If you spend even a little time on social media, you’ve likely come across a slew of videos featuring pundits breathlessly accusing Democrats or Republicans of plotting to end democracy as we know it. That’s a drumbeat nearly as old as our nation, but it’s grown increasingly louder ever since the contested 2000 presidential election, which needed to be decided by the Supreme Court.
What’s even more worrisome now, however, is the darker turn these videos have taken, with discussions about the chilling possibility of civil war in the United States. Many include detailed analysis about how the country might fracture geographically and speculation on which side law enforcement or the military might support.
Our nation is indeed dreadfully divided along ideological lines, but enough to take up arms and engage in civil war? Alarmingly, two recent polls reveal such a prospect has entered the national consciousness and is perhaps very close.
Earlier this month, a jolting Rasmussen Reports poll revealed “that 41 percent of likely U.S. voters believe the United States is likely to experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years, including 16 percent who consider such a scenario very likely.”
That bears repeating — just shy of half the nation now believes we are headed for an all out civil war by 2029. The chilling demographics look like this:
How likely is a civil war in the next 5 years?
-LIKELY-
All – 41%
Men – 35%
Women – 45%
18-39 – 56%
40-64 – 34%
65+ – 34%
White – 39%
Black – 46%
Hisp – 51%
Dem – 35%
Rep – 54%
Ind – 32% https://t.co/mYiliTo1ca— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) May 2, 2024
Interestingly enough, 37 percent of those included in the poll believe that a civil war is more likely to occur under Biden’s watch while 25 percent of respondents believe a civil war will occur if Trump is elected. And 30 percent are convinced that it doesn’t matter who sits in the oval office; it won’t have an impact either way.
The Rasmusson poll followed an equally alarming October University of Virginia Center of Politics poll that revealed not only are a significant percentage of Americans open to an “alternative” to democracy, but they also view political violence as acceptable.
Do you think the United States is headed towards a civil war?
Specifically, 41 percent of Biden supporters said they view Republicans as extreme to the point that violence against them is justifiable while 38 percent of Trump supporters felt the same way about Democrats.
One seemingly definitive explanation for that mutual animosity may be found in a January report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The report, fittingly entitled “Them vs. U.S.,” revealed in painstaking detail the profound lifestyle and ideological differences between what amounts to “ordinary Americans” versus “ruling class elites.”
Notably, it concluded that elites “live in a bubble of their own construction” and “represent an existential threat to America’s founding ideals of freedom, equality, and self-governance.”
TikToker appalacianprepper went viral recently with an astute video that clearly evidences this view, citing five reasons our nation seems to be on the precipice: increasing partisanship, dysfunctional governance, the widening of the wealth gap, the further entrenching of oligarchy, and the rise of extremist ideologies.
@appalachianprepper♬ original sound – Appalachian Prepper
Given the disturbing sentiments behind these polls, it’s no wonder internet buzz surrounding the recently released feature film “Civil War” could be summarized as seeming less eerie or coincidental than purposeful. Many saw it as more evidence of predictive programming. Even Rasmussen acknowledged that discussions around the topic increased amid the film’s release.
This makes sense, of course, but it also begs the question: “Is art leading life or shaping it?” German-born poet, playwright, and theater director Bertolt Brecht was famous for saying, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer of which to shape it.” His perspective would suggest that the question of coincidence is a valid one — as is the concern over an impending civil war among Americans.
It Gets Worse
Discussions about coincidence versus predictive programming aside, it’s clear that some very smart people are actually beginning to talk as if civil war is a forgone conclusion. For example, there’s Louis Marinelli, the president and founder of Yes California, who recently addressed the topic using the words, “The coming American civil war.”
For the uninitiated, Yes California is the leading organization advocating for a permanent divorce between two regions in the state of California. The goal is the birth of a new country, Pacifica, that would encompass the San Francisco Bay area and the central California coast.
Marinelli told the U.K.’s Daily Mail, “The coming American civil war will be fought between the people of this country based on ideology. We have two diverging and incompatible sets of values in this country that can no longer coexist.”
He isn’t alone. Plenty of political writers, including Ezra Klein, Thomas Carothers, and Andrew O’Donohue, have pointed out the complexity of the deep-seeded polarization unique to the United States. When factoring ideological, racial, and religious differences into the mix, the identity and thinking of one side is incomprehensible to the other. It is like the failure that comes of mixing oil and water.
It helps to think of that oil and water as societal fundamentals — the ones Barack Obama targeted in 2008 when he pledged to “fundamentally transform America.” What’s become highly evident from an analysis comparing Gallup polls carried out in 10-year intervals between 2003 and 2023 is that our growing divide centers around huge differences in the fundamentals related to policies required to run our nation. This includes “issues related to federal government power, global warming and the environment, education, abortion, foreign trade, immigration, gun laws, the government’s role in providing healthcare, and income tax fairness,” according to Gallup.
Professor Barbara Walter of the University of California San Diego has been no less comforting in her views about the inevitability of a civil war. In an interview with CNN’s Michael Holmes, she discussed her work on the predictive indicators for civil war and stated the odds of one occurring in the next few years are escalating — even nearing the highly likely scenario. Her work is based on metrics, markets and signs the CIA uses to predict civil wars in other countries. Walter has been engaged in this type of work for the last 30 years and currently sits on a CIA task force.
“We actually know now that the two best predictors of whether violence is likely to happen are whether a country is an anocracy — and that’s a fancy term for a partial democracy — and whether ethnic entrepreneurs have emerged in a country that are using racial, religious or ethnic divisions to try to gain political power,” Walter said. “And the amazing thing about the United States is that both of these factors currently exist, and they have emerged at a surprisingly fast rate.”
