My wife and I recently went and watched Alex Garland’s dystopian drama Civil War, which I have to say, was way better than I was expecting.
A cursory reading of recent history shows that there are different types of modern civil wars, from 1917 Russia, to 1930s Spain, to 1990s Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and to 2010s Syria. Often fought over ethnic, economic, religious, nationalist, and territorial issues. They are all brutal, dehumanizing, repressive, traumatic, and in the end, nobody really wins.
America has already had a civil war fought between the North and South on the subject of slavery. Garland’s movie likes to imagine a US civil war that is not North vs. South, conservative vs. progressive, or white vs. ethnic minorities. I think that is both the strength and weakness of the film.
On the downside is the price of realism.
The fact is that any future US civil war would probably be North vs. South, progressive vs. conservative, secular vs. religious, and multi-cultural vs. white homogeneity. It would be, in a sense, the first Civil War on replay, even if the fissures have moved on from on slavery to things like abortion, CRT, trans-ideology, censorship, taxation, and federal government coercion in more aspects of life.
If there was another US civil war - God forbid! - it would probably start similar to the way the 1861-65 civil war began!
Extreme voices in the media stoking rage against the “others” as intrinsically evil.
Conspiracy theories about how each group came to power and/or is planning to annihilate the other.
A belief that the current political arrangement cannot protect them against the other political tribe.
A single incendiary action that sparks the outbreak of hostilities.
Garland’s book lacks the realism of a civil war breaking out amidst current political and tribal faultlines in the US.
But that is not to say that the movie is without merit!
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