Attacks on Power Stations Are More Evidence the 'Civil War' is Upon Us
The media-anticipated "civil war" is already here. We have already become inured to gun violence; we mustn't also become inured to domestic terrorism.
Headline from Business Insider: “The far right is calling for civil war after the FBI raid on Trump’s home. Experts say that fight wouldn’t look like the last one.”
The New York Times: “Is Civil War Coming to America?”
The Washington Post: “Is the United States headed for a civil war?”
What the media is anticipating seems to be a shooting war like the one that ripped the country apart from 1861 to 1865.
But if we step back and consider the general definition of small-c civil war, we might realize it’s already started.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines “civil war” as, “A war between factions or regions of the same country.”
So maybe this headline from The Guardian is the most accurate: “The next US civil war is already here — we just refuse to see it.”
We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Two years ago, election deniers were hanging their hopes on statewide audits, like the farce perpetrated in Maricopa County, Arizona that confirmed — again — Joe Biden was the undisputed winner over Donald Trump.
Just because they failed doesn’t mean they were going away.
They attacked the Capitol January 6, 2021 in an attempt to overthrow democracy.
Right-wing vigilante groups have been spending the past two years mobilizing.
Since the last presidential election, threats to poll workers spiked as right-wing Trump supporters targeted their animosity toward those they baselessly felt were helping to “steal votes” from Trump.
Then they expanded the conspiracy to “votes being stolen” from all republican candidates.
Further evidence the anticipated civil war is upon us came last week when electrical power stations in North Carolina, Florida, Oregon, and Washington were attacked in what has been determined to be intentional and targeted.
Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW Public Radio first reported at least six attacks, two of which were similar to that perpetrated in Moore county, North Carolina.
Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) transmission vice-president of field services, John Lahti, explained:
Someone clearly wanted to damage equipment and, possibly, cause a power outage. We were fortunate to avoid any power supply disruption, which would have jeopardized public safety, increased financial damages and presented challenges to the community on a holiday.
While it’s still unknown who is behind these specific acts of domestic terrorism, intelligence experts have for some time been warning about extremist groups planning disruptions to the nation’s power grid.
A US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report released at the beginning of the year states domestic extremists have been making “credible, specific plans” to attack electricity infrastructure for the past two years.
DHS cited a document shared on the right-wing infested social media site Telegram that included a white supremacist guide to attacking an electric grid with firearms.
But if that isn’t enough evidence of behavior indicative of a civil war, perhaps we should consider the Young Republicans gala in New York City last week where Young Republicans president Gavin Wax told the crowd:
We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets.
This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power.
Joining him were none other than Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., and white nationalists Peter and Lyndia Brimelow, whose organization “VDARE” proclaims its mission as “inform[ing] the fight to keep America American.”
Also present was Georgia Rep. — and MAGA republican darling — Marjorie Taylor Greene, who announced about the January 6, 2021 insurrection:
If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed.
“Won” meaning “overthrow the government.”
Quote a few of the insurrectionists were, in fact, armed.
Representatives from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “Hatewatch” were on hand to report:
Republicans publicly lauded members of an Austrian political party founded by World War II-era German Nazi party members.
Republican speakers repeatedly voiced an anti-democracy, authoritarian ideology, and extremists in the audience cheered wildly. White nationalists such as the Brimelows of VDARE and leaders from extreme far-right European parties like Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), whom German officials placed under surveillance for their ties to extremism, and Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), ate and drank in the same room as newly elected Republican congresspeople, such as Long Island and Queens-based George Santos, Georgia-based Mike Collins and Florida-based Cory Mills.
Also cozying up to these neo-fascists, according to the the SPLC, was Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer, who joked with “racist political operative Jack Posobiec,” the originator of the 2016 “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that promoted the lie Hillary Clinton and other Democratic party operatives were running a child sex ring in the basement of Washington, DC’s Comet Ping-Pong Pizza restaurant, the basis for the modern-day “Q-Anon” movement.
It is noteworthy that Donald Trump was not present at this event as a recent poll shows 61 percent of republicans have rejected him.
While this might look like the “rational” republicans are still in charge, standing up to Trump’s demand to “suspend the Constitution,” his encouraging concentration camps, having Thanksgiving dinner with anti-Semites Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, and stealing classified nuclear secrets, it isn’t. What it really indicates is republicans’ doubt over the former president’s ability to be elected to the White House again.
They’re perfectly fine with racism and incitements to violence.
Over the past year, we have seen more evidence America is closer to fascism than ever.
Jason Stanley, writing for The Guardian, stated:
The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.
Even Canadians fear the American experiment is on the precipice of ending.
In his new book, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, Canadian author Stephen Marche warns:
The United States is coming to an end. The question is how.
He isn’t alone.
Cascade Institute executive director Thomas Homer-Dixon begins a Globe & Mail piece titled “ The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare” with a harrowing assertion:
By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.
In September, President Joe Biden delivered what might have been the most important speech any American president has had to deliver in which he acknowledged the existential threat from the rise of right-wing extremism.
While citing all examples of these extreme threats over just the past half decade is too daunting, the president summed it up:
History tells us blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.
They’re [MAGA republicans] working right now, as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.
The media-anticipated “civil war” is already here, and over the next few years it may, unfortunately, get worse.
We have already become inured to gun violence; we mustn’t also become inured to domestic terrorism.
But because fascism seeps in slowly, and we live in a country that promotes political ignorance for the sake of media ratings and corporate profits, there is a frighteningly strong chance of our shrugging off democracy as so many other countries have in the past decade.
We prevent this by not accepting racist, bellicose, divisive rhetoric as insincere or simply “political blather.”
We prevent it by rising up and pushing back legislatively, electorally against those who profit from separating us.
The good news is, this has been happening the past four four or five years with activist energy gaining ground and elections of progressives.
Progress has always resulted in right-wing backlash.
This time is no different — unless we succumb to it.