During one brief period of recent history in this country it looked like things were getting better:
It was the 1970s. The Jimmy Carter era.
Everyone walked around in platform shoes, flared pants, multi-colored ruffled shirts and wide ties. Even the white guys had Afros.
Or as the president of Boston's Museum of Science, Tim Ritchie, told me recently, "It was a brief moment when we all recognized diversity as the best way for our nation. We took it for granted and while we all didn't agree on how to get there, most of us understood inclusion and diversity was the way of the future."
Then came Ronald Reagan and the dark times.
Now, more than 40 years later, the United States in 2023 actually resembles the United States in 1923 — with the additional prospects of nuclear annihilation and disastrous climate change thrown in.
Of course, there are those who don't see it.
Those people are supposedly grown men, too busy playing with Barbie dolls — and burning them.
Listening to politicians, their rabid supporters and a few people in my industry, it seems obvious that many people stop maturing right after they shed their pull-ups. For some, it's before that.
This disintegration of the United States has led to screams of possible civil war, mostly coming from Donald Trump's supporters who vow violence or worse if Trump is indicted again, found guilty, locked up or denied the presidency for whatever reason in 2024.
This comes at a time, as National Security Council spokesman John Kirby explained to me this week, "when the need for America to represent stability and democracy has never been stronger." Wars in Ukraine and Africa, missile tests in North Korea and disarray in the Middle East further sow the seeds of division. "American stability is important for international peace and survival," Kirby explained.
Yet the MAGA world still screams about civil war. Norman Eisen of the Brookings Institution, also a legal analyst for CNN, says it is mostly just that – screaming. "Jan. 6 showed that insurrection won't succeed," he said, but while increased violence isn't necessarily in the offing (this country is already exceedingly violent, with an average of two mass shootings per day this year), many of the states that joined the Confederate insurrection 160 years ago are still trying to undermine the federal government.
In Alabama it's all about voting districts. In Texas it's about our international border. In Florida it's all about history class.
In Texas, the Justice Department filed a suit against the state and Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday, claiming violations of federal law after the state installed a floating barrier in the Rio Grande and the Texas state police said Abbott was having immigrants tossed back into the river, particularly small children.
John Fugelsang, a comedian, political pundit and Sirius XM radio host, believes that's not very Christian of Abbott, who claims to be a devout believer. There's "no Jesus-based defense" for the actions of Trump, Abbott and many others who claim to follow the teachings of Christ, Fugelsang said: "They've prostituted Christianity into a mean little cult."
In Florida, in one of the most insidious moves ever made by any legislature since the end of the Civil War, new laws demand that school children be taught that there were benefits to slavery. You know, skills. As if slavery was an extended trade school with room and board.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama's redistricting effort and demanded it redraw its legislative maps to include a second district with a Black majority. (At the moment, there's one, represented by the state's only congressional Democrat.) The state has refused to do so, and that case is headed to court. It could end up, Eisen suggested, with "U.S. marshals involved," contempt charges against Alabama office-holders and the federal government drawing up the voting districts.
This is how the new civil war is being waged, with individual states defying the federal government and demanding to take action separately from the rest of the country. "We certainly haven't seen this type of pushback since before the Civil War," Eisen said. Thing is, the federal government cannot afford to look the other way, at risk of seeing the United States disintegrate. If the government loses even one such case, it will be severely weakened. Those sons and daughters of the South who've been taught propaganda about the noble "lost cause" of the Confederacy will get the last laugh.
Still, if you fear such events, it's useful to remember the mental acumen of those who want to defy the will of the people. Consider Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, the former Auburn football coach, who wants to limit our national defense readiness by refusing abortions to service members and their families. That hasn't gone over well at the White House, and even some of his allies in Congress think he's gone too far.
Then there are Kevin McCarthy, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and the usual gang of idiots, now including Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who want to impeach Joe Biden without any evidence to justify it. These people are all mental flatlines.
Compare them to people like Kirby, who has to deal with international problems including potential nuclear conflagration, UAPs and Russia's bid for regional hegemony; Eisen, who was involved in prosecuting Trump's first impeachment; Ritchie, a man of science who has to deal with climate-change deniers and those who consider the teaching of science evil; and Fugelsang, a comedian, actor and commentator — all of them remain hopeful for the future.
But they also recognize that the next year and a half will be a very bumpy road indeed, both domestically and internationally.
Donald Trump began a process he can no longer control, though he'll never admit it. He's given politicians, and everyone else on the planet, leeway to embrace their darkest nature. The neo-Confederate movement in defiance of the federal government is a direct result of Trump's appeal to those who have nurtured their sadistic and misanthropic fantasies many generations after the end of the Civil War.
But their success is limited, and ultimately they will fail. That's reflected in Trump's own actions. He is under two criminal indictments and faces at least two more — and one of those, in Georgia, can't be erased by a presidential pardon should Trump regain the White House. Then there's Rudy Giuliani. Like many of Trump's minions, he's facing potential indictment himself. And it doesn't make things better for Rudy that this week he had to admit in a Georgia civil case that he lied about the actions of two election workers and grossly defamed them. It's enough to make the hair dye run down his face. "If the devil was as incompetent as Giuliani, hell would be empty," Eisen explained on the podcast "Just Ask the Question."
The challenges from individual states to the federal government will fail, ending whatever "civil war" the former Confederacy wishes to start — and Norm Eisen also believes Trump's presidential campaign will fail. In fact, he shares my belief that Trump may not even be on the ballot next November. Trump may face four criminal trials between October and next July, when the Republicans meet to pick their candidate. "He can't dodge that many bullets," Eisen said. "He's been good at dodging them before, but they've never come this quick and this hard. He could have two convictions by next July."
That leads to the ultimate question for those following the long-running Trump melodrama. Will he go to prison? Michael Cohen hopes so, and Eisen thinks so: "This is going to be a presidential race for the record books," he said.
There will be at least one substantial third-party challenge. The current president is 80 years old. Trump is only three years younger and in questionable health. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is older than both of them, suffered a "moment of lightheadedness" in the Capitol on Wednesday. Our leaders are aging. Our politics is badly divided. Our most recent former president seems hell-bent to tear it all down.
What does the future bring? Civil war? Or, perhaps, if you listened to a "whistleblower" who testified before Congress on Wednesday, an alien incursion?
Ritchie, the head of Boston's science museum asks the ultimate question we all have to consider: "Are we courageous enough to greet reality as a friend?"
On Wednesday afternoon, that purported whistleblower, a former intelligence agent named David Grusch, told a congressional committee that the U.S. government is in possession of alien technology and "biologics" that are "non-human." If we are being observed by advanced species, how foolish we must seem to them.
Instead of cooperating, we compete. Instead of tolerating each other, we fight among ourselves. We divide ourselves by race, color, sex, religion, wealth, perceived slights and just about any means we can — to what end, we have no idea, although we think it's all about control and power that we actually do not have and can never possess.
The next year and a half will unveil our national character, and our national will.
I join others in being hopeful, but that hope is tempered by the realization that the moves made by Texas, Florida and Alabama portend a great upheaval that will only be settled when we all decide to embrace our better angels instead of our darker ones.
Barack Obama had a saying attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. stitched into the Oval Office rug: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
The key word is "long." It will be at least 16 long months before we see whether the light at the end of the tunnel justifies our hope, or is just an oncoming freight train.
