THE FOURTH AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
These United States and the ongoing battle for human rights as a process & not a fixed concept
How many of us wake well before dawn this morning, concerned of imminent civil war? Would this truly be the second American civil war, as it is commonly referred to? Or might it be the fourth civil war if viewed from a new perspective?
Or maybe even a perpetual ongoing process towards democracy and human rights. “Perpetual war for perpetual peace” is far from a new idea. However I remain fascinated by the concept in 2022. As my usual motivation for writing is to explore things I don’t yet fully understand this is a most cloudy concept as I begin. Major corporate media speaks of a second civil war:
https://www.newsweek.com/our-second-civil-war-opinion-1670408
https://www.newsweek.com/2022/04/08/civil-war-20-why-splitting-would-100-trillion-mistake-1690730.html
We know by the time corporate media speaks of civil war that the concept is alive and well. But how many would agree this is only the second civil war? When we reflect further on American history it is possible to count four civil wars and quite likely many more. Not only has the great American experiment towards an establishment of democracy but it is shrouded in violence from the beginning
The Revolutionary War as the Second Civil War
I find it helpful to consider a writing by Tom Cutterham, Was the American Revolution a Civil War? https://earlyamericanists.com/2014/02/18/was-the-american-revolution-a-civil-war/
If we stop thinking of the Revolution as a War for Independence, in which the United States freed itself from the British empire, we can better see it as a process in which the United States, and American identity, was gradually, painfully, imperfectly constructed in the midst of imperial collapse. If we saw this and every revolution as a civil war, maybe we’d better understand the way the modern world—the nexus of state, citizen, and property—was born in and determined by violence.
In a follow up article Christopher Minty discusses “Seriously though, was the American Revolution a Civil War?”https://earlyamericanists.com/2015/06/29/amrev_civil_war/
On February 18, 2014, Tom Cutterham asked, “Was the American Revolution a Civil War?” According to Cutterham, understanding the Revolution that way might be useful. If we did, he suggested, “we’d better understand the way the modern world—the nexus of state, citizen, and property—was born in and determined by violence.”[1]
Understanding the American Revolution as a civil war is an accepted concept. In 1975, John Shy argued that the Revolution was a civil war. Since then, a number of historians have made similar propositions. More recently, in 2012, Alan Taylor delivered a talk, in New Mexico, titled “The First American Civil War: The Revolution.” There are other instances, too, and they are not hard to find or engage with. I don’t think historians will jettison the civil war framework, either. Indeed, we will be understanding the Revolution as a civil war indefinitely.[2]
This viewpoint is valuable 2022 as we consider the idea we are in yet another civil war. However the consideration that this would be the third civil war or possibly the fourth civil war now takes shape from this perspective. From here we see the United States and our American identity as a process. In 2022 it’s difficult not to see the current situation as once again “being constructed in the midst of imperial collapse”. Imperial collapse of course would need to be seen in this example as the more modern institutions which threaten tyranny today.
More on this later, but if at this point I must try to convince the reader we are in a planetary struggle for human rights then I will need several volumes and not one post. So I will assume the readers are well aware of the dimensions of the current threats. Certainly we can see governments and corporations, along with many institutions as direct threats to we the people.
Beginning with colonization of the US land mass when it was still a collection of British Colonies we might view the colonization process itself as a long civil war. then by extension it’s not difficult to see what is happening today as an continued exploitation of citizens by rapacious governments, corporations, and institutions.
Now as the USA and the world devolve into war, kleptocracy, crime, poverty, and the collapse of society we must consider the necessity to reinvent our democratic republic from fundamentals or perish as a nation. It’s up to us. Taking the view that the people across the planet are the real elites, sources of wealth and power and the determiners of their fates is crucial . To think otherwise is a dead end. We’re fortunate in the United States to have the Constitution and the existing framework left to us by our ancestors.
If the Revolutionary War is our second civil war then we may consider the idea that the long battle with Native Americans has been our first and longest. Although our American colonial and revolutionary ancestors often respected the Native American people they in fact pursued a schizophrenic policy. While borrowing whole concepts of participatory government from the Native Americans and applying this throughout their new framework they simultaneously supported policies of total war against them.
Throughout the world the inheritance of enlightened thinking and Democracy is the great theme. If we have the sense to reclaim it or establish it and accept our responsibility of oversight as citizens we may be able to hold onto it. This is now a world task but we can only write as who We are. There is no other choice remaining.
