Check it out! Wilder's Civil War 2.0 Weather Report

John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy & Wise has posted a new Civil War 2.0 Weather Report. These are different from his normal posts in that he begins by discussing one or two topics related to the decline and/or political division in the country, but then looks at four factors that are bell weathers for political violence: Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  The primary topic which he introduces is that faced with too few white men to run things and serve in the military, the powers-that-be are rolling back the wokism just a bit; but don't trust them--they still plan on utterly destroying your culture and your people. 

    I guess I would remind you of what Peter Turchin learned in his research: it isn't about you, it is about the elites. He states in his book, End Times, that once you include the preferences of the top 10 percent and interest groups, "the effect of the commoners [on national policy] is statistically indistinguishable from zero." (p. 130). Commoners may revolt when popular immiseration (the misery of the masses) reach a critical level, but while such revolts (or threats of revolts) may result in some reforms, these revolts are also one of the few times that the different factions of the elites will unite to fight their common enemy: the people. Occasionally, though, an elite faction will take advantage of popular immiseration to start a civil war.

    This is why this election cycle was important. Trump's election in 2016 really did, I believe, represent a populist movement. Trump was the avatar of the discontented masses. And that is why we saw politicians and bureaucrats from both sides of the aisle work together to hamstring Trump from before he even took office. They were elites uniting against what they viewed as a popular revolt. 

    Four years after the end of Trump's first administration and the situation is different. Yes, Trump still is the champion of the disaffected commoner. But he has formed a coalition of counter-elites. This coalition seems odd at first glance: RFK, Jr., Elon Musk,  Linda McMahon, and others. In fact, going through a list of his nominees, I'm left with the impression that he has selected a lot of political outsiders--people that seem that they should have more political power and success than they have achieved but somehow were passed over. I also suspect that behind the scenes he has captured the support of powerful people that have become disgusted with the current Administration's treatment of Israel, which weighs far more heavily on the minds of Washington than the needs of those living in "fly over country". 

    So if there is a civil war, it will be the result of a conflict between the entrenched elites and the counter elites that stand to gain power by Trump taking the presidency. Just as we saw in his first term, most of this conflict will play out in the shadows, with the intelligence agencies and FBI mostly controlling the anti-Trump narrative. And that was when Trump wasn't going to specifically target the intelligence community. This time is going to be different, because Trump will be coming in with a goal of trimming their wings. I suspect that the back stabbing and subversion will be more intense this time around. And given the push to drive out illegal aliens, the entrenched elites will have a larger "army" upon which to draw. We very well might see political violence worse than the BLM riots.