Ever since white nationalists took the streets with tiki torches in Charlottesville in 2017 and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, there have been serious concerns about the possibility of a second civil war in America. As cataclysmic as such a conflict would be, it obscures the extent to which an uncivil war has been tearing the nation apart all along.
By an uncivil war, we mean the widespread disregard that too many Americans have for other citizens, as well as the disrespect, the insults, and the outright hostility that often accompanies the slights and nasty derogatory putdowns.
These are the kinds of behaviors that trigger violent reactions, but we don’t believe any of these conditions are enough to provoke a people to rise up en masse against one another. At least that is our hope.
Some of the issues that sparked the former contest between the Blue and the Gray is missing one pertinent ingredient—slavery. Yes, white supremacy, racism, and oppression remain as constant and debilitating as ever, and the nation is as divided as it was in the 1860s. And, yes, “states rights” continue to nag at our democratic freedoms. But to date, there is no armed and united Confederacy or any of the states threatening to secede.
Thoughts of a second civil war arose again with the recent assassination attempt on Trump and it was interesting to hear the chorus of leaders declaring “This is not who we are, America!” in their attempt to play down the incident. Years ago, the revolutionary Black activist H. Rap Brown summed up the past and current situation very well, noting that “violence is as American as cherry pie.” Rev. Bernice King echoed this, commenting on “this is not who we are.” “My father was assassinated in this nation, gunned down on a motel balcony in Memphis, where he was engaged as a nonviolent warrior for nondiscriminatory, humane wages. He was killed for working to end racism, poverty, and militarism, which he called the Triple Evils, and which are all still perpetuated both in policy and practice by the United States of America. This is not who we should be.
With that honest statement about our culture of violence, political and otherwise, we can rise up to eradicate injustice and violence, and reform our rhetoric.”Reforming the rhetoric, tamping down the troubling dischords is a meaningful and necessary step toward achieving some of Dr. King’s goals and what Abe Lincoln said years ago: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on the finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
To honor and uphold these words of wisdom would put an end to an incipient civil war and mollify the extremisms of uncivil behavior.