A second civil war seems far-fetched. But do we ignore the possibility at our peril? Or do we turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy by talking about it too much?
And we are talking about it a lot. Last week The New York Times published at least four opinion pieces contemplating the prospects of civil war in our increasingly factionalized — and militarized — society.
In a column under the headline “We Need to Think the Unthinkable About Our Country,” Jonathan Stevenson and Steven Simon support the ignore-it-at-our-peril perspective. They say that we should prepare for the prospect that the “next national election will almost inevitably be viciously (perhaps violently) contested.” Yet, they say, “many Americans seem to be whistling past the graveyard of American democracy.”
