“You fight the war with guns, you fight the peace with stories.”
― Omar El Akkad, American War
“Everyone fights an American war.”
― Omar El Akkad, American War
Dystopian novels are a difficult genre: They need to be imaginative, edging on the far-fetched, while being just plausible enough to terrify. Omar El Akkad’s American War, which interprets the American South by way of the Middle East, challenges Americans to imagine what it might be like to die for, but also kill, their fellow citizens.
The Second Civil War begins in 2074. Climate change has changed the continent, submerging the banks of Louisiana and the near entirety of Florida, save for an island enclave or two, one of which eventually houses the notorious Sugarloaf Detention Facility for Northern prisoners of war.
In the early 2070s, the federal government, by then based in Columbus, moved to outlaw fossil fuels. Southerners resented this and other impositions from the richer, prosperous Northern states. Fervor for secession began to build. The nature of Southern “culture” was rich, but also somewhat vague and constructed, like all cultural identities are. It was enough, though, to moor a movement that would lead to the deaths of millions. A Southern suicide bomber assassinated the president in 2073, plunging the country into violence.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/12/american-war-religion/548543/
Also, from the above article:
Ultimately, the second civil war becomes “tribal.” To fight for your tribe, regardless of anything else, becomes its own cause, and one apparently worth dying for.
The fear and foreignness of tribal divisions might be why some American analysts, including The New Yorker’s Robin Wright, are treating the risk of civil war more seriously (with the caveat that a future American war wouldn’t be a “normal” one, but rather a lower intensity conflict). One common definition of civil war is 1,000 combat deaths in a year, coupled with the existence of at least one organized militia, a standard the United States, due to its large population, could theoretically more easily meet than a smaller country could.
Wright cites former special-operations officer Keith Mines, who puts the risk of civil war in America at 60 percent and lists five conditions that make violence more likely, each of which has by now been met. Basically, at the core of most civil wars is a collection of grievances, whether economic, ideological, or sectarian, that are foundational enough that they can’t—or can no longer be—addressed through politics. But it is not enough for grievances to exist; rebel groups must be sufficiently organized and effective, and the central state sufficiently weak or illegitimate, to be able to mobilize around those grievances.
Yes, the article from the Atlantic is a bit longwinded but definitely worth reading. What is not longwinded and even more worthy of reading is the book.
READ IT!
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