Rwanda 2.0?
Why there won’t be a civil war in the USA between Trumpies and Lib’ruls even though there will be deaths
A friend of mine asked me not so long ago, “Do you think there is a chance the USA will collapse into a civil war after the election results are announced this November?”
At face value the question could be regarded as absurd. Yes, the USA is a backward nation in terms of education — so much so that the typical US citizen is completely clueless about practically everything. Yes, the USA is a nation built on racism and slavery and the long dark shadow remains in everyday life. Yes, the USA is polarized between virtue-signaling politically-correct lefty-trendies and mindless waddling gun-toting “patriots.” And yes, the USA has a history of white right-wing thugs killing groups of people they deemed to be enemies.
But seriously: civil war?
My friend’s argument was quite stark, however, and it’s worth examining.
Before the Rwandan genocide that killed over 800,000 people predominantly of the Tutsi and Twa tribes but also including some moderates among the majority Hutu population, Hutu politicians had been stirring up tribal hatred, praising violence against Tutsis and dehumanizing them by calling them cockroaches and other derogatory terms. The President relied on Hutu extremists as the core of his power base. Key elements of the mass media were nothing more than crude propaganda machines churning out absurd but nevertheless potent anti-Tutsi lies and accusations.
The situation is eerily echoed in today’s totally dysfunctional USA.
Fox News and various other right-wing propaganda organizations pump out a never-ending stream of lies and accusations. Trump calls ordinary people “terrorists” and “criminals.” He praises ultra-right-wing groups and has sent paramilitaries into cities against the express wishes of elected officials and those paramilitaries have kidnapped and assaulted unarmed citizens more or less at random and assaulted journalists to intimidate them. Trump relies on the extreme right and all the mindless drooling howling morons who think he’s “the greatest president” and he’s eager to encourage them ever-further in their demonization of anyone who hasn’t signed up to his incompetent and thuggish regime.
Perhaps, then, the idea that the USA will dissolve into a second Civil War isn’t so far-fetched. After all, who’d have imagined that a failed trash TV show host and serial bankrupt with the IQ of a dead pigeon would not only become President but would in less than four years trample over every part of the Constitution supposedly designed to prevent anyone acquiring absolute power? A supine and craven Republican Party, a far-right Supreme Court, and hundreds of thousands of unreasoning drones at all levels of government have enabled the unthinkable.
Why not, therefore, also a descent into internecine conflict?
The reason there won’t be a second Civil War in the USA turns out to be very simple: to have a war, you need at least two sides who recognize what’s happening.
When Hitler marched his troops into Austria for the Anschluss it wasn’t a war: it was an occupation. The Austrians were even foolish enough to imagine Hitler’s takeover of their country was a good thing. Later, when Hitler marched his troops into Czechoslovakia, it wasn’t a war: the Czecks failed to understand the threat until too late and then there was nothing they could do, not least because they were abandoned by their supposed guarantors Britain and France who were too busy hiding under the bed of appeasement to lift a finger.
When the Hutus rose up with their machetes and axes and knives to slaughter their Tutsi neighbors, that wasn’t a civil war either. It was a simple massacre. At least 800,000 men, women, and children were hacked to death and at least 250,000 women were raped before being slaughtered. It was a one-sided bloodbath, conducted in the open while a United Nations so-called peacekeeping force stood aside and let it all happen without firing a single shot.
Now let’s return to the situation in the USA.
On the one side we have people brandishing placards, babbling about safe spaces, virtue-signaling frantically about every good cause they’ve been told about, and doing their best not to commit accidental micro-aggressions.
On the other side we have brainless waddling neofascists who delight in brandishing their AR-15s, their Colt-45s, and their Remington 870s and who think that killing “terrorist traitor lib’ruls” would be “patriotic.”
What would stand in the way of a sizeable number of these mindless inadequates going on a rampage and shooting any “dumb lib’rul” they can find?
Not the police, who mostly sympathize with “patriots” and whose ranks have been infiltrated by far-right extremists over the last decade. Not the National Guard, who likewise lean Trumpward. And not the military, where a significant majority of personnel under the rank of lieutenant adore Trump and all he stands for.
Let’s imagine that by some miracle Biden actually wins not only the popular vote but also scrapes a slender theoretical majority via the Electoral College (which, by the way, could easily switch their votes to Trump anyway, as there’s no obligation on Electors to reflect the will of those who went to the voting booths across the nation). Trump has been loudly blustering for months about “voter fraud” and mysterious “foreign countries” that don’t want him to win. It is inconceivable, given the evidence to date, that Trump wouldn’t simply declare the election fraudulent and announce his intention to remain in office as “America’s true President.”
Nobody would stop him. Not the Congress with its Republican-dominated Senate. Not the Supreme Court with its 5–4 far-right majority. Not anybody at all.
Furthermore, it’s also probable that Trump would call on his “loyal and patriotic” supporters to come out on the streets to suppress any attempted demonstrations by people who unaccountably don’t want to see the USA turn into a de jure tyranny (it’s OK being a de facto one provided everyone can still pretend it’s not). Trump would support these “patriots” with thousands of obedient Homeland Security thugs and whatever other forces he needed and the police would stand back and watch (or join in). And maybe later they’d arrest whoever hadn’t been killed for brandishing a placard or for wearing a BLM t-shirt.
At this point the obese low-status empty-heads who adore Trump and who like nothing more than to play with their little guns would inevitably up the ante. When people have every reason to believe they can act with impunity, they will. And let’s be honest: there are few pleasures in life more gratifying than putting a few rounds into a terrorist traitor baby-eating god-hating gun-limiting lib’rul pedophile. It’s almost enough to make a man forget to take his heart and blood pressure medication.
So we’re not talking about civil war here. There aren’t two sides. There’s one heavily armed side and then there are millions of people who haven’t a clue what’s happening around them.
This does not mean, however, that the USA will soon see millions of dead bodies on the streets. Whereas in Rwanda the government controlled the media and the radio pumped out exhortations to violence, Fox News relies on selling ad slots for its revenue stream. Very few corporations will be happy to be associated with the slaughter of unarmed civilians who also happen to be their customers. So we won’t see the relentless incitements to killing that occurred in Rwanda.
Nor will we see the dedication to eradicating every last Tutsi that was the hallmark of the Rwandan genocide. Trump supporters won’t waddle laboriously from building to building eager to shoot every last liberal hiding (in a non-microaggressive way, of course) behind their sofa or in their bathroom. They’ll be happy enough to blast away at targets of opportunity but after a while they’ll lurch off to find something to eat and then they’ll be too full and too sleepy to go back out and be patriotic again. Besides, those beers in the fridge won’t drink themselves and the game will be on TV in a few minutes.
It may well be that only a few hundred people will die; or, if Trump gets excited enough and just can’t stop himself from encouraging the killing, perhaps it will be a few thousand people.
But it won’t be 14% of the population as was the case in Rwanda.
The USA is no stranger in its recent history to groups of white people killing a few hundred or even a few thousand, so the whole thing will be forgotten after a handful of decades. US citizens are famously incapable of remembering even the recent past (last week); anything further back is lost in the mists of time and safely covered up in a Disney version of history in which all unfortunate events are carefully left unremembered.
So I don’t think that we’re going to see the USA becoming Rwanda 2.0. The crucial ingredients aren’t there, even though there are enough guns (more than 400 million) in circulation to enable a truly spectacular burst of self-destruction.
All that’s going to happen is that the USA will continue to descend into incompetent tyranny as tens of millions of voters continue to drool over the world’s most fatuous infantile buffoon, simply because they’re all too stupid to see how ridiculous he is.
