No, Civil War 2.0 in the States does not look like the fighting in 1863 [above]. North versus South has shifted to a more complex Urban versus Rural. A comprehensive look at the genesis and scope of the 2nd American civil war is brought to us in a series of podcasts produced by Robert Evans, a former conflict journalist who reported on Russian covert operations known as the “civil war” in Ukraine.
A Confederate flag in Quebec
You may have heard that within the “United” States today, the nation is anything but united. Sure, a massive calamity (an external threat or a tremendous natural disaster) might be enough to pull the USA together for a few months, but as the NYT Pulitzer Prize winning “radical centrist” columnist Thomas Friedman opined in late 2018, his nation is at war with itself. Friedman suggests this new war — strongly associated with the binary political system in the States — is “less violent… but much more broadly divisive” than some of the “intense social strife” (e.g., the civil rights movement) seen by the nation since the hot war of 1861. Could the same happen in Quebec, given how acutely Canada is corrupted by the diffusion of U.S. culture across the border?
In LaSalle (a borough of Montreal) on Easter Sunday, we came across a license plate [photo below] considered by decent folk as either malicious or brainless. Can we even expect a Quebecer to understand what this flag truly represents? Since moving to Quebec in 2017, this is the second time I’ve seen the Second Confederate Navy Jack displayed by an individual. We’ll never know why his car was sporting a flag associated with slavery, segregation, white supremacy, and treason. What we do know is that in 21st century Murica, the Confederate flag is still rightly a symbol of all that was wrong with the Confederacy, and that some Muricans can’t seem to let go of the Confederate States of America.
Seeing a Confederate flag on a Quebec vehicle spurred the authorship of this post…
Culture Clash
Current political strife in the USA can be very crudely broken down into rural versus urban camps; suburban areas are caught in the middle, yielding mixed allegiances based in part on geography. On the macro level in the U.S., we can reference the Northeast Corridor (from Boston down to Washington D.C.) and “sanctuary cities” on the West Coast clashing with the “flyover country” between the coasts. The animosity between camps is of course not some kind of novel symptom heretofore unseen by nations, but the degree to which tribalism has taken hold in the USA is swiftly becoming unworkable (Canada could be next). On a smaller scale, we observe this festering cultural phenomenon when contrasting Upstate New York with NYC — or Montreal with the rest of Quebec.
If an extraterrestrial examined the province of Quebec or the state of New York, the alien might see NYC or Montreal as powerful city-states isolated within truculent, anthropologically incongruent larger territories. This is unfortunate. In an ideal nation, the urban and rural territories would work together and draw upon each others strengths. Despite flying the same flag at the top of the pole, rural territories in Trump’s nation are becoming downright hostile to the megalopolises that are virtual city-states.
In economic terms, urban folk see rural areas as places where raw materials are derived. In decades past, they were revered too as manufacturing powerhouses. They’re also a nice place to visit for a break from the city, and on a good day the bucolic folk are friendly to visitors — to the extent that money can be gotten. Rural folk benefit from cities invisibly and innumerably, yet perpetuate mythologies about urban life (racial comments are still a favorite). Due to media echo chambers and a demagogic national leader, geographical division has spun out of control in the USA. This zeitgeist has become so suffocating that at least one presidential candidate has taken an admirable policy position in response.
Rasmussen poll question, June 2018
How likely is it that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years?
According to 31% of the 1000 “Likely U.S. Voters” asked this question by Rasmussen Reports, a second civil war sometime in the next five years is likely, with 11% saying it’s very likely. (Note: Rasmussen is a respected polling company but is also known by conservatives as the “gold standard” among pollsters, and has been accused of asking questions specifically to show public support for conservative positions.) Thirty-one percent is extraordinarily high given the gravity of the question, regardless of how flawed the methodology could have been. Reading certain websites mansplaining how Civil War 2.0 will play out — complete with theories about NYC becoming “blockaded until it is starved into submission” — it truly sounds as if many on the Right want a hot war. After all, there’s no shortage of U.S. gun owners just itching to exercise their perceived 2nd Amendment right against other citizens.
