If the American experiment ultimately decides to end, how will the nation begin to divide?
Perhaps California is moving toward secession after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s strict gun control measures. Or, as a dispute over abortion laws turns deadly and the National Guard remains loyal to the second Republic of Texas, Texas revolts. Or a skirmish over the closure of a local bridge by federal inspectors escalates into a conflict between a beloved sheriff and a famous general, with the rest of the country taking sides. Or the coordinated bombing of state capitols in time for the presidential transition in 2028, with right-wing militias and left-wing activists blaming each other.
In other words, it’s not you who hates you, it’s me..
These scenarios are not of my own creation. They all appear in a recent nonfiction book warning of America’s divisiveness. The separatist impulse is crystallized in David French’s Divided We Fall, which warns that the political and cultural clustering of Americans threatens to tear the country apart. (French published this article before becoming a Times columnist in 2023.) Barbara F. Walter’s “The Beginning of the Civil War,” in which the Capitol explodes, explores the They point out that as norms erode, opportunistic leaders can easily exacerbate ethnic and cultural divisions. It ends in violence. The Battle of the Bridge is one of several moments in Sumter that are considered in Stephen Marche’s The Next Civil War, in which he moves from irreconcilable differences over the representation of America to They claim that there will be a major divorce.
Rather than predicting what will happen, these authors provide examples of what could happen. Their point is that our politics and culture are susceptible to such possibilities. “The crisis is already here,” Marche wrote. “Only incendiary cases are pending.”
What makes writer-director Alex Garland’s much-talked-about new film, Civil War (part of its box-office success was the fact that a number of newspaper columnists went to see it), is precisely that: There are no exciting incidents. In addition to this canon. We will never know exactly who or what started the new American civil war, or what, if any, ideologies are competing for power. This can be disorienting and dangerous, but it’s an effective method. An elaborate backstory would distract viewers from the war itself, a bout of despair and isolation, death and denial, as lived and recorded by the exhausted journalist at the center of the story.
Even the choice of a journalist as the film’s protagonist creates an additional layer of exclusion. Because, strangely enough, these journalists, even among themselves, rarely discuss the origins of the conflict or question its politics. (“We record for others to ask,” a veteran photographer reminds her protégé.) The story begins with a New Yorker hoping to record the last presidential interview before the fall of the capital. is built around traveling from to Washington.
“Civil War” is a road trip movie, with a journey somewhere between the chaos of “Nomadland” and the dystopia of “The Road.” If you want to see national monuments before they are reduced to rubble. If a stop for gas involves Canadian currency or a scene of torture. If only stadium camps and mass graves had become standard features of beautiful America.
The story goes that California and Texas both seceded and formed some form of confederation. They fight the remnants of the U.S. military, as well as some loyal Secret Service agents and dedicated White House officials, all of whom serve the same purpose as the disposable flags of a Star Trek landing party. There is. There’s also something called the Florida Alliance, which is also trying to convince the Carolinas to secede from Washington.
But the war’s most memorable combatants are the unofficial militias found across the country, whose motives for violence range from self-defense to self-gratification. One of the combatants explains in an irritated manner why he would target a sniper. “Someone’s trying to kill us. We’re trying to kill them,” another says with glee in slow motion as he executes a uniformed and hooded prisoner. It’s floating. Another extremist mutters that he implicates a local looter in part because the man ignored him in high school, but his casual malice echoes Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel “Here He reminded me of Shad LeDew, the murderous handyman from “It Never Happened.” When LeDew gains a little—enough—power over his kind but indifferent former employer, his enduring resentment spurs revenge.
The civil war is sustained by various groups’ beliefs that their “status and standing in society” has been lowered, Walter writes. Whether that erosion is real may not be as important as the feeling of oppression or loss and the opportunity to blame or punish someone for it. Once the door is open, the high school student’s contempt and condescending boss become an easy excuse for violence, precisely because it is so trivial.
The power of Civil War lies in the fragments of context that deepen the film’s ambiguity and realism. She incidentally learns that the president is serving his third term, but his actions begin by rehearsing his lies before addressing the nation. (So was secession a response to an authoritarian leader, or was his term extension itself a response to regional rebellions?) (this plot point was reminiscent of the US killing of militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011) and the dissolution of the FBI (this was the fateful US decision to disband the Iraqi army in 2003). (reminded me of the decision). The film’s central character, a war photographer played by Kirsten Dunst, gained fame in college for taking “legendary” photos of what has been described as an Antifa massacre. (I was immediately reminded of the indelible photo of Kent State from 1970, also taken by a university photographer, who wondered if this new massacre was allegedly committed by Antifa activists.) It is unclear whether this was done against
“Civil War” is not so much plucked from the headlines as it is sewn from history. It is not a vision of what might happen in America, but a collage of what has already happened here and elsewhere.
