The Second American Civil War

The Second American Civil War looks at how the coming three years may unfold in the United States, and why  democracy will likely survive.  All this, with a Canadian twist. 

Transcript

7 The Second American Civil War

I’m Patrick Esmonde-White. Welcome to Canada Re-imagined, After the Cataclysm

In this season of Canada Re-imagined, I have made the case for constitutional reform to make Canada stronger, in areas such as Indigenous restitution, health care, and the status of Quebec.  My premise is that the world is changing dramatically, and what made sense in the past will not work in the future.  In the final two episodes of season three, let me turn to our neighbour, the United States. 

This episode: The Second American Civil War 

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“After the Cataclysm”. Let me define what I mean.

Planet Earth is a dangerous neighbourhood.

It is not just the madness of Donald Trump and the Epstein elites, destroying American democracy, and inviting economic and environmental destruction.

Or the renewed arms race, the bad guys in Moscow, Washington, Jerusalem, Beijing, and elsewhere. 

Or the rise of nationalist and religious extremism: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu. 

Or the arrival of artificial intelligence that can think, that holds all the information known to mankind, and will have the power to wipe out the human species. 

Or the hubris of technology oligarchs, the new global overlords, under the illusion that they can control the monster that they are building.  

Or even the devastation of climate change, or the poverty crisis, or the waves of refugees, or the poison of plastics and toxic waste. 

It is all of this, together: that is the cataclysm of which I speak.

It’s depressing. I recall Leonard Cohen … on his final tour, his poetry and music heavy, dark and beautiful.  At one point he paused. "I sometimes get up in the morning," he said, "and look at himself in the mirror, and say to myself: Lighten up, Leonard!”

I feel the same. Lighten up, Patrick. 

So I will. Let me be positive and offer a guide for the survival of democracy.  Spoiler alert: we need the United States. That is, not the United States of reality, but the land of inspiration. We need the idea of America. For that, Canada and other democracies must plan for after the cataclysm. 

Start with Canada, our fabulous, democratic, but flawed country. I have argued that significant change is essential to future good government. But what a country!

There are also other great and glorious nations around the world with diverse cultures and history. We share many values. We face the same foes. We are not alone. 

There is other good news. Carbon free energy is arriving at a phenomenal pace. New medicines are saving countless lives. The world is filled with people who are kind and good, but trapped and helpless as they struggle to survive. Vast majorities want hope.  Even in the most repressive of regimes, the voices of democracy persist, with a courage that defies the odds. 

Good intentions, however, cannot stop the cataclysm. But if we understand the danger we face, we can craft a guide for survival, a plan for a better world. 

Then, there is the United States.

During the coming three years, America will be a disaster. Specific events cannot be predicted, just as the assault on Iran was unexpected. But the United States is fighting it's Second Civil War, and we can already foresee much of what is ahead.

The months leading to the November mid-term elections will be chaotic, messy, and probably bloody. Make no mistake, it is a war, fought in the shadows, with disinformation, outrage, distraction, and constant skirmishes.

In 2025, the jackboots of ICE marched into many democratic-leaning cities of America, and were met with non-violent resistance.  The silent majority of Americans witnessed those masked thugs, and began to rise and fight for their communities. Outgunned, they were beaten and bloodied. Yet they continue to protest in the streets, the courts, the media, and at the ballot box. 

In 2026, the deportations will continue. Justice will remain under siege. Trade and tariffs will roil the economy. Trump will try to distract the public, and control the narrative of the day. Ignore the Epstein files, the surveillance state, and the wealth gap, he implies. Ignore Gaza, the West Bank, and the religious extremism that has gripped Israel and kept Netanyahu from jail. Gasp at the news on Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and then move on to the next distraction. Except the ruins are a reminder, and the graveyards keep growing. 

The daily distractions can't fully hide the White House plot to take control of elections. It is underway. The act of casting a ballot is made more difficult. Voters are intimidated.  Election losses are always contested. The warfare will not cease. 

But for all this, the tide may have turned. Canadians and Americans alike face a summer of discontent. Reality is hard to ignore. The big lie, fully exposed, loses its power. As the saying goes, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." 

It will be hard to fool the American public on the economy.  Costs are high. The social safety net is tattered. Inflation is constant. Food prices never go down. Hospitals close, and health costs rise. Preventable diseases like measles are returning. Climate disasters are inevitable

The first victims from all these woes will be the rural poor who voted MAGA. This is reality that even they will begin to grasp. Fake news and AI tweets cannot disguise it. Buyers remorse will start to kick in.

Of course, the tech-billionaires and Epstein elites are unaffected. They made a Faustian bargain. However, there is a saying that "if you sup with the devil, use a long spoon." There is no spoon long enough to protect them from retribution should democracy survive the civil war.

This war has skirmishes, and battles. A major political battle will be the November mid-term elections.  If Republicans retain full control over Congress in November, the American experiment in democracy will end. That seems unlikely, according to experts.

The elections are hard to stop, and the polling looks promising for Democrats. The probable result this November is that the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives… but not the Supreme Court, or the White House. This is what recent by-election upsets and polling suggest. The Senate will be a toss-up.

