Tag Archives: Civil War

2016 Presidential Election, American democracy, American Politics, Civil War, Climate Change, Conservatives, Democracy, Democratic Party, Economics, Fear, Foreign relations, Free speech, Health care, History, Immigration Reform, International Politics, Iran Deal, Iraq War, Liberals, Media, medical reform, Medicare, Money in Politics, New States Rights, Nuclear Iran, Peace, Political scapegoats, Politics, President Barack Obama, Scandals, Science, Science-Denial, Society, U.S. Government, U.S. History, US Domestic Policy, US Economic Policy, US Foreign Policy, Washington D.C.

Can the USA Survive Trump?

2 Comments

The United States is facing the largest threat to its continued existence as one nation-state since the Civil War. This is not hyperbole or exaggeration: I have extensively studied the Civil War and American history as a whole, and we are in dangerous waters. As I see it, the threat is a massive leadership vacuum coming from the Washington and Donald Trump.

The problem with the vacuum is that far too many states, cities, and people are not content to just twist in the wind regarding health care, global warming, and immigration. The American people and their state and city representatives are going to step up and fill that vacuum, leading to a potential clash between state and national power the likes of which have not been seen for well over a century.

Even some Liberals are skeptical of the Trump-Russia connection, but if Vladimir Putin made a wish for the United States when he blew out his birthday candles last October, he’s already gotten most of what he wanted. There has been a massive erosion of faith in the American government, the media and even factual, objective reality as a whole; the USA has largely relinquished the leadership role it has held since the end of World War II and is more isolated than any time since just before the War. Now, with the recent G-20 Summit and Trump’s decision to quit the Paris Climate Accords, the rest of the free world openly mocks us. And most troubling of all going forward, our nation is splitting at the seams as the political, cultural, ideological, and economic ties that have bound our nation together for so long are ripped apart.

And the end of our nation may be coming sooner than later. Donald Trump has less legitimacy and political capital than any president in American history, and it isn’t even that close. We already see individuals, states, and cities rising to fill the leadership vacuum, but I believe the real problem will come to a head soon as a result of 2 potential sequences of events, both involving Trump’s role as Commander-in-chief.

1.) Trump grows angrier and angrier over the increased resistance to his rule and to approval ratings lower than intestinal parasites and he and his advisers decide that military action will cause the American people to line up behind him out of patriotic duty. Now, recent history (Iraq) should show him and his advisers that this approach is flawed in the extreme, but Trump neither knows nor cares about recent history. In 2002, President George W. Bush labeled Iraq, North Korea, and Iran an ‘axis of evil,’ and Iraq, the ‘easiest’ target of the 3 is no longer on the list. That leaves the nuclear-armed North Koreans, and Iran, a nation of 80 million people (for comparison, Iraq had 26 million when we attacked in 2003) that will achieve nuclear arms pretty quickly once we tear up the deal that we – along with the UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany – made with them in 2015. Not only will any pre-emptive US attack on those nations devastate our allies and further isolate us more than Trump already has, but there will be many in our armed forces who will not risk their lives for an aggressive war that will be transparently political. For maybe the first time in American history, those who protest the war at the start or who refuse to fight will be those celebrated as patriots.

2.) The more likely scenario as I see it. Trump grows angrier and angrier over the increased resistance to his rule and to approval ratings lower than genital warts, and he finally decides he can’t ‘allow’ protests anymore (First Amendment be damned), and he orders either the National Guard or regular military to disperse the most high-profile and disruptive protests; he does not order them to use deadly force but to use all force short of lethal. It is again easy to see many refusing to follow such orders, which is the very type of situation at the start of many revolutions throughout history.

When the US faced the greatest crisis in our history, we had an almost perfectly designed leader to handle it in Abraham Lincoln. When the Great Depression threatened to end our democratic republic, we had an almost perfectly designed leader to handle it in Franklin D. Roosevelt. We are now at the precipice of national disaster just as we were in 1860 and 1932, but instead of having Lincoln or FDR, we have an erratic, petty, angry, ignorant, short-sighted, dishonest, and probably mentally ill man standing where those two giants once stood. There is no easy answer for this type of situation in the Constitution: we have to find it our selves, and we must identify, elect, and follow leaders in our states, cities, and towns, because there is a vacuum in Washington right now, and we have to recognize it, and decide whether or not it is fatal to the United States as we know and understand it.

Civil War, History, Politics

Starting the Conversation

Leave a comment

Much of American history, with more than a few setbacks, has been about expanding the scope of the Declaration of Independence’s bold statement that  ‘All men are created equal’ to include more and more people. Today we basically hold it to mean, ‘All human beings are equal regardless of skin-color, gender, religion, sexual preference, economic situation, and more.’ However it was not easy getting to this place of greater equality for all Americans and we cannot take anything for granted as we dream of a still more equitable and just USA where each child is born with a legitimate chance at success regardless of where he or she comes from.

There has always been a push against such an America by those who hold wealth and power in the present, but history shows that while those reactionaries are often able to hold out and delay the forward movement of society for a time, the recalcitrant minority almost always loses. The reactionaries lost the Civil War and the fight over women’s suffrage, but even though they’re still losing these fights – as seen in their battle over gay rights – the victory of progress is far from assured and we cannot rest easily until we can truthfully claim to have done all that we possibly can to insure that our children have a legitimate chance at long, successful, and fulfilling lives.

So let’s use this platform to have an honest conversation with each other and filter out any preconceived notions; let’s hold nothing as sacred and speak truth to power regardless of who holds that power. Let’s use evidence to back up any claims we make, refrain from name-calling and trolling, while at the same time passionately (yet civilly) discussing what we can do to make our nation better and improve the lives of as many people as possible. Let’s stand up for what we believe in and refuse to be mere spectators of the events that take place in our neighborhoods, cities, states, our nation, and even the world

Above all, let’s be fearless in the face of the truth and beholden to no interest either from the Right or the Left. Future generations will know whether or not we succeeded in our attempts to better the world around us, so let us always be ready to hazard all that we have and all we are for the noble goal of leaving our posterity a legacy that they can be proud of.

– Heath David Lenoble