Expert predicts potential US civil war, fall of democracy
A political expert has made a horrifying prediction about the future of the US with 2024 being the breaking point.
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Canada’s on edge. It’s becoming increasingly alarmed that its closest neighbour – the United States – will soon be consumed by civil war and devolve into fascism.
“By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence,” warns Canadian political scientist Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon. “By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship. We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine.”
His evidence is in plain sight.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for a “national divorce” between Republican and Democrat states. That’s secession.
Republican congressional candidate Noah Malgeri has called for the execution of General Mark Milley on live television. That’s insurrection.
Millions of armed militia threaten to seize power if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election. That’s civil war.
Combine that rhetoric with a nation of 330 million people, 4018 nuclear warheads, 485,000 troops, 165 armed militia groups and more than 400 million firearms in the hands of civilians – and any neighbour is bound to be nervous.
And that’s Canada’s neighbour.
“Today, we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace,” says Professor Homer-Dixon. “The US is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war.”
Canada has defeated the United States before. In 1812, British-Canadian forces repulsed a US attempt at invasion and went on to storm Washington D.C. and burn down the White House.
Will it have to do so again?
Clear and present danger
Three retired US Army generals stepped up to the podium last month to warn of divisions within the force they once led. They warned that the 2024 election result might be rejected by powerful military units that will seek to impose their will on the nation.
That’s a military coup.
“In short: We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time,” generals Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba and Steven Anderson wrote.
“The real question is, does everybody understand who the duly elected President is? If that is not a clear-cut understanding, that can infect the rank and file or at any level in the US military,” Eaton went on to tell NPR.
The CIA actually has a Task Force designed to try to predict where and when political instability and conflict is likely to break out around the world. It's just not legally allowed to look at the U.S. That means we are blind to the risk factors that are rapidly emerging here. pic.twitter.com/86UMVwhi3C
— Barbara F Walter (@bfwalter) November 25, 2021
Mr Trump himself predicts confusion. And collapse.
“You go to these elections coming up in ’22 and ’24 – we’re not going to have a country left,” Mr Trump told the far-right Newsmax news service in September. “The election was rigged, and we’re not going to have a country left in three years, I’ll tell you that.”
Ironically, he plans to run for the presidency – in 2024.
But the simple fact such influential former military leaders are taking sides is cause for concern.
No evidence the 2020 election outcome was in any way invalid has been produced. Yet 124 former admirals, generals and other command ranks signed a letter rejecting the result.
“We’re concerned about that,” General Eaton says. “And we’re interested in seeing mitigating measures applied to make sure that our military is better prepared for a contested election, should that happen in 2024 …
“I just don’t want the doubt that has compromised or infected the greater population of the United States to infect our military.”
Might makes right?
“A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. We must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unravelling of democracy in the United States,” Professor Homer-Dixon says.
And he should know his stuff.
“I’m a scholar of violent conflict. For more than 40 years, I’ve studied and published on the causes of war, social breakdown, revolution, ethnic violence and genocide,” he says.
He believes the US has entered a terminal phase.
“The more an under-resourced government can’t solve everyday problems, the more people give up on it, and the more they turn to their own resources and their narrow identity groups for safety,” Professor Homer-Dixon warns.
Contempt for the equal application of the law. The glorification of violence. An exploding gun culture.
.@RepThomasMassie, since we are sharing family photos, here are mine. One is the last photo that I ever took of Jaime, the other is where she is buried because of the Parkland school shooting.
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) December 4, 2021
The Michigan school shooter and his family used to take photos like yours as well. pic.twitter.com/MsQWneJXAp
“Those guns are more than symbols,” he states. “Many of those with guns are waiting for a signal to use them. Polls show that between 20 and 30 million American adults believe both that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr Trump and that violence is justified to return him to the presidency.”
It’s a sentiment seen in a call for the execution of Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief General Mark Milley. His crime – talking to his Chinese counterpart and disagreeing with Mr Trump.
“We need to get back to our patriotic, liberty-loving roots,” declares Republican Las Vegas congressional candidate Noah Malgeri.
“What did they used to do to traitors if they were convicted by a court? They would execute them. That’s still the law in the United States of America.”
Such appeals to conspiracy theories and calls for violence has focused attention on the enormous US military.
“If there is any doubt in the loyalty and the willingness to follow the oath of the United States, the support and defend part of the US Constitution, then those folks need to be identified and addressed,” warns General Eaton.
Recipe for disaster
Professor Homer-Dixon warns Canadians: “If Mr Trump is re-elected, even under the more-optimistic scenarios, the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable.”
That’s because he calls the political turmoil in the US a symptom of a failing state.
“Today, as I watch the unfolding crisis in the United States, I see a political and social landscape flashing with warning signals.”
Fellow political scientists across the border agree.
In November, some 150 professors warned US Congress that their nation faced a moment of “great peril and risk … Time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching”.
Professor Homer-Dixon points to the aggressive partisan political “shock-jocks” and the amplification of their violent rhetoric by social media.
“The cracks have steadily widened, ramified, connected and propagated deeply into America’s once-esteemed institutions, profoundly compromising their structural integrity,” he said.
“The country is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war.”
This, he says, is not the cause of the crisis.
“These people and their actions are symptoms of that dysfunction as its root causes, and those causes are many … These shifts include stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity, and rising inequality.”
Relative wages have fallen. Economic instability is widespread. Growth is limited to a few city centres.
Meanwhile, executive incomes have soared from 30 times that of the average worker in 1978 to more than 270 times greater.
A civil war would be the first thing civil about America since 2016.
— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) October 10, 2021
“Two other material factors are key,” Professor Homer-Dixon warns. “Right-wing ideologues have inflamed fears that traditional US culture is being erased and whites are being ‘replaced’.
“The second is pervasive elite selfishness: The wealthy and powerful in America are broadly unwilling to pay the taxes, invest in the public services, or create the avenues for vertical mobility that would lessen their country’s economic, educational, racial and geographic gaps.”
Such intransigence is at the core of growing US fascism, he says.
“Democracy is an institution, but underpinning that institution is a vital set of beliefs and values. Probably the most important is recognition of the equality of the polity’s citizens in deciding its future; a close runner up is willingness to concede power to one’s political opponents, should those equal citizens decide that’s what they want.”
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel
Originally published as Expert predicts potential US civil war, fall of democracy
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