Not very 'civil'

Jun 01, 2020 09:28


Finding it mildly amusing, the "Boogaloo" used as code for white-power insurrection apparently being a web-fueled riff, "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo," based on the movie title "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo" - so yeah, the irony of white supremacists getting the name of their movement from a film about Urban (mainly black) culture.

Putting that aside, it's interesting that even left-leaning comments are taking seriously the notion of a new Civil War. Which isn't going to happen, at least in the near future, and not with the people trying to foment it now. The original war had its roots in regional alliances that set up from Colonial ties (no doubt the Crown liked it that way, keeping us mad at each other rather than the King). Further, each southern state had its own organization from the capitol on down to local sheriffs, complete with fully trained and supplied militias. Today's "militias" have nowhere near that level of organization or support, and are too individually paranoid to gel under central leadership.



The original Civil War took decades to finally break out; it's unnatural to put people who were erstwhile friends and family at each others' throats on that scale. Of course, Slavery was the huge factor and tipping point. When it seemed inevitable that Northern industrial interests, backed up by the moral/ethical high ground, were going to abolish, the Southern planters, being informed the equivalent of today telling farmers in the Midwest that their farm equipment no longer belongs to them and can leave the land with no recourse, roused the militias to action, and enforced the (fairly popular) notion that the "United States" is a plural noun, not singular, and a State is and can be totally on its own away from the others, joining with a Confederacy of like-minded if it sees fit.

No. What we see here is an active case of the delusion of "Race War," which wasn't even possible back in the 1960s when a lot of people thought it was inevitable. The idea that once fighting broke out, everyone in the U.S. would automatically form lines based on their skin-tone and fight each other to the death, or to eventual parallel utopias of race-based ethno-states (see the recent novel, "Adjustment Day"), was so far-out wacky, one of its biggest proponents was Charles Manson.

Sad to say for the Proud Boys, Kluxxers, and whoever else ascribes to this, but the nightmare their Jim Crow grandpas warned of has come true. "Race-mixing" has been completely accepted and normalized in America, especially among the younger generations.

Old ways die hard, especially if one's personal identity and means of attaining power are highly invested in them. Boogaloo will swiftly become as much of a relic as an '80s breakdancing movie, but with with worse music. In the meantime, we need to see the dangerous fools for what they are, and deal with their (call it what it is) terrorist threats.

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