An Uncivil War
This afternoon, Kim and I will join brother-in-law Jeff and his wife Lisa at our local Angelika Theater for an opening weekend showing of Civil War, the Alex Garland movie about an all-too-close-to-home dystopian near future for America where certain factions revolt against the established U.S. government leadership. The perspective it takes seems very pertinent in that it follows the actions of a group of imbedded photojournalists who are tracking and reporting on the revolt. The revolt is originated by some combination of the states of California and Texas, which highlights the attempt by the filmmakers to keep this somewhat non-partisan and also make the audience angst all the more by virtue of making it confusing for watchers to know exactly who or what to root for and stand with.
As we were driving our friends Mark and Laura to the Del Mar Dog Beach yesterday, I posed the serious question to the group about whether we needed or wanted to go to this movie. Having read a few controversial reviews of the film, I was quite torn about whether going to see the movie would help or hurt my sensibilities about the current state of affairs. Mark and Laura are Canadians who live in Vancouver, British Columbia. Their perspective on many of the issues of the day are interesting and somewhat different from other American views regardless of political leanings. Having lived in Canada (specifically, Toronto) thirty years ago, I am somewhat familiar with the Canadian outlook towards America and its political leanings. To characterize it generally, it is a low-grade astonishment and quandary as to what we are thinking. Canadians are very logical and pragmatic people who seem to feel that life is hard enough to survive such that we should not be needlessly battling one another. That said, I recall from my time living in Canada that between the Quebecois v. Anglos, Western Provinces v. Eastern Provinces or the Maritimes v. everyone else, Canada is not entirely immune to internal strife. Nonetheless, it is always interesting to see ourselves through our neighbor’s eyes and to Canadians we are a bit of cipher right now, especially with regard to the support that Donald Trump continues to engender.
I just got off the phone with my youngest son, Thomas and his wife Jenna, who were spending the weekend in some remote geodesic dome by a river in backwoods Colorado. I called to voice our concern and support for Jenna’s brother, Zac, and his young family who just moved to Israel this past week. Given the Iranian direct attack on Israel last night by launching over 300 drones and missiles in their direction, it is safe to say that Zac’s timing sucks and we all wish he was somewhere else as the Middle East situation ratchets up another few notches on the DefCon setting. My conversation with Thomas caused me to reflect momentarily on the rising temperature of the world at large at this moment. Not only is the Middle East not showing any signs reducing tension, but as Iran turns up the heat, Russia is pressing its advantage against an increasingly weakening Ukraine, weakened mostly by the politically-motivated disruption in the provision of military support for armaments from the United States, and China is very tactically turning up the heat in the South China Sea by slapping around the Philippine Coast Guard at Thitsu Island, a remote reef 1,250 miles south of Hong Kong (closer to Ho Chi Minh City than any place in China). The most troubling part of all of these incidents are that none of them are particularly necessary or effective militarily at the moment and yet all of them are clear and present dangers to world peace as they are obvious tweaks of the United States’ nose by the three major Axis Powers of the world against a country which is getting closer and closer to being at civil war with itself.
We as a nation are trying so hard to take diplomatic routes to all the global antagonism as we struggle with a very mixed sense of wanting to be isolationist and yet wanting to be strong in our stance against aggression which is being pointed in our direction by both primary actors like Russia and China or through proxy players deployed against us and our allies in places like the Middle East and strategically important spots like the Straights of Hormuz and the South China Sea. It feels more and more each day like the world and even our own country is a mere tinderbox, waiting to explode in flames. When I hear that Israelis are shocked that this has happened, I think what a stupid reaction that truly represents. How can Israelis be shocked that sooner or later their sworn enemies will respond in kind to