Our Next Civil War

We have slid into another Civil War, without noticing the diminution of our rights, and the unwavering hatred that a very vocal minority has for the general well-being of our Nation. Once again, a few very loud firebrands call for moral indignation at the oppression of their perceived rights – their rights to dictate their minority views on the many. Hanging behind the shredded and defunct curtain of State’s Rights they once again call for their followers to rise to arms – whether it be through force or vindictiveness – to force their tightly controlled and editorially incorrect views of the Constitution.

As a citizen of the United States (whose forbears fought in many of our Wars) I am frightened for the future this portends. To call upon State’s Rights is to bring up every specious argument nullified by the failure of the Confederacy to support its own cause. As history has shown, many of the leaders of that earlier Civil War professed profound belief that their cause was just and could be won, “if only” the people would show the determination that the leaders showed in misappropriating the rights given them in the Constitution. How can one hide behind, or use, a Constitution, if one so violently disagrees with it? How can one then use it as a shield – even a weapon – when fighting against it? And in hindsight, how could such supposedly educated people be willing to go to war, with all its commensurate expenses in money and lives, solely to keep a race in slavery to maintain their own wealth? Will history eventually show that this Civil War was started and is being fought for similarly evil and self-centered purposes?

One of the weapons the Far Right is using is the voice – they raise it to a higher pitch with as many wild accusations as they can. This is the old magician’s trick – keep the audience’s eye focused on the hand or face while the other hand is doing the hiding, the dirty work, the trickery. The shouting is a ruse to keep people from focusing on their trickery – on their dirty work of driving wedges between people through mistrust and hatred. Their trickery is designed to get them in power and keep them in power regardless of the consequences to their fellow citizens and our country. Exactly the same thing that the Fascists did in Germany and Italy.