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Gather round, ye armchair strategists, and listen to my tale of President Trump’s Second Civil War!
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you too had a military hot take after Trump’s mad tweet. Maybe you had the decency to feel guilty about it: you were, after all, having a dash of fantasy about Americans murdering one another at scale.
Thankfully, America is very, very far away from a civil war. There are good reasons for that. But even as that remains the case, we also can’t help but think about it — in our age of hyper-polarized media, it sure can feel like we’re just one shot away from splitting in half.
So while it might not be a totally intellectually worthwhile exercise to think out how a Trump-centered Civil War II might unfold, I would argue it’s emotionally important. As we indulge in the ridiculous, and slightly irresponsible, fantasy of a Civil War II, perhaps we find just a dash of catharsis — and become better able to think about our political problems without resorting to its hyperbole.
Thus this four-part series. The United States will fight no civil war anytime soon; yet to exorcise it from our everyday politics, perhaps we should let ourselves fall down the rabbit hole, just to see how ridiculous the whole premise truly is.