Unlike the Russians, we as the inheritors of Capitalism wouldn’t necessarily view our history as the series of invasions appearing to dominate Russian history. But then again, on further reflection, maybe a concept of repeated invasion in the United States is exactly what takes shape. Invasion of colonists to the Americas, invasion of native American land repeatedly, invasion of the South by the Northern Federal forces, invasion of this Democratic Republic by current Federal and associated corporate and institutional forces.
From the realities of 2022 we may perhaps see the Revolutionary War itself as an invasion of British forces. But on deeper reflection we see in our nation was in fact a loose affiliation of British colonies. Our Revolutionary War was both a revolution against tyranny and may also quite literally be our Second Civil War.
The Third American Civil War
By the years 1861 to 1865 Americans who lived South of the Mason-Dixon Line may well have viewed themselves as having been invaded. To this day many in the United States - certainly not just Southerners - still feel as if the overall welfare of the Nation was forever damaged by this third American Civil War. The strength and power of the Federal Government, not to mention the rise of corporatism allied with the government, arose mightily from seeds planted then. Wage slavery became a reality for many while racism continued and still does today.
Besides slavery, territorial and sectional political control were all involved. This is discussed in “Origins Of the Civil War, in Britain and the American Civil War”.
At the heart of the conflict were the interconnected issues of slavery, territorial and sectional political control. Tensions over these concerns had been present from the start the American nation. The United States began as collection of colonies who sought independence from Great Britain in the late 18th century.
https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/uscivilwar/origins/origins.html
From the perspective of 2022 the idea that issues of territorial and sectional political control are not at work would be nearly impossible.
To further complicate this the later “Indian Wars” have been considered to be yet another war or an important extension of the commonly referred to “Civil War”.
In How The Civil War Became Indian Wars, Boyd Cothran and Ari Kelman explore this concept. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/how-the-civil-war-became-the-indian-wars/
During the era of Reconstruction, many American soldiers, whether they had fought for the Union or the Confederacy, redeployed to the frontier. They became shock troops of empire. The federal project of demilitarization, paradoxically, accelerated the conquest and colonization of the West.
And more:
The Indian wars of the Reconstruction era devastated not just Native American nations but also the United States. When the Civil War ended, many Northerners embraced their government, which had, after all, proved its worth by preserving the Union and helping to free the slaves. For a moment, it seemed that the federal government could accomplish great things. But in the West, Native Americans would not simply vanish, fated by racial destiny to drown in the flood tide of civilization.
However this immediately allows us to question colonization itself as not only an invasion but also the beginnings of a civil war. American Colonists were engaged in a seemingly perpetual battle at home to win territory from the Native Americans. It was a “civil” war too in which the colonists intermarried and reproduced with the Native peoples. They shared the land in the truest sense and then engaged in perpetual war to claim new territory. Many American genealogies are peppered with ancestors who are or were Native Americans.
In 2022 we may additionally perceive the current disintegration of the Southern borders as an invasion aided and abetted by the Federal Government against our own citizens. These circumstances too are more like a civil war waged on the American people. It is the Federal Government, unbound by laws, which promotes this invasion against the wishes or benefit of the American people. And many see the US Federal government in 2022 as being an overall threat to the people and to any definition of Democracy. In other words, the Fourth (not the Second) American Civil War.
The First American Civil War:
If we are Native Americans living today or if we identify with those alive in the early 17th century as the first roots of our nation were established - we may view the period of colonization and even nation building as our first civil war. The Native American people in The America’s were subject to invasion, colonization, suppression and genocide. The present day US-based Native American population is a tiny fraction of the original. Those who were successful inhabitants and real survivors of the Americas for many thousands of years were all but wiped out. From this view we have had a long civil war with our native peoples - likely from colonial times into the present. They have suffered from horrible lack of understanding of these people’s rights from the beginning.
In 2022, we as world citizens, allowed ourselves to become treated as suspected terrorists well before 9/11. There has been little doubt in recent years of this. Clearly corporations governments, and institutions were involved. As we were herded, interviewed, scanned and treated like suspected criminals few were brave enough to complain or stage meaningful, organized reactions. Although there were many questions regarding 9/11 the corporate media came to largely ignore these. It was a preliminary uncivil action to instill fear and justification for Middle East wars.
