It is uncomfortable truth of history that nations that rise can also fall. Nations that didn’t exist can come into existence and then one day no longer exist again. We’re not very familiar with that idea but it’s true, and if you’re not sure just ask a Ukrainian. We’ve been working our way through the minor prophets at church and the story is clear: one day there was a united kingdom of Israel and then one day there wasn’t. One day the northern kingdom of Israel flourished and then one day it didn’t. One day it was there and then one day it was just another part of the mighty Assyrian Empire. A bit later the same thing happens to Judah. To Judah! To Jerusalem, to God’s holy city! One day it was the seat of the house of David and the next it was a part of Babylon.

The same uncomfortable truth applies to empires be them Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, British, French or American. One day they fell. So the simple possibility of one day there not being a United States of America is undeniable. It came into existence and in much the same way it was born, it can die. The question is not whether it’s theoretically possible but is it probable, is it likely, is it happening?

Just ten years ago the question would have been ridiculous, so it is something that ten years later it is not a ridiculous question, it is not unthinkable because people are thinking about it. And that fact alone says something about the trouble America is in. It should be notable that Tyler Cowen has a piece on his blog with this title: Do not expect a civil war in America. Isn’t it incredible that people are having to answer the question at all? The arguments made are reasonable and cogent and worth considering. I probably agree with them. But the uncomfortable fact is that not everyone does, and that in itself is remarkable!

There is currently a photo exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London called America in Crisis and pictures (one of which is the header to this article) show a nation not at peace with itself and one that has not been at peace with itself from it’s conception. David French opens one of his newsletters with this paragraph:

On Thursday the University of Virginia released polling results that should shock exactly no one who closely follows American politics and culture. A majority of Trump voters (52 percent) and a strong minority of Biden voters (41 percent) strongly or somewhat agree that it’s “time to split the country.” 

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a-whiff-of-civil-war-in-the-air

Now just because people are thinking it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but it’s definitely more likely to happen if people are thinking about it! I’ve previously written on these troubles here & here, but I don’t think America is on the verge of another civil war. What I do think is, is that America has problem that it is finally recognizing but it’s one without a solution and that means it is a problem that won’t go away.

In two articles at the beginning of last year I wrote that The crisis of truth is worse than the coronavirus crisis and that we live among Utterly unintelligible polarizations. That there exists now in increasing measure in many liberal democracies and most evidently in America two different media eco-systems that are independent of each other.

Here’s David French’s description of it:

The cycle works a bit like this. Malice and disdain makes a person vulnerable to misinformation. Misinformation then builds more malice and disdain and enhances the commercial demand for, you guessed it, more misinformation. Rinse and repeat until entire media empires exist to supply that demand. 

Moreover, there are different kinds of misinformation. There’s of course blunt, direct lying, which is rampant online. But there’s also deception by omission (a news diet that consistently feeds a person with news only of the excesses of the other side) and by exaggeration and hyperbole. 

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a-whiff-of-civil-war-in-the-air

Here’s Tim Keller’s description of it:

In virtually every church there is a smaller or larger body of Christians who have been radicalized to the Left or to the Right by extremely effective and completely immersive internet and social media loops, newsfeeds, and communities. People are bombarded 12 hours a day with pieces that present a particular political point of view, and the main way it seeks to persuade is not through argument but through outrage. People are being formed by this immersive form of public discourse—far more than they are being formed by the Church.

This is creating a crisis.

Tim Keller on the Church Crisis That He Never Had to Face as a Pastor—But You Do

And here is Matt Taibbi:

America is a now a nation of warring media faiths, with Fox/OAN/Newsmax preaching a heretic Savanarola-style gospel of corrupt elites lying about everything from election results to vaccine efficacy, while the rival Church of the Mainstream, which describes itself as the (literally) true faith and exclusive arbiter of such things as “fact” and “science,” preaches a coming fascist apocalypse. Its pundits openly rejoice in Covid-19 as an instrument of vengeance against “denialism” and those who don’t “believe science,” and it’s not an accident that people who watch them too much do things like wear masks alone in cars.

The News is America’s New Religion, and We’re in a Religious War

It was evident to Marshall McLuhan, to Neal Postman – it was evident in 1976 and now America is, to a degree, reaping what it has sown.

Wendell Berry writes that, “Unless one is willing to be destructive on a very large scale, one cannot do something except locally, in a small place.” My guess is that most Americans feel unable to influence the national, the international but they’re fighting very hard to influence the local: schools, sports, libraries, universities, hospitals, churches. They are fighting each other a thousand times over all the time, they just haven’t yet started organising armies.

But like in Ukraine, or in ancient Israel, a nation does not fall in a day, there is usually a death rattle and in nations that can take decades and or sometimes centuries. So, no I don’t think America is going anywhere just yet but for a number of reasons I think the era of Pax Americana and the ascendancy of the USA is almost over.