Very few things make my blood boil these days, I’m trying to incorporate a zen-like outlook in life as much as possible. But any intentional effort to increase political antagonism and paranoia, like a movie released last Friday, takes me from zen to 10 on the inner-rage meter, with 10 being the highest.
Leave it to Hollywood to try to capitalize on the country’s polarized zeitgeist. Don’t take your history-interested teenager to the movies this weekend to learn about the events leading to the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861. Nope, “Civil War” is about an armed conflict in this country in the “not-too-distant” future according to write-ups. Like after November 2024, oh movie-pushing public relations mavens? Subtle.
And those willing to fan the flames of the outlandish fear that we are destined for armed conflict in their coverage and commentary like The Boston Globe’s movie critic Mark Feeney who called the premise “grotesque” but not “fantastical or exploitative”? Shame on them, too. Hats off to NPR’s Justin Chang who rightly deemed “Civil War” an “empty stunt” and “a thought experiment that hasn’t been especially well thought out.”
To Chang’s point, that the movie’s script aligns California and Texas as states which have seceded and formed a “Western Force” alliance may be laughable on its face — think San Francisco and Houston marshaling a common militia. But the flag with two stars instead of 50? A Florida Alliance attacking the Carolinas? An Antifa massacre? A last stand starting in Charlottesville? A “New People’s Army” which would be more honestly named the Proud Boys. Yes, all the “democracy is finished if you-know-who-gets-elected” tropes are here.
Paranoid thinking is all I can ascribe to those who have suggested with real anxiety a scenario in which Donald Trump gets re-elected and refuses to leave office four years later. “Civil War” neatly pours gas on that fire by imagining a world in which the Constitution gets shredded by featuring a president in his third term and the elimination of the FBI.
It gets worse. Scenes from America’s main streets and city centers aflame, children screaming as military helicopters and rockets rain down on leafy boulevards. And these merely in the trailer.
What twisted plot aiming to twist minds doesn’t end with an attack on Washington, D.C., this time on the White House, not on the Capitol? Yes, Jan. 6 was an attack on the Capitol — by a mob, not an army. And its perpetrators are being held to account in a country organized under a “government of laws, not men.” But such a democratic state of affairs doesn’t sell at the box office, or on cable news.
Starts With Us, an organization focused on reducing political polarization sent an email out coinciding with this movie’s release which put some needed expertise and facts on the table.
They asked Thomas Zeitzoff, an American University professor who specializes in political violence and extremism. for his perspective. “A full-scale civil war is pretty remote. Between civil war and peaceful coexistence, there’s a large swath of outcomes. I think the more realistic worries for U.S. democracy are the legalese maneuverings that use the law and politics to break democracy,” he said.
In other words, yes there are real threats to our democracy we ought to pay attention to. The prospect of a civil war is not among them.
Also for Starts With Us, political violence researcher Sean J. Westwood noted, “Americans are increasingly divided along partisan lines, but it’s important to recognize that we have no evidence for substantial support for partisan violence among either party in the general public. There are factions outside of general society who support partisan violence, but they haven’t polluted the minds of typical Americans. There are deep cracks in American democratic life, but our democratic foundation is stronger than many in the media and academia suggest.”
I hope the public votes with their wallets and avoids seeing this pathetic attempt at mass manipulation. After all, filling in those deep cracks in American democratic life does indeed start with us.
Virginia Buckingham is the president of The Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors.
Virginia Buckingham
A member of the Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors, Virginia Buckingham is the former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”