American Civil War 2.0

I am finding it hard to let go of this election. Last night I spoke with incarcerated men afraid for our country. Men who wanted to make it clear that what The Donald had to say about how he treated women is not locker room talk. It is not even prison talk.

I’ve been recording an hour of CNN and the same hour of Fox News so I can compare. They appear to be talking about the same events but in two different universes. One insists that saying “I’m sorry saying for pussy,” for committing locker room talk, is more than enough, but never getting close to suggesting that it is assault or endorsing assault. The other network is fair and balanced. One network pivots to false equivalences and the other stays fair and balanced. One network does not live up to its tag line.

With two Americas listening to two shockingly different narratives I think these men are afraid for good reason. What will the bucket of deplorables do if they lose?

If Trump wins? What will we, the less deplorable, do? What should we do? How many times have you been asked, “what would you do if you could time travel to Germany in 1936?” I suppose it is no accident that time travel TV shows appear to be the thing right now.

And then there are the Lefties. It is so bad from that side that I can’t even listen to them, I’d rather listen to Fox News. And believe me, I’m pretty far left in my views. At least Bernie is proving to be somewhat grown up — hence they believe he is a sell-out.

We may be on the verge of the second American Civil War no matter who wins. Bernie trumpeted revolution, and this would be revolt on a new scale, but not the nice one he imagined. Maybe it will be the one Neil Stevenson imagined that resulted in the world of Snow Crash. A world of fractious enclaves, much like the groups in a prison, each striving to control their own territories by controlling the people in their group — where loyalty to your group is inseparable from survival. Like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Syria.

We are far from civil war at this point, but closer than we have been for 150 years. But we should not fool ourselves into believing we are immune. We are deeply divided and we need to find the courage to heal the divides that are causing so much anguish. I won’t pretend to have the answer, but we each need to search within ourselves for acceptance of self and others. The alternative is unacceptable.