Revisiting Bracken's CW2 Cube

Matthew Bracken developed a conceptual model (he called it a "meta-terrain") to help understand how the lines of conflict would likely form in a then-future civil war, and published an article back in 2010 about the concept at the old Western Rifle Shooters Association blog. He envisioned the conflict as developing between three axis. One axis was economic: it reflects a continuum from richer to poorer. The second axis was based around racial divides: whiter to darker. (Bracken notes: "Darker, for brevity, includes African-Americans, Hispanics and so on. Lighter refers to those of European ancestry."). And the third axis reflected the city/rural divide: rural to urban. ("It has frequently been observed that today’s red-blue political map is better understood at the county than at the state level."). His article also included the helpful graphic below to more easily visualize this concept.

    Bracken warned readers to not get hung up on exceptions because, he explained, "to focus on them is to miss the critical centers of gravity of Civil War Two for the over-study of interesting but insignificant outliers." Thus, for instance, he recognizes that the poorer and darker includes "their elected leaders [who] are anything but poor or dark."

    Although we have the 6 faces and 8 extreme corners of the cubes, he focuses on two of corners which he believes will form the two primary meta-groups driving the conflict. Bracken explains:

    So the opposing corners of the CW2 Cube can be seen as the poorer, darker cities versus the richer, whiter rural areas. Again, don’t quibble about outliers. Yes, there are a few rich, conservative African-Americans living in Wyoming, many poor white liberal Democrats in rural West Virginia, some rich conservatives in San Francisco and every other exceptional case imaginable.

    Most of us live in the mushy, mongrel middle, far from the tips of the two opposite corners. But the centers of gravity of Civil War Two shall be as I have described: the relatively richer, whiter and more rural against the poorer, darker and urban. One can also propose many more axes of conflict than can fit on a cube, such as the religious versus the non-believers, socialists versus capitalists, statists versus individualists and so on. However, after you reflect upon the CW2 Cube, I think you will find that most of these extra axes can be overlaid parallel to one of the three already posited.

In other words, Bracken sees the main conflict as between Corners 1 and 2. 

    Also, the Cube is an analytical tool. What is it to be used for?

To begin: you do not want to live as a trapped and cut-off minority in what might become “enemy territory.” If you live amidst your civil war enemies, as defined and located within the CW2 Cube, you will be in mortal danger even if your immediate neighbors know, love and respect you. Those persons who have a stake in fanning the flames of CW2 (and their number shall be legion), will intentionally target those remaining “holdouts” who may be respected minority neighbors. (In this essay, minority means “the minority within a given group or area.” Blacks are the majority in some areas, and whites are the minorities in others, and so on.)

He goes into this in much more detail and so I would recommend you read the whole thing.

    It's been 13 years since this article was published, so how has Bracken's model fared? Our civil war has seen some violent skirmishes, but is not yet a civil war. But I think we can see how it is shaking out. 

    First of all, the civil war is being driven by a cosmopolitan elite which, as Vox Day and others have pointed out, are Evil (with a capital "E") and directed or inspired by demonic forces. Their goal is the eradication of the good and beautiful, which is mostly personified by a middle-class, rural (or small city) whites (i.e., traditional Americans) because they are the strongest block of devout Christians. Their tools are to attack whiteness (through immigration, and promoting perverse sexual ideas and miscegenation), middle-class status (through higher taxes, higher cost of living, inflation, and eliminating jobs), and the rural/small city lifestyle (by concentrating all political and economic power in the cities). 

    To carry this out, they have polarized certain groups. Thus, Corner 4 (white, urban, rich) are very definitely trying to eliminate Corner 6 (white, poor, rural). We saw this through the long neglect of the social-welfare of rural America in favor of the poor urban minorities, as well as the more recent meth and opioid epidemics in rural America, combined with Corner 4 doing everything they can to eliminate gainful employment in rural America. This has been abetted by Corner 2 (white, rich, rural) who are some of the most ardent proponents of foreign immigration (and not all that opposed to shutting down the mining and timber industries). And Corner 1 (dark, urban, poor) have been weaponized against all but Corner 3 (dark, urban, rich). As Latin gangs gain greater influence and control, I think we will see much more from Corner 5 (rural, dark, poor). 

    Rather than Corners 1 and 2 facing off, then, we seem to be seeing all the corners ganging up against  the center of the white face of the cube (i.e., middle-class and mostly semi-rural). Thus, while Bracken is correct about the divide on color lines, I don't think that the white metagroup will be quite as rural and rich as he predicted. Perhaps this will shift once the shooting breaks out and more white Christians are forced to vacate the cities. Perhaps I misunderstood Bracken, and he is only looking at which groups will take up arms (and doesn't believe that the semi-rural white population will do so).