In the mid 19th century, Americans in the North behaved, spoke, and dressed differently than in the South. Suppose there was a unifying cultural moment, like listening to a performance of a classical piece performed by a string quartet. After the show, one audience might ride home past free laborers in one part of the country and the other past enslaved Africans. That is one example of the radical differences in the way people lived in a spiritual and moral sense. It also highlighted their conceptions of labor and the foundations of their economies. There are few such spiritual and material differences that exist between Americans today.

America’s divisions derive from polarizing ideologies. In the months leading up to the 2020 Presidental election, media figures and Democratic politicians suggested that the country would cease as a democracy if Trump won. When he lost, the former president made ceaseless claims that the election was stolen. These claims were bolstered by the unwillingness of many Republicans to counter his false assertions.

Progressives and their media propagandist allies have created a social-engineering machine that is currently operating at warp speed. Campaigns are well underway to brainwash children into thinking that those born without brown skin are racists and oppressors. When the United States attorney general designates parents as domestic terrorists when they resist the indoctrination of their children into the Marxist ideology of critical race theory, we may have an epistemological crisis.

There are times where people can feel as if Americans are trapped between a revolutionary vanguard and reactionaries. Everywhere you turn, you see the implosion of sexual identity. The media has replaced “pregnant woman” with “pregnant person.” It’s common to bully anyone, no matter how decent or well-intentioned, who questions gender ideology. We see the anathematization of work. On the one hand, the delusional right is still under a web of illusions about a lost election. On the other, many on the radical left are living an unreality about human nature.

Is finding ourselves in an epistemological crisis analogous to being on the verge of a civil war? The hyperbolic divisions perpetuated by the mainstream media machine are fantastical. For instance, the often-heard claim that Americans essentially live in different countries is a disconnection from reality. There is more that unites us than divides us. When I traveled to Portland, Maine last summer with my son, we listened to local radio during the entire trip. There is as many country music radio stations as there are in places like upstate New York and states like South Carolina, and Wyoming. There were as many stations praising God as you’ll find anywhere outside of the big cities.

Heated Thanksgiving table discussions are not existential emergencies; neither are intellectual disputes between spouses, lovers, colleagues, and friends. We all do not see things the same way, nor should we necessarily. Having actual conversations in person will foster greater understanding and contribute to a more robust case made for one’s version of reality over another’s.

The media magnifies conflict for clicks and ad revenue, but the reality on the ground is dissimilar to the prevailing narrative. Civil war is only one step removed from revolution. Imagine if the South had chosen to overthrow the American republic rather than to secede from it. That seems like a revolution. Do the conditions exist in our country today for such a momentous, violent and bloody occurrence? Each side has to have an army behind it, and each must prepare to wage war. Who is on which side? The citizens of the state of Maine would be battling whom?

For a war to begin, classes must be divided, not just by culture but material circumstances. Vast segments of the population must feel socially disenfranchised, materially deprived, and on the verge of being not merely displaced by other groups but eliminated by them. Violent class conflict existed in both the South and the North in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Competition for wage labor, for example, was one reason that blacks seeking work at cheaper wages were sometimes murdered by whites in the North even as the Civil War raged on.

The conditions for a civil war in today’s America do not exist. Regardless of which political side wins the next national election, people need to reflect on what it means to throw around these phrases. We should remove the flush of fever from the rhetoric. While there will always be conflict in any society, let’s allow the next act in American political life to be peaceful.

Civil wars are a rare and exceptional moment in the life of a civilization. The media should be cautious in the employment of such a term. Political catastrophes may become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Clayton Craddock is a father, independent thinker, and the founder and publisher of the social and political commentary newsletter Think Things Through and host of the Think Things Through Podcast.

Twitter: @claytoncraddock

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