![]() Walter previously served on the political instability taskforce, an advisory panel to the CIA, which had a model to predict political violence in countries all over the world – except the US itself. ![]() Among those raising the alarm is Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and author of a new book, How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them. With the cult of Trump more dominant in the Republican party than ever, and radical rightwing groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys on the march, some regard the threat to democracy as greater now than it was a year ago. Tucker Carlson, the most watched host on the conservative Fox News network, refused to play any clips of Biden’s speech, arguing that 6 January 2021 “barely rates as a footnote” historically because “really not a lot happened that day”. Illustrating the point, almost no Republicans attended the commemorations as the party seeks to rewrite history, recasting the mob who tried to overturn Trump’s election defeat as martyrs fighting for democracy. View image in fullscreen History looms large as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in Statuary Hall to address the threat to American democracy. ![]() The president’s remarks on Thursday – “I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy” – appeared to acknowledge that there can be no business as usual when one of America’s major parties has embraced authoritarianism. The anxiety is fed by rancour in Washington, where Biden’s desire for bipartisanship has crashed into radicalized Republican opposition. The mere fact that such notions are entering the public domain shows the once unthinkable has become thinkable, even though some would argue it remains firmly improbable. Three retired US generals wrote a recent Washington Post column warning that another coup attempt “could lead to civil war”. “Are We Really Facing a Second Civil War?” posed the headline of a column in Friday’s New York Times. “Is a Civil War ahead?” was the blunt headline of a New Yorker magazine article this week. Even talk of a second American civil war has gone from fringe fantasy to media mainstream. In a deeply divided society, where even a national tragedy such as 6 January only pushed people further apart, there is fear that that day was the just the beginning of a wave of unrest, conflict and domestic terrorism.Ī slew of recent opinion polls shows a significant minority of Americans at ease with the idea of violence against the government. I wouldn't name Lincoln as a great US president.Īt best, he was prone to bad judgement and a grossly overindulged self image.Īt worst, it's easy to see him as a calculating, narcissistic war monger and certainly a tyrant.It is a question that many inside America and beyond are now asking. ![]() He gets assassinated, of course, making it impossible for him to have any input from that point forward. Sounds like a grand, enlightening term.īut setting the slaves free all at once, instead of by a more ordered plan, set up a condition of chaos that has never really ended for whites or for blacks, has it? Nor did Lincoln stick around to help sort out the mess. Indeed, a situation that his own political stance had been central in bringing to a boiling point.Įmancipation. Were it not for his over inflated self image, he might not have dragged the entire country into a civil war, but instead have used politics and diplomacy to cool off an intense situation. In my opinion Lincoln was operating far beyond the boundaries of Executive Power at many times throughout the conflict.
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