In this increasingly polarized world of ours, it’s easy to get caught up in our own information bubbles. It’s natural to gravitate toward what makes us most comfortable. Nobody likes to feel like they’re constantly having to defend their opinions. We thrive on validation.
(No, this is not going to be a post that makes you feel guilty for staying in your bubble. Who am I to talk? I stay in mine as much as possible. I like it in here. It makes sense to me. Nobody feels the urge to defecate in the hallway of the Capitol Building here. No one wants children to live in fear that their families will be torn apart here.)
But I was a little startled the other day when a fellow liberal expressed a very different point of view than that of my own. She said a civil war is imminent. She says people are talking about it quite a bit on social media. Professionals.
The first wave of shock was the thought that there’s another liberal information bubble out there that I’m not privy to. Nothing I’m reading or hearing seriously discusses civil war. And if this information bubble is radically different from my bubble, are we really on the same side? How does that work? I mean, none of us voted for the orange-fisted goon, so we have that in common. But it seems that we part company regarding what happens next.
The second wave of shock was… civil war? Really? I could see the Insurrectionists and their ilk trying to start one, but they have no motivation now, since their “side” won. (It hasn’t yet dawned on them that their side has just been using them.) So that leaves the liberals to throw down the gauntlet, and I don’t see that taking the shape of a civil war.
My first thought was that my friend greatly underestimates the apathy of modern Americans. I mean, the majority of us can’t even be bothered to get out and vote. Look at it this way. (And all of the following figures are from 2023, the most recent ones I could find.) According to the US Department of Defense, there are 1.2 million active members of the American military. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2023 this country had about 206 million 17 – 39-year-olds (the age you must be to join most military branches.). That means only one half of one percent (0.5 percent) of all Americans eligible to join the military did so. Even less, technically, since not all the active duty military joined up that very year, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just pretend that they did.
But that percentage drops even lower when you consider the fact that of that tiny portion of people who did join up, 67% of them have an education level ranging from no high school to only some college. Now, there is absolutely no way to determine how many of the people in the active duty military joined up due to an overwhelming sense of patriotism, but I’m thinking that given that education range, and given what I know about rural small towns with very few prospects, a good chunk of that number joined the military to get the hell out of their dead end lives, or to see the world, or to avoid starvation, or jail, or because it was their only ticket out.
This number is purely speculative, but I feel fairly confident in saying that that knocks the potential number of people eligible to join the military in 2023 who did so purely out of a sense of patriotism down to a very generous 0.35% of that age group. That’s 721,000 patriots. (And thank you for your service if you are one of them.)
Now, 721,000 people may sound intimidating, but that’s about 1 in every 469 men, women and children that you encounter in America. Think about that the next time you go to your nearest high school football game for lack of anything better to do on a Friday night. While the odds of stumbling upon a patriot that is actually willing to stand up and defend our country are a lot higher than the odds of being struck by lightning (1 in 15,300 according to the Encyclopedia Britannica), they are still not that great, even under the Friday night lights.
But, you may interject, many of the American people have not yet accepted the idea that they may be about to lose their democracy! This very country is hanging in the balance! Surely the people are going to rise up!
Well yes, there is that. And we rebels might even get half of those patriots and non patriots to join us, so there are 600,000 trained soldiers, right there. That’s nothing to sneeze at, right? But it’s not like rebel forces could engage in a draft for the rest. One thing that we Americans are expert at is, “Sacrifice? You go first.”
But the next question is, do you think Trump is going to divvy up all the tanks and fighter jets and ordinance with us? The US has the most equipped fighting force on the planet. Surely he could spare some so that we could… what? Overthrow him? Not gonna happen. And do you think other countries are going to help us out, drawing the ire of that same equipped fighting force? Not unless Trump invades their country first. Greenland and Gaza might help just out of pure spite, but, you know…how much help would they be?
So yeah, we’d be stuck hoping that all the idiotic AK-47-toting school shooter wannabes will step up. And as much as they’d like to think that that makes them all alpha males and such, they’d be flicked off this continent like the fleas that they are. But wait a minute. Those wannabes are already on Trump’s “side”, so they aren’t going to play with us.
And where would the front lines of this civil war be, exactly? The Northeast and West Coasts vs the Heartland and the South? We’re not that cleanly cut. All of us vs. Washington DC, Texas, Arizona, Florida and all the military bases in the country? That’d be like playing whack-a-mole. This is not a slave state vs. free state situation. It’s not even shirts vs. skins in terms of enemy identification. And no American would tolerate an arbitrary border being drawn. That would mean that if you found yourself on the wrong side of it, well, tough luck, you’d have to relocate at a moment’s notice, a la India/Pakistan. No way is dad going to pull up stakes when his daughter just became president of the student council. That would look bad on her college application.