We must hope and assume that Democrats win enough seats in Congress to stop a total authoritarian take-over.  Even then, there is still no way to avoid two further years of chaos, with Donald Trump exercising powers no other president has ever imagined. The pain and outrage will not end.  War, economic decline, climate catastrophes and scandal will dominate the news. The final battle for democracy in the United States will come in the election of 2028.

The forces that oppose Trump will learn from 2026, but they must still must find a way to win that election. They must choose candidates that are authentic, and capture the moment. As the current election cycle will show, the first shoots of a new American vision are starting to appear in the grass roots of the Democratic party. They will learn much about the mood of the electorate, what works and what does not. Much, however, is already known.

A century ago, American humourist Will Rogers famously said: “I am not a member of any organized political party — I am a Democrat.”  His joke holds true today.

Increasingly, party members grasp that the survival of American democracy hinges on changing this. There is anger and frustration. Trump tapped into it. But he sold snake oil. Voters who are having buyers regret are up for grabs. 

If the Democrats can finally unite in a common goal, they may turn the tide.  As Ben Franklin reportedly said, "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately".

Democrat leaders are now hanging together on bread-and-butter issues, like affordability, and tapping into the legitimate anger over the economy. Anything less would be political malpractice.  They are learning to fight back.

This said, the main reason Democrats may finally succeed is that they may solve the puzzle of the two party system. Voter seem to split down the middle in the Presidential elections. That makes no sense when American voters also fall into three very broad categories: reactionaries, progressives, and mugwumps. 

Stating the obvious, I am a progressive. 

Let me describe the voters I consider to be reactionaries.  These are not the conservatives I respect but disagree with. That is, the ones who believe in self-reliance, fiscal prudence, traditional values and national defense. I hear what they say, but that conservative ship left the harbour long ago.  Trump is not a conservative. MAGA is not conservative.

The MAGA movement is descended the white, slave-owning Confederates who lost the first American Civil War. They never really went away. Waving a Trump bible and a false flag, they now seek to return society to a time that existed only in the imagination. 

This modern reactionary movement began when Ronald Reagan sold the notion that “government is not the solution, it is the problem”. He fought against unions, against a social safety net, against progressive taxes, against regulations, and against the powerless and minorities. He let blue-collar jobs move overseas, allowing the wealthy to pocket the profits.  The deficit tripled under him.

Reagan also railed against the media. There is a truism that freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press.  The media, increasingly owned by fewer people, have led the decline of truth and accuracy. Our sources of news slid from print to broadcast to cable and finally to the digital age. The tech-bros, lords of the new media, profit from angry, paranoid conspiracies and lies.

The new reactionaries were energized by issues like guns and abortion. They spouted the mantra of low taxes and deregulation. They have evolved into a cult under Trump that a third of Americans have joined. These are the evil that threatens democracy. 

The second major grouping is the progressives. They support unions, women's rights, minorities, gays, the poor, environmentalists, and other groups that fight for change. It is a political buffet of contrasting and conflicting flavors. Together, progressives make up a third of the electorate. But they are not together.

Unlike the reactionaries, they are not united. They no Lincoln, no Mandala, no Ghandi at the helm. Will Rogers was right about it not being an organized party.  

This is the fatal weakness of progressives. Many advocates are focused on single issue, and hate to compromise. Their intensity of concern makes them overly sensitive, often humourless. Some are incapable of empathy towards those who they oppose. 

What's more, the process of selecting a leader to run for President is flawed. Leadership candidates spend most of the cycle undermining each other. The final selection is scheduled so late in the election cycle that the new leader has no time to re-build the party and the platform. By contrast, most democracies have an opponent in waiting, responding to events of the day, offering a visible alternative.

The disorganized Democratic party then tries to hold the progressives together, but at a price. They compromise by offering a cautious, risk-averse platform. They do not offend, nor do they inspire. They think this will attract the mythic centrist voter. Too often, voters see them as wishy-washy and inauthentic.

Pundits in the mainstream media worry that voters will not elect a woman, or a person of colour, or a gay. When Democrats get bold, and nominate someone from one of these categories, the political platform is then designed to be inoffensive.  They play not to lose, rather than play to win. 

The Democratics, of course, typically win after the Republicans drive the economy into the ditch, which happens on a regular basis. Once in power, the Democrats put the car back on the road, and prepare to return the keys. They govern as cautious professionals. But the impression they give is that the progressive leaders are elites, slightly aloof, with an instinct to compromise before engaging in combat. 

This November, the progressive base will angry, and ready to fight. The party leaders will likely support moderate candidates that can appeal to the mythical independents. That is the third major group in American politics: the modern Mugwumps. 

The word "Mugwump" originates from the Algonquian language. In the 1880's the word was adapted to mock the Republican voters who were having doubts about their party, which was a model of corruption in the gilded age. The Mugwumps  were described as having their mug on one side of the fence, their wump on the other. Yet it was these undecided voters who suddenly moved as a herd to elect a Democrat, Grover Cleveland.  

Mugwumps today are independents, undecided, centrists. Pundits politely call them low-information voters. Politicians publicly court them. 

