In high school, I learned the Civil War began when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter.
I don’t know when today’s Civil War began, but I get the feeling the country has been fired upon.
Last September, the Geneva Learners gathered at the library and discussed whether the U.S. will be – or already is –suffering a second civil war. The facilitator began by summarizing a TED talk by Barbara F. Walter (Aug. 14, 2023), author of “How Civil Wars Start”:
• Income inequality
• Discrimination against one group
• The country functioning as an anocracy (neither democracy nor autocracy: free elections, but winners rule untethered)
• Citizens drawn to political parties not for their ideology, but for their identity and/or ethnicity.
• From 2016 to 2020, the U.S. was downgraded from its democratic status because of Russian election interference, the White House refusing Congress requested information and President Donald Trump not accepting the 2020 election results.
• Civil war instigators from ethnic groups formerly politically dominant and now in decline
Sound familiar?
When my aunt was kicked out of a swank boarding school, the headmistress explained, “Shirley, you’re a born leader. Unfortunately, you’re leading in the wrong direction.”
Today, leaders advocate taking autocratic control by dismantling democratic and judicial processes enshrined in the Constitution. Their weaponry? Slander, prevarication and spewing vitriol about anyone with a different viewpoint.
Even people with Ivy League educations and graduate degrees can’t – or refuse to – filter the nonsensical, propagandistic fabrications and misinformation from the factual, scientific and methodological.
Why?
Max Fisher’s insightful book “The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World” focuses on real-world examples to illustrate how internet vehicles can manipulate emotions, attitudes and actions.
“The enjoyment of moral outrage is one of the key sentiments Fisher sees being exploited by algorithms devised by Google [for YouTube] and Meta [for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp],” a New York Times reviewer writes, “which discovered they could monetize this impulse by having their algorithms promote hyperpartisanship. Divisiveness drives engagement, which … drives advertising revenues.” (nytimes.com, BookReview, Sept. 9, 2022).
A close relative gives credit to the defamations, lies and conspiracy theories. She watches TV and listens to radio shows that reinforce absurdities and divisiveness. Her graduate degrees and revered stature in her field do nothing to prevent blind faith.
Why can’t she distinguish the flimflam from the authentic?
“We need to ask not just what makes some people susceptible to manipulation, but also what in the mind’s “wiring” protects others,” Fisher writes. “The answer will presumably include education, and … critical thinking skills.”
Examining “accounts from each side of a global conflict, [Fisher] details the viral disinformation that feeds it, the invented accusations, often against minorities, of espionage, murder, rape and pedophilia.”
Our country is doomed if we fight ourselves rather than the algorithms purposed to reinforce fairy tales born of Grendels who seek to ravage any Beowulf foolhardy enough to defend the honor and sanctity of Heorot Hall.
My solution may be modest, may even be naive, but I propose a family sit-down meal.
We invited our renegade relative for Christmas brunch. The reception, conversation and goodwill felt genuine. Overlooking her childish beliefs, we ate and drank to good health, the season and the future.
Sharing turkey, wine, memories, anecdotes and chocolate cake is a start, at least, toward an affable, if imperfect, Appomattox.
• Rick Holinger taught English and creative writing on several academic levels. His writing appears in Chicago Quarterly Review, Chautauqua, The Southern Review and elsewhere. His poetry, “North of Crivitz,” and essays, “Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences,” are available at local bookstores, Amazon or richardholinger.net. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com.