Member Newsletter
For years there’s been a running conversation in the United States about whether the country is heading towards a second Civil War. That conversation often stumbles on the fact that America’s profound divides today don’t line up on any clear regional lines, despite what the maps of presidential election results might seem to show. Divisions are at best intra-regional. So any kind of replay of the 1860s is highly unlikely. But of course plenty of civil wars either had no clear regional breakdown or at least don’t start with one — the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, the Syrian Civil War. Before going further I should note that as a general matter I’m a “no” on this question of “are we headed to a second American civil war?” But events yesterday and those of last month suggest the possibility of something more realistic and still ominous.
Let’s quickly review the details: yesterday in New Orleans we had what appears to be an ISIS-inspired lone wolf terrorist attack. The FBI is now discounting initial suspicions that others might be involved. Events like these happened with some frequency in the U.S. for a number of years. But there’s been some respite, more or less since the Pandemic. Then a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in front of a Trump building in Las Vegas. The driver was killed and the car appeared to be filled with high-powered fireworks and gas canisters. It’s still not clear what this incident was about. That’s not remotely how you’d build a car bomb if you wanted to injure anyone. But it certainly doesn’t seem like an accident either.