In that sense, the film is reminiscent of Omar El Akkad’s 2017 novel American War. The novel depicts a country being reshaped by climate change and a new civil war erupting in the late 21st century due to the federal government’s ban on fossil fuels. An uprising by Americans greedy for guns and gas. El Akkad, a journalist who has covered terrorism, military tribunals, and mass immigration around the world, is determined to unite a future America where principles have been replaced by retaliation. After the fighting begins, someone explains, “This is no longer just a question of secession.” “This is about avenging our dead.” This is a book-length rebuttal to American exceptionalism.
In Civil War, a similar rebuttal is made in the lament of Dunst’s character, who is suffering from flashbacks of the many conflicts he has covered so far, yet cannot fully accept what is happening. ing. “She survived a war zone, and every time she took a photo, she thought she was sending a warning home: ‘Don’t do this,'” she says. But here we are. ”
Civil War’s lack of backstory doesn’t negate the need for an examination of how such a war began. It makes the viewer realize that different paths can get us there. We don’t need him to be the United States of the 1850s or he the Balkans of the 1990s. We can choose our own misfortune.
Of course, not everyone chooses sides. Political violence does not necessarily depend on mass mobilization, but on the right combination of minority enthusiasm and majority apathy, or perhaps fear. In “Civil War,” journalists encounter a time-warped town where sprinklers are still spraying, stores are still open, and the town appears insulated from the mayhem. One resident explains that although he watches the war on TV, he would rather not go outside. The coexistence of brutality and normalcy is a recurring feature of war, and one can imagine many Americans navigating an actual civil war with similar distance. (Perhaps they would call it self-care.) But I think there are more than enough people who experience what Marche calls “the joy of contempt.” That sense of fun is everywhere in “Civil War,” and no less so than in the Abu Ghraib-style shots that slowly unfold during the end credits.
In “The Beginning of a Civil War,” Walter points out that the breakdown of a unified national identity is a precursor to conflict. In Iraq, she writes, people have begun to ask who is Shia and who is Sunni. In Bosnia, the differences between Serb, Croat, and Muslim identities overwhelmed all others. One of the most disturbing moments in Civil War is when a fighter jet in camouflage threatens a journalist. When they claim they are Americans, he asks, “What kind of American are you?” At gunpoint, they respond, but this deadly exchange shows that America is no longer defined in its creed of freedom, equality, and opportunity, but in a cesspool of blood, soil, and language. There is.
The search for a cohesive national definition is featured in these recent books that warn of our deepening divides. Walter compares contemporary political tensions to his 1850s and his 1960s. “Both times, the political parties in this country had fundamentally different visions of America’s future. What is the country? What should we do about it? What country? ” She hopes America’s enduring ideals and shared history will inspire us to “fulfill the promise of a truly multiracial democracy.” In “Divided We Fall,” the French imagine that they might draw on their federalist traditions to allow different states to live freely, while protecting individual rights, as well as the commonwealth. I do, but I don’t expect it.
Such an outcome would require an acceptance of common ideals and history, and some sort of agreement about the kind of country we want to be. This is even more difficult in America, a country where identities and symbols proliferate, where group rights and grievances risk taking precedence over the commonalities and compromises that unite us. “Identity-based parties make it impossible for voters to switch sides,” Walter writes. “If political identity is tied to ethnic or religious identity, they have nowhere to go.”
Mr. Marche hopes America will regain its arrogance and reinvent politics, but the alienation he sees is little encouragement. “While each side accuses the other of hating America, this is simply another way of saying that each side hates America for what it stands for,” he wrote.
The debate over what kind of America we want is critical and never-ending. But when it moves from the universal to the personal, from what kind of America we want to be to what kind of Americans we accept, we move from conversation to interrogation, from investigation to tragedy. We have migrated. You don’t have to believe that another civil war is on the horizon to understand the danger of asking the question, “What kind of American are you?” And we realize that the more we grasp for answers, the weaker we become.
