Some evils have so much power we dare not speak of them. Like the villain in a horror story, we refuse to utter their names for fear we may summon them into our presence. An evil far off scares us enough, so we take comfort in not bringing it any nearer. To those of us familiar with the Harry Potter novels – a series ever so millennial in more than one sense of the word – this strikes us as superstitious nonsense. Refusal to acknowledge an evil, to its name aloud, would seem to give it power over us. Mastering it, conquering it, we are told, requires us to name it for what it is. I find much to value in this, but taboos against mentioning certain things serve valuable purposes. What we permit ourselves to discuss governs what we think possible, and what we think possible guides what we do. I approach this topic with some reluctance for fear of contributing in my own small way to the very problem I seek to address, but that which needs saying, it would seem, needs saying.
I have observed in the last two or so years some truly irresponsible speculation that the United States will descend into another Civil War. Our social and political order does appear to have gathered some of the tinder necessary to light such things off: erosion of political norms, questioning the legitimacy of elections, violence in the streets, decaying national identity, and so forth. These things all should worry responsible people who wish to bequeath to their posterity a world better than the one they inherited. But having concerns does not mean you have to blast the Overton Window wide open and then throw yourself out.
Civil wars and similar conflicts require people to start them. Do you know what kinds of people tend to start civil wars? People who think they are desirable, necessary, and most importantly, possible. If you want to start massive civil and political unrest, do you know the best way to do that? Tell people that the moment demands such things. Tell them that the disorder they fear already exists. Nobody wants to fire the first shot in any conflict, but if you can convince people they have acted only in self-defense, they sleep rather more soundly. People who do not think they will ever fight a civil war tend not to be the sorts of people who would start one. But convince them they are already in one? That it is only careening towards us? Now you have changed the calculus.
Sadly, we find ourselves in an age of extremes and paranoia, and the grotesque irresponsibility of those who theoretically govern us only makes matters worse. Assault and property destruction thinly veiled as protest increase nobody’s confidence in their society. When our betters gently tell us that no, we cannot call this violence for reasons of truly postgraduate stupidity, it produces only more violence. Victims of what they correctly consider violence, knowing they can no longer rely on legitimate authority, will take matters into their own hands. The perpetrators of violence, knowing they have political cover from the necessary parties, then feel empowered to escalate even further, and so the cycle continues. In such an environment, speculating about a new civil war, or the president refusing to leave office, evince a lack of judgment so profound as to border on the criminal.
If you don’t want a civil war, then stop speaking like all it has to do is round the corner and mug us. To treat such a tragedy as inevitable is tantamount to declaring that you no longer share a common nationality with those you fear. To gin up this kind of worry is to cave into defeat and the worst kinds of despair. If you truly do not want something of this kind to occur, then stop talking about it. Banish it from the realm of the possible. If you value the country, don’t talk about how it will fall apart, but about how it can come together. Seek, with malice toward none, with charity for all, solutions through the hard and so deeply unsatisfying avenues of democratic politics. The cold, hard truth is that those most insistent on talking about this are also those most insistent on it happening, and whose fantasies only venture into worlds in which they emerge victorious. So for the love of everything good and noble in this world: slam the Overton Window shut before some fool throws this noble republic through it.