Part of the blind obedience we see among the population results from the fear of reprisal. In the time of the Nazi rise to power in Europe this kind of fear and allegiance from citizens was widely observed. Those who obey and fall in line believe the evil won’t affect them although the eventual effects are undeniable.
Here in the US, government agencies have been put into place which directly go against the rights spelled out in the Constitution. The Department of Homeland Security is anything but a security agency. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been accused of interfering in the rights of American citizens. We are being played and serially abused by these forces. If we do not see former US or colonial actions as preliminary to what is happening today we risk repeating these.
Feltz discusses in "Civil War and Globalization: The Effect of Colonialism on Political Globalization" (2012). Celebration. 37.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/celebration/2012/Panels/37
The purpose of this paper to determine why civil war onset reduces political globalization in former British colonies. Through linear regression and logistic regression analyses, I test the affect of civil war onset and the presence of civil war on political globalization, controlling for former British colonies, French colonies, and other factors. More important, however, is the history behind British colonialism. Through setting up a unique institutional system and maintaining ties to its former colonies, the British have created an atmosphere conducive to international political engagement after the onset of civil war. This study shows that while civil war onset creates an immediate backlash in former British colonies, these same states actually increase their political globalization as the duration of conflict continues.
Whether we can surmise from his conclusions that civil war in general and in 2022 may have an effect such as reducing or increasing participation in political globalization remains to be seen. We would think that the deflection value offered in present circumstances by national and international conflicts is observable and offers a chance to impose tyranny from within or without.
A very comprehensive scholarly article discusses many facets of civil war and colonialism.
“Colonial ties and civil conflict intervention: Clarifying the causal mechanisms”
Mwita Chacha, Szymon Stojek
First Published July 19, 2016 Research Article
https://doi.org/10.1177/0738894216655514
Less relevant to the limitations of this post, another article discusses poverty as a cause for civil war and concludes it is not a sufficient cause:
Marta Reynal-Querol1
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, CEPR, and CESifo
May 2007
Abstract The dominant hypothesis in the literature that studies conflict is that poverty is the main cause of civil wars. We instead analyze the effect of institutions on civil war, controlling for income per capita. In our set up, institutions are endogenous and colonial origins affect civil wars through their legacy on institutions. Our results indicate that institutions, proxied by the protection of property rights, rule of law and the efficiency of the legal system, are a fundamental cause of civil war. In particular, an improvement in institutions from the median value in the sample to the 75th percentile is associated with a 38 percentage points’ reduction in the incidence of civil wars. Moreover, once institutions are included as explaining civil wars, income does not have any effect on civil war, either directly or indirectly.
JEL: 011
Key Words: Institutions, Civil wars
Other related papers, as follows, draw conclusions differing strongly from the idea of the “Revolutionary War as a Civil War”
https://www.diffen.com/difference/American_Civil_War_vs_Revolutionary_War
The American Revolutionary War, sometimes known as the American War for Independence, was a war fought between Great Britain and the original 13 colonies, from 1775 to 1783. Caused by colonial resentment of British taxes and strict, impractical rules and regulations, it eventually led to the development of the United States as an independent nation. Fought from 1861 to 1865, the American Civil War was a war between the Union (almost all northern and western states) and the Confederate States of America (almost all southern states), primarily over the practice of slavery. To date, the Civil War remains the deadliest conflict in U.S. history.
Today we lie amidst the fog of a possible fourth Civil War - one which threatens to become or already is a planetary war. This potential Fourth Civil War arises amidst the declared Fourth Industrial Revolution of Klaus Schwab and our Davos Elitists.
Standing against this, despite current realities, is the American cause. This cause, Thomas Paine insisted, was cause of all mankind. This would become a key principle as we move forward to try to both diffuse the conflict and at the same time to extricate ourselves from the threat of imposed tyranny from within and without. That tyranny should arise within was among our founding ancestors greatest fear.
Native American’s have a saying: “They who are ignorant of history are like wind in the buffalo grass.” They may well have been correct on several accounts.
I can sympathize. Been inhabiting my brain for days, lol.
The war between the abolitionists and the slaveholders (also known as the Northern War against State Rights) resulted in 640,000 - 700,000 deaths. The on-going war between Eugenicists and Christians in the United States resulted in 850,000 deaths in the year 2000 alone. The war has been going on for nearly 60 years and it continues.