Walter also stressed that the optimistic among our population are misguided in believing that nothing will ever break the United States and drive it into civil war or dramatic upheaval.
“What I say to them is that we all wish that the United States was a strong democracy. We all see it that way, but the reality just is not true,” she cautioned. “The United States has been declining as a democracy for the last five years on every measure. There are multiple different data sets that measure democracy in various different ways, and all of them have showed America in decline, and in fact, the main measure that the task force uses to predict political violence comes from a data set called the Polity data set. They have actually classified the United States for the very first time as an anocracy.”
What that means is that we are no longer considered the world’s longest standing democracy. It also means that we are primed for internal conflict.
For his part, Robert Jones, the CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that researches the intersection of politics, culture and religion, believes the time between now and the next election cycle is exceedingly fragile.
“Nearly a quarter of Americans (23 percent) agree that ‘because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,’” he told NPR.
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, seems to concur with Jones. In an interview with the Financial Times last week, Dalio described the 2024 election as the most important of his lifetime.
“We are now on the brink,” he said of civil war, putting the probability of an uprising at somewhere between 35 to 40 percent.
Biden’s Destructiveness
Is it any wonder that violence and secession have both become constant topics of discussion under Biden? He certainly broke his campaign promise to become the nation’s great unifier, as well as his inaugural address vow to end what he termed the “uncivil war.”
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” Biden said. “We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts, if we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we are willing to stand in the other person’s shoes. As my mom would say, ‘Just for a moment, stand in their shoes.’ … And we can still disagree.”
If there was any doubt that was all just lip service, Biden’s true motives should have become crystal clear during his infamous 2022 blood-red backlit speech, aptly entitled, “Battle for the Soul of the Nation,” in which he maniacally demonized half the nation — the MAGA half. It was no coincidence that the sinister spectacle took place at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, the architectural birthplace of our nation.
LIVE: President Biden delivers prime-time address on what the White House calls the “battle for the soul of the nation.” Follow along for live updates and expert analysis. https://t.co/PJs479IdzO https://t.co/fxoizPgyzP
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 2, 2022
Biden doubled down on the divisiveness during his unhinged State of the Union address in March. He used the occasion to equate Russian aggressors in the war in Ukraine with those who opposes his radical policies — saying, for starters, “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.”
Tucker Carlson aptly summarized it as “possibly the darkest, most un-American speech ever given by an American president.” And in a post on X, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk noted that Biden opened his speech by referencing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wartime appearance before Congress in 1941 and rightly pointed out that Biden seemed to be declaring war on half of America.
“He sees YOU and anyone who supports the Republican nominee for US President as the moral equivalent of the Nazis, worthy of destruction. Joe Biden sees himself as a wartime leader overseeing a domestic war against the American right.”
Joe Biden opened his speech with this line:
“In January, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation…”
That’s seemingly a random way to open a speech.
Or is it?
FDR spoke about declaring ALL OUT WAR in two theaters and to rally Congress.
Joe Biden…
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 8, 2024
Biden himself has addressed the topic of civil war several times within the context of his ongoing gun grab. In 2023, he ridiculed Thomas Jefferson and mocked gun owners, saying they’ll need F-16s to fight back against the government.
“You know, I love these guys who say the Second Amendment is — you know, the tree of liberty is water with the blood of patriots,” Biden said. “Well, if [you] want to do that, you want to work against the government, you need an F-16. You need something else than just an AR-15.”
It wasn’t the first time Biden referenced the F-16s, a veiled threat against the people he took an oath to represent and protect.
Is it any wonder, then, that three years deep into his administration, “we the people” are so angry, on edge and polarized? Does anyone of any political affiliation now really believe Joe Biden’s true intent was to unify the country — or that he was ever morally capable of it?
TikToker Aaron Geer boldly underscores just how much of an intentional wrecking ball this presidency has been.
@aaron.geer Did I miss any? Dumb question, there are unlimited possibilities. 😂 #fyp #politics #conservative #republican #biden #america #usa @dailywire @real.benshapiro @foxnation @cnn @msnbc @abcnews @nbcnews ♬ original sound – Aaron Geer
Currently, the destructive ramifications of Biden’s leadership include protests on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war. As this comment on X indicates, “An extremist on the mic says: ‘There’s only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the USA.’ This isn’t just about Israel/Palestine. It’s an attempt of the Marxist takeover of America. Our colleges have become indoctrination camps.”
An extremist on the mic says: “There’s only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the USA.”
This isn’t just about Israel/Palestine. It’s an attempt of the Marxist takeover of America. Our colleges have become… pic.twitter.com/2IEqRyuorB
— A Man Of Memes (@RickyDoggin) April 30, 2024
Conclusion
To avert civil war in America, “It’s going to take the people. The people will have to run our country again,” one veteran on TikTok wisely advised. “We have to elect, put in honest, God-fearing men to run our country like we used to have. That is what made us such a great nation.”
@darkshadowtwo #treason #foryou #fyp #takebackamerica #politics #blessings #f4f ♬ original sound – DarkShadowII
He’s right of course. But the question now is which people? Are there enough well-intentioned and virtuous Mr. Smiths left to go to Washington? Our Founding Fathers understood virtue to be an inherent prerequisite of our political representatives. But virtue is sorely lacking in so many that represents us these days — as especially demonstrated by the current occupant of the White House.
He’s broken the nation in two, and he’s done so under the bold guise of being pro-American. If a civil war or some violent semblance of it ever occurs, future historians will no doubt be able to heap blame on Joe Biden and his muse, Barack Obama, for sowing such deep division within our nation. And they will have no trouble linking the spark of such a conflict to any number of the duo’s calculated destructive decisions.
God forbid such a version of U.S. history ever gets written.