But you know what I think the primary deterrent to civil war will be? Unfortunately, it will be things like the Superbowl and the Oscars and Black Friday and Netflix. Next time you’re at work (because surely you’re not reading this at work, right?) look around you. Do you honestly think Karen in Payroll and Rito in Dispatch and P.J. in Customer Service are going to give up their “me time” to go out there and hunker down in trenches in the rain while bullets whiz past them? They’re too busy whitening their teeth and painting the toenails of their labradoodles for that. It’s hard to get people to even show up for a touch football game nowadays.
People have been expecting Americans to rise up for decades. Despite what Trump might tell you, the riots in Seattle are usually confined to 3 square blocks. The rest of us keep going about our business, and even if we agree with the cause, we get really pissed if any of that stuff snarls up traffic. Those idiotic Neo-Nazi, White Supremacist, Manson-worshiping whack-jobs who have been trying to incite a race war have never gained the least bit of traction anywhere outside of Watts. And when will Southerners realize that shouting “The South will rise again!” only makes them look kind of pathetic? It stuns me that they haven’t figured that out by now. As we used to say when I was a kid in rural Florida, “Tsk. Ain’t nobody studyin’ y’all.”
Your neighbors are not going to come pouring out of their houses on a whim to march down the street to fight the good fight while the women folk proudly wave their hankies at them from the sidewalk. They aren’t going to be sitting at their open windows with rifles cocked, ready to defend your cul de sac. No hordes are going to come pouring over the hill shouting, “To arms! To arms!”
If you’re hoping for some violent overthrow to save us from this current insanity, I’m afraid you’re backing the wrong horse. Americans, especially the mentally healthy portion of the Democrats, don’t lean into violence. Believe it or not, sanity is alive and well in America. It’s just been asleep. But apathy is ready to go, at least in a physical sense.
That probably sounds discouraging to those of you who seem to be sucking down the panic and anxiety like thirsty travelers at the first water hole this side of Death Valley. People have been actively seeking out a steady increase in pressure and anxiety, I think, because the resounding pop of an instant release would be so satisfying. They want this madness to erupt in a violent fountain of pus and blood, leaving behind a nice clean, healing pore that won’t leave a scar, so they can be done with it all and everything will go back to normal. But life doesn’t work that way.
When and if the dust settles, we’re going to have to create a brand new normal. The old one is gone. However…
It doesn’t mean that democrats are sitting on their hands, doing nothing. We may not start smack-downs, but we do still fight the good fight. We just do it by upholding the constitution and the rule of law, and we do it by shining a light on the cockroaches until they are forced to scuttle back into whatever dirty little hole they came out of in the first place. It may not be as sexy as bleeding out for your principles, but it’s quite often a helluva lot more effective.
Here are just a few of the victories we’ve achieved in less than a month:
Per Robert Reich, Federal courts have blocked DOGE’s access of Treasury Department Payment systems, a buyout of federal workers, an executive order ending birthright citizenship, and extended the block on the federal funding freeze on grants and loans.
According to the Washington Post, as of this writing, we have blocked the transfer of transgender prisoners, blocked the dismantling of USAID, and we’re fighting the ban on asylum, fighting the expansion of fast-track deportations, fighting the removal of employment protections for civil servants, fighting the firing of commissioners without cause, fighting a ban on transgender troops, fighting a ban on gender-transition care for minors, fighting the legality of the US DOGE Service.
In addition, the news has exposed ICE’s attempt to claim that raids they did as much as 14 years ago are happening right now, in their feeble attempt to pretend they have the manpower and organizational skill to eject the millions of people from this country that Trump wants them to get rid of before the people lock him in a rubber room.
Now, things have been changing quickly, so no doubt there have been more developments since the time of this writing. And some of these developments will be setbacks. No doubt about it. But some will be victories. Just a glance at the ACLU website page regarding court cases will show that we are not just sitting idly by while our country burns to the ground.
I am annoyed by the fact that so many people are saying that the democrats are doing nothing. That’s not what I’m seeing. I’m seeing disgust, outrage, determination, and quiet, decisive action. I’m seeing spotlights being aimed at every single inequity that is occurring. I’m hearing the most highly respected people with the very largest platforms speaking out. I’m seeing legal minds plugging away with such persistence that smoke is issuing from their ears. I’m seeing information gathered and shared far and wide.