Civil War 2.0 makes much less sense than civil war did in 1861… but try telling that to today’s “minutemen” 😂 who stockpile AR-15s due to an exceptional overabundance of paranoia. Without uniforms, the battle lines are grey enough areas that — other than the conspicuous extremist elements on both sides — you may not know who your “enemy” is until they open their mouths (or until they open fire, à la contemporary mass shooters). It would be convenient if the rural armed factions wore red MAGA hats, but most of today’s Redhats will likely be tomorrow’s collaborators rather than true foot soldiers.
POTUS making a duck lips face aside his squadrismo
Thanks to the World Wide Web, we now know more than we ever wanted to know about what lurks in the minds of our neighbors, coworkers, family members — and complete strangers who happen to live in the same province or state as us. In a sense this transparency is refreshing, because we often can know where people stand. While a chosen political tribe should technically not be used to pigeonhole a citizen, you can expect to be judged harshly if you declare your support for a megalomaniac who over and over again has shown the world that he’s a petulant, compulsively lying, self-preoccupied bigot who knowingly fortifies white hegemony (while displaying ample evidence of mental disorders not suitable for a stable world leader).
2018 & 2019 Elections: Rural versus Urban Quebecers
The binary choice faced by most Muricans at the ballot box is not one Quebecers were faced with in the 2019 Canadian federal election and the 2018 provincial election. This small measure has helped insulate Quebec against the brand of toxic tribalism imported from south of the border. Although the CAQ won 59% of National Assembly of Quebec seats in 2018, three other major parties received a combined 58% of the popular vote, as seen in the bar graph below. According to Wikipedia, “Quebec elections have historically seen large disparities between the raw vote and the actual seat count.” Despite such disparity, I’ll take it over my lack of choice in the USA (a system that didn’t even reflect the popular vote in 2016).
Yet despite more choices and less binary propaganda here than in the USA, rural and urban Quebecers visibly vote differently:
Quebec is no Murican powder keg
We should carefully note how Bill 21 has thrust the “rural” versus urban dichotomy into the public spotlight in this province, with nearly none of the elected representatives on the Island of Montreal supporting the bill. While Quebec may exhibit a rural versus urban dichotomy along the lines of what’s found in the States, Canada blessedly has no 2nd Amendment. Without arsenals of assault rifles in the hands of white nationalists (an important factor differentiating Quebec’s bucolic folk from their country cousins in the States), the worry of a culture war becoming a hot war within Canada isn’t present.
Not to mention, a large presence of white nationalists in the U.S. armed forces has been well established, with nearly one-third of troops surveyed seeing this problem as a national security threat. According to a Military Times poll, “Troops rate it as a larger national security threat than Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.” But to what degree does Canada’s military suffer from the same problem? Expat in Montreal spends time in the comment sections of U.S. news items. For what it’s worth (because often we don’t know the true intent of individuals online), here’s a comment we found on the topic of Civil War 2.0:
“It’s far more common than people realize. I work for the military as a civilian in Colorado Springs. Both active duty and veterans (more so the veterans, who are now contractors) will openly discuss the ‘upcoming civil war’ if Trump is impeached — right in the halls of one of the most secure buildings in the country. And they have security clearances. During Obama’s presidency, our FSO (facility security officer) had to put out a warning to everyone on the distribution list that ‘discussing Colorado seceding from the union’ would be contrary to their oaths and clearances. Why he had to send a memo is beyond me. It should be obvious. Meanwhile, people like me have to stay very, very quiet. Some of these people are aggressive and will get directly in your face. It’s tense.“
All Kinds of Flags
The other day we saw an Algerian “car flag” [photo below] while driving through the Mile-Ex neighborhood. A fan of the Algerian football team? Pride in being Algerian? (Algeria was a former colony of France, so it’s not surprising to see immigrants from Algeria in Montreal.) Perhaps the Algerian flag carries negative connotations we are unaware of in North America, but what we do know is that the Second National Flag of the Confederate States of America was the work of notorious white supremacist William Tappan Thompson, who designed it to be hailed as “the white man’s flag”. Here at Expat in Montreal, we believe any version of the Confederate flag should be no more welcome in Quebec than a Nazi flag.
— Victor
This Montrealer would be risking his life by displaying this flag in U.S. Confederate territory.