[To say that the
2020 presidential election will be a pivotal one in American history is to
significantly under-state the case. But while in some clear ways this moment
feels singular, this is of course far from our only such crucial election. So
this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of others, leading up to a special
weekend post on this year’s results.]
On a comparison
that has become even more ominous, and what we can learn from it.
Almost exactly
seven years ago, in late November 2013, I wrote
a post comparing that moment to 1860. I’d still make many of the same
points today, so will ask you to read that one if you would and then come back
for a couple new paragraphs.
Welcome back! If
anything, I’d say this moment feels even more frustratingly and frighteningly akin
to 1860 than that one did, not least because the current president is among the
worst in our history (I think Trump is significantly worse than James Buchanan,
but Buchanan’s
a top-five baddie in any case). That means that we’ve spent the last four
years watching so many things get worse, seeing the nation move ever closer to
what feels terrifying like the genuine possibility of civil conflict: as I
draft this post in mid-June, two African
American young men have been found
lynched in two supposedly separate incidents in California, perhaps the
clearest single detail yet that makes me terrified that white supremacist
domestic terrorists are actively seeking to incite a race war; I hope that by
the time this post airs those fears will seem less founded, but I have no sense
of clarity and certainly no real optimism about that, perhaps especially if the
November 3rd election results go the way they desperately need to. While
the events of 2020 have (again, as of mid-June) made Trump as unpopular as at
any point in his presidency, it still feels as if a significant percentage of
Americans live in an entirely alternate universe to the one I inhabit (indeed,
it feels that way much more overtly than it did in 2013), which I believe is a
necessary prerequisite for such civil conflict.
So if Joe Biden wins
the 2020 presidential election (which will be unfolding as this piece airs),
will the nation descend into a second civil war? Anybody who pretends to be
able to predict the future in this moment is a con man or a fool, and I try not
be either of those things so I won’t say that I know what’s going to happen, in
a such a hypothetical case or in any other. But one important lesson of 1860 is
that the Confederate states which seceded after
the election did so not because of a divided citizenry or angry armed
communities, but rather because their governing bodies voted to do so, drafted statements
of secession, and so on (indeed, large cohorts in every Confederate state
remained loyal to the Union, and in Virginia such a cohort even formed
an entirely new state, West Virginia). Which is to say, resisting a new
civil conflict will be at least as much a political as a social process, one
that will involve making sure elected officials (even, indeed especially, those
fully immersed in the cult of Trump) know that the vast majority of their
constituents want the nation to move forward peacefully and productively.
Next election
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other pivotal elections you’d highlight?
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