They are the voters who saw a pussy-grabbing, convicted rapist, who cheated at business and golf, was a liar and a bully, and they still split their vote on whether he could be a good President. 

These modern Mugwumps, perhaps a third of the electorate, often behave like a herd. Most of the time, they graze and chew their cuds, uninterested in public affairs and politics.  They vote with the local herd.

But occasionally, very occasionally, they get spooked.

In the 1930's the herd was spooked by the Great Depression, and went with Franklin Roosevelt, and his New Deal. During the cold war the herd drifted to the right, spooked by the counter-culture and anti-war movement. In recent years, they have settled into scattered herds. Red state, blue state, they vote with the local herd.

But now, their grazing is threatened. They can smell the wildfire. Herds all across America look spooked, ready to stampede. They sense, to paraphrase Mark Carney, that since they are not at the table, they must be on the menu. 

These swing voters who elected for Trump had naively expected prices to drop. They agreed dangerous criminals should be deported. They thought factories would reopen. They believed the Russian war against Ukraine would end on day one, and Trump would not start new wars. They wanted the good old days. 

Instead, Americans saw masked ICE thugs gun down Americans just like them. The economy is teetering. Inflation is unchanged. War is everywhere. Preventable diseases are returning. They can smell the smoke, and may finally stampede.

The Trump response to this possibility is predictable. Calming the herd is not in his nature.  His MAGA core, the private militias and the government storm-troopers, will try to impose authoritarian control. Their goal will be to confuse, to terrify, to paralyze the herd with fear.  Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court will interfere. War in Iran is a dangerous distraction that may spread ominously. 

Civil war to resist the fascist takeover is already started. It is a shadow was, without set armies.  But the war is a reality. 

Protesters know that armed resistance to ICE and the military would end in a bloodbath. They know that protesters would get the blame, leading to worse repression.  The media, increasingly controlled by a handful of Trump allies, will vilify them. That is what happened in the "Black Lives Matter" protests. It was a dry run for what is to come.

Trump will try to terrify Americans to the point they do not dare vote in the November mid-term elections. His campaign of intimidation is already underway, especially in minority communities. So too is a plot to take control over the electoral system. Failing that, he will try to cancel the elections. All this, in the name of national security

In spite of these efforts, the election will still take place. The intimidation and voting restrictions will, of course, have an impact. But the results of the fall election will be determined by the Mugwumps, who are not targeted for intimidation as much as the progressives. If polling is accurate, a big if, the Democrats will win a majority in the House of Representatives. The Republicans will likely retain control of the Senate. 

There is a slim possibility that the Mugwump herd may stampede in November, and trample the MAGA candidates. There is also a slim possibility that Trump wins two more years of full control, and the fascist control becomes permanent.

The bottom line is, Canada can probably expect political warfare and chaos for two further years. Trump will control the administration, issue Executive Orders, and use the veto. Legislation will not pass. The House of Representatives will be able to hold hearings, investigate, and impeach some officials. 

All this is simply skirmishing ahead of the critical Presidential election two years down the road.  The race to select nominees for President will be vicious. It will consume the attention of voters in the midst of the cataclysm. 

2028 will also be the first election in which AI, the Large Language Models, have grown to the point that the Trump administration can use it to target every voter in the nation. Every piece of date held in any database by any corporation can be used to threaten individual voters.  This is the dread that haunts both the libertarian right and the civil rights left. It is what the American Department of War is demanding of AI contractors, such as Anthropic. Anthropic, to its credit, has resisted. Other companies, like that of Elon Musk, will have no such qualms.  This is one issue on which most Americans will find common ground, and where legislation might overcome a Presidential veto. 

The protest against Trump's attempted coup d'etat will include guerilla economic warfare. Boycotts will target Trump allies. Strikes and protests will appear, and evaporate when armed forces arrive, only to reappear elsewhere. Road, rail and other infrastructure will be disrupted, just long enough to make a point, to bring attention to abuses of power. Protest leaders can expect to be jailed, including elected politicians. Some will be killed.

Finally, by 2028, the full impact of the Trump policies will be fully evident. The stench of scandal will be unavoidable. The planet will be in pain, reeling from endless war and climate catastrophe. Economic chaos, unemployment, and high prices will cause despair. The Mugwump herd will stampede.

Trump himself may not survive to see the election. He is not a model of good health.  J.D. Vance may find an excuse to oust him, for mental or physical incapacity, and to seize control. But so long as the House of Representatives is in Democrat control, the civil war will continue.  

But the Democrats will find their voice, their vision, and their leader. These two years of civil skirmish may feel endless. The cataclysm may bring unending misery.  But with the 2028 election, the second American civil war will end. 

It will do so in pain and exhaustion, with a whimper, and with muted celebration. One American nightmare may have come to an end.  The nightmare of reconstruction is still ahead.

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I’m Patrick Esmonde-White, totally responsible for this podcast. My theme music is by Tom Plant. My artwork from Tom Evans. My thanks to the Harbinger Media Network for their support.

My hope is that you found my podcast to be cautiously optimistic.  I am trying to lighten up.

However... Thank you for your time. It is the most precious gift you can give. In my next and final episode... a New America. How it can rise from the ashes.