THE CIVIL WAR SEQUENCE

We have not had a civil war in this country for 152 years.  But we are in a sequence that gives us our best shot at one since then.

Please allow me to lay out the circumstances that might cause one.

-Donald Trump – first laughed at by mainstream media, then laughed at and derided by them, then just derided – won the presidency last year over Hillary Clinton – beloved by mainstream media and assumed, right up to election day, to be our next President.

-Donald Trump is a blunt-speaking, enormously successful businessman.

-Donald Trump is also a thin-skinned egomaniac who uses bluster and threats to mask ignorance, and who has little if any capacity to focus on big issues instead of tweeting out 140-character sound bites – which often are childish “I got you back” nonsense.

-Mainstream media essentially handed Donald Trump the Republican nomination, by giving him massive coverage during the primaries while virtually ignoring other, far more qualified, candidates.  This, I strongly suspect, was done partly because Trump was something of a circus sideshow who generated viewership/readeship, and partly because, if he were somehow to become the nominee, he would be easy pickings for Ms. Clinton:  a daily double for media.

-But this transparent little game backfired and Donald Trump won the presidency.

-And Since election day, an embittered media have taken this out on him, and his family, by launching attacks on them in every way they can find, while ignoring any possible good news emanating from his presidency and not reporting the violence and hatred visited upon Trump supporters around the country.

-In this regard, they bear at least some – maybe a great deal of – responsibility for Trump’s continuing use of twitter as a way for him to get whatever message he wants across in his own words.  It is Trump’s fault that, often, the tweets are ridiculous.

-Right now there are demands that Donald Trump be impeached for lying about his offices being wiretapped (though it is not settled fact that he lied), and his collusion with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton (though there is no hard evidence that any such collusion took place).   Hatred for Trump – however much some (by no means all) of it is self-inflicted – is so great that even though nothing has been definitively proven about either situation, they are being treated as though both have been.  In other words, facts are being treated as though they do not matter at all any more.

The net is closing in.  Democrats, aided and abetted by most mainstream media, are out to get Donald Trump and remove him from office.

At this moment, with a strong majority in the house and a majority, albeit a smaller one, in the Senate, it seems little more than a wistful hope.  But, a year ago, that’s what I and most others would have said about prospects for Mr. Trump becoming the nominee and winning the election.

And if, by some chance, Donald Trump should be impeached or should resign (of those two, I would bet on the second – with him attacking his enemies saying they do not want to save the country as he exits), there is no doubt in my mind that the next order of business would be an attempt to remove Mr. Trump’s personal pick for Vice President, Mike Pence and, instead of making Paul Ryan the President (which is the constitutional order of succession), holding a special election.

If that were to happen, the prospects for a civil war in this country would be all too real.

Am I expecting any of this to take place?  No I am not.

But do I think some, or all, of this could take place?  Yes I do.

I hope the people in positions of power and authority think hard, think hard twice, and then think hard again before they set situations in motion that everyone in this country, and internationally as well, will wind up regretting.