The Build up to the Second US Civil War?

Photo credit: Andrew Harnik - White House Correspondents' Association   Photo Source: Getty Images News

A flurry of gunshots is heard from the other side of the door where people in tuxedos and ball gowns are gathered for an important dinner. Armed police burst onto the stage and turn their rifles towards the assembled guests, dignitaries, and press. They scream orders, swinging their rifles in a precise and terrifying manner as they scan the crowd looking for potential targets or threats. Putin is whisked off of the stage, ministers follow in suit, dragged away by other bodyguards and officers of the state. If we take a moment to consider what just happened at the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner, the third attempted assassination of Donald Trump in less than two years, and put it in another country it would be hard not to make the assumption that some much more dangerous and unstable situation lies around the corner.

If indeed this happened in Beijing, Moscow, Paris or London, particularly in Moscow or Beijing the incident would be viewed as a sign of potential societal collapse, as now three citizens of that country had attempted to kill their leader. It would be used as a marker for the general discontent with the government, with the system, and with the elites. There would be concerns, questions, discussions of civil war, of partition and the highest mountain of these matters, that ultimate phrase: “Regime change”. Yet, this is not seen in the same light when it happens in Washington. Perhaps the American system is different, there is still Congress, the Constitution and so on, it is not painted as being an authoritarian one-man system so if the president is killed it doesn’t mean the end of the government or the system.

Perhaps there is some truth to that, particularly if you believe that so many of the world’s governments are somehow run by one bloke. 

A member of security points a gun a at a confused crowd of reporters and journalist in front of a banner that reads "Celebrating the First Amendment" (Photo credit: CNN)

There is beginning to be a similar feeling that many people now have when they hear of a school shooting in the USA. These things happen, if they happened elsewhere there would be a great zeitgeist changing moment, grappling with how to solve and end it, but in the states the school shootings just happen, they make headlines, usually, but it is the status quo. So are we entering a type of society, of politics in the USA whereby the partisanship is so severe that political killings, or assassinations, such as that of Charlie Kirk and now another attempt on the president are somehow ordinary? Are routine?

Perhaps we should also remind ourselves of the past and consider how odd or different this moment is in American history. The USA is no stranger to assassinated presidents, Abraham Lincoln, and JFK being arguably the most famous. However, there are others. James Garfield in 1881, as well as the tariff president of his time, William McKinley, assasinated in 1901. Those are just the deadly assassinations of sitting presidents, there are also the failed attempts on both candidates and leaders who would also most likely have been presidents in their time. The failed attempts on Ronald Reagan (1981), Theodore Roosevelt (1912), Andrew Jackson (1835), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933), two failed attempts on Gerald Ford (1975), and finally Robert F. Kennedy prove that this is nothing new. In particular Robert F. Kennedy, a rising star in the Democratic party, followed in his brother’s footsteps with the difference of being shot before he became president and not after.   Let's also not ignore the elephant in the room, the US has already had a massive civil war before in the mid 1860s. So an assassination during a civil war, is not something out of the ordinary. In a modern scenario, once we begin to consider all other factors, such as the seemingly botched war against Iran, the levels of partisanship in American society and the ever declining approval rating of the Commander in Chief, we can start to see a similar picture being formed. Once extending the paradigm to another country, for example an instance where the Chinese chairman XiJinping or the Russian president Vladimir Putin might be attacked in a similar scenario, we can instantly envision the dramatic headlines warning of civil war and imminent collapse. It might be a little far to say that civil war and partition are imminent but it is reasonable to assume that if something like that were to happen, then in the documentaries and history books that were to be written after the fact, this event would certainly be placed in the explanation of the build up to that collapse. In that hypothetical, ever more probable future, we just witnessed a small segment in the history of the Second American Civil War.