And I think that is one thing Trump’s cronies failed to factor in. This isn’t Nazi Germany, as much as they’d love it to be. This is the age of the internet. We no longer live in a world where you can do something heinous in plain sight 5 miles away and it remains a relative secret. Evil thrives in secret. Nothing stays a secret for long in the modern world, regardless of what conspiracy theorists may think. Information goes global in the blink of an eye.
These chuckleheads in power right now are loudmouths. They are too stupid to know how to be on the downlow. They are too arrogant to realize that they can’t get away with what they’re doing if the whole world is watching. And the whole world is watching.
I can’t predict the future any more than anyone else can. But I can point out that all of this nervous babbling about dire consequences and apocalyptic futures does not constitute a single fact. No one will know what is going to happen until it does. That’s why I’m choosing to stay out of that other, hysterical liberal bubble, wherever it may be. Because all it is doing is fomenting panic. I don’t get the sense that it is serving any other purpose. If those who dwell in that bubble come up with concrete, rational, and plausible calls to action, please do let me know, though. I’d be up for that.
But no, you’re not crazy. You have good reason to be concerned. Do I think that the current administration is going to do a lot of damage? Heck yes.
But as crazy as this sounds, I think we need this period of total chaos and fear to wake us all the hell up. Those who can’t be bothered to vote need to be shown why voting matters. Those who don’t take the democratic process seriously need to start paying attention. We all need to start exercising our atrophied critical thinking muscles.
Reforms are long overdue. We need to get rid of the electoral college, restore the voting rights act, make strict laws to reduce gerrymandering, and basically level the playing field for all Americans. If you want to win, do so in a fair fight. We need to impose strict and painful penalties on those platforms that allow the type of misinformation that alters elections or incites riots. We need to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine and get back to fair and balanced news again.
And for God’s sake, we have to stop apathetically reelecting the same old geezers and bombastic attention-getting nut-jobs into congress. That coven of rich old octogenarians and pretty little idiots don’t represent us. They never have. And they have no idea what our lives are like or what we need or want. We need to reduce the time and money allowed for campaigns, because politicians should not have to be beholden to corporate sponsors and spend so much time fundraising, even after getting elected, that they can’t focus on the task at hand. If we want people in congress to really have our best interests at heart, they shouldn’t have to be millionaires to even consider throwing their hats in the ring
Yes, the Porcine Putin-Panderer will do damage to this country. And some of it will be irreparable, but the things that can be fixed will be fixed. And maybe, just maybe, some things will be made better.
I know Americans view our constitution as some sort of religious decree, but it needs updating. Other countries have done it. We’re living in the modern world. We need a modernized constitution that spells out basic human rights for all, and also makes it impossible for sh*t like this to ever happen again. People who would not normally be able to get a security clearance should not be able to run for public office. It should be made clear that no one is above the law, and that includes elected officials. And a provision should be made so that Supreme Court Justices are held to the same ethical standards as judges in lower courts are. And every public official above a certain level must disclose their tax returns to the public immediately every year or step down from office.
By the way, lest you think my cynicism knows no bounds, I do believe that if another country invaded us, Americans would indeed rise up. I’d certainly hop off my recliner for something like that. We have not devolved so much that we’d let Putin waltz in here uninvited. As a united force against an easily identifiable “enemy from without”, we’d open a can of whoop ass the likes of which have never been seen before. I’m confident of that.
But in this present surreality of ours, I’m going to do my best to remain calm and let the professionals grind their way through the legal system and pray that the constitution holds up after having been stretched to its breaking point. I’ll get information from the coolest heads in that bunch, and stay informed about what’s happening NOW, without focusing on what might happen next week, month, or year. If I see storm clouds on the horizon and there’s any way I can divert them from our shores, I’ll do my best.
As I have always done, if I can see effective ways to make the world, or any part thereof, a better place, I will. I’ll personally prepare for disasters, man-made or natural, foreign or domestic, in any way I can. And rather than get spun up by speculation, I’ll speak up when my voice doesn’t simply increase the strength of the hysterical tempest, because that serves no one.
Maybe someday I’ll look back and be embarrassed that I wrote this naïve post. Maybe I’ll be forced to eat every single word of it. So be it. But until someone shows me a tangible benefit of hopping on the crazy-anxiety-stress-train-from-hell, I think I’ll let it leave the station without me for now. Lord knows there will be ample opportunity to take that trip some other day. But for now I’ll wave goodbye, then sit here on this nice bench and gather my strength.
But you go and have a nice ride, if that’s your thing. To each their own. And when it’s your turn to reflect back on this era of insanity, you can tell me if the ride was worth the price of the ticket.
Wishing you peace, security, and loving kindness, Dear Reader. Remember to breathe. There will be better days. The only constant is change.
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