. One suspects that this rogue agency has captured The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, and several TV cable news networks as well. And now they are metamorphosing into an enemy of the people.

      The moment approaches when Mr. Trump will have to carry out a severe housecleaning of the CIA and perhaps many other agencies under the executive branch of the government. Their ongoing campaign to undo the 2016 election is igniting a civil war. ...

• "Judicial Watch: AP Reporters Gave DOJ/FBI Ukraine Info and Code to Private Locker of Paul Manafort in Apparent Effort to Push Criminal Prosecution"
• "The Michael Flynn smoking gun: FBI headquarters altered interview summary"--Washington Examiner. Not just any interview summary, but the one relied on to bring charges against Flynn. And other reports I've seen say that the original has disappeared.
• "SCOOP: CIA, FBI Informant Was Washington Post Source For Russiagate Smears"--The Federalist.

The Federalist has learned that the now-outed CIA and FBI informant Stefan Halper served as a source for Washington Post reporter David Ignatius, providing more evidence that the intelligence community has co-opted the press to push anti-Trump conspiracy theories. In addition, an email recently obtained by The Federalist from the MI5-connected Christopher Andrew bragging that his long-time friend Ignatius has the “‘inside track’ on Flynn” adds further confirmation of this conclusion.

• "Ukraine Burisma Story is Massive – Involves BILLIONS of IMF and US Funds Looted and Lost by Bank Connected to Burisma Holdings!"--Gateway Pundit. 
• "Trump Is Derailing The Elite’s Gravy Train" by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.

If the elitists get power again, they are never letting go of it, not without a fight. And now, doesn’t the elite’s obsessive fixation on shutting down conservative dissent, eliminating competing institutions (like religious entities), and disarming law-abiding Americans make a lot more sense?

• "Faith Goldy: Antifa Terrorism—The Coming Civil War"--VDare.
• "What Happens When Top Rival American Politicians Compete to Jail Each Other?" by Richard Fernandez.
• "On Civil War"--Motus Mentis.
• "Impeachment"--American Partisan. "Post-impeachment, the real source of power in D.C. would be those who control the intelligence agencies, or have access to privileged personal and metadata through corporate sources."
• "A TIMELINE OF TREASON: How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election"--Doug Ross.
• "New Evidence Unveils Disturbing Facts About Hillary's Email Scandal"--Frontpage Magazine. The FBI destroyed evidence to benefit Hillary Clinton.
• "Liberals cheer as antifa violence escalates" by Andy Ngo at The New York Post. "Political violence is a feature, not a bug, of antifa, which believes itself to be in an existential struggle with latter-day fascism."
• "Peter Turchin: How 'elite overproduction' and 'lawyer glut' could ruin the U.S."--National Post.

      The Great Compression unraveled in the late 1970s, when workers’ wages stagnated. We are living in a new cycle of growing inequality, elite overproduction, ideological polarization and political fragmentation.

      Today we are seeing not just a bitter struggle between the Democrats and Republicans; the Republican Party itself is fragmenting. Now, as during the 1850s, many of the political elites disdain compromise and are instead inclined to fight to the bitter end. 

Notes:

     * "The nation's white population has grown only 0.1% since 2010 and is projected to decline over the next decade."

     ** Noting the official and unofficial sanctions against "Rightwing extremists," Van Creveld writes:

What is not often said is that, practically without exception, they are white men. People who, following over half a century of civil rights, women’s lib, gay lib, and immigration (both legal and illegal), have been turned into the most denigrated, most marginalized, most abused group in America. Nigger and Dago and Chink and Greaseball and Kike and queer and poofster (and butch) are out and may, if those who use them are unlucky, lead to legal action. But Honkey, a derogatory slur meaning, originally, “white devil,” is in. So are “Hick,” “Hillbilly” (“often used as an insult and racial slur against White folks who live in the country”) “Redneck” “a poor white person without education, especially one living in the countryside in the southern US who has prejudiced, unfair and unreasonable beliefs”) and “White Trash.” To engage in homosexual, or lesbian, or “transgender” sex is chic, and anyone who considers it revolting had better [h]old his or her peace. But for a man of any color to have or merely try to have normal sex with a woman is to invite accusations of harassment, exploitation, abuse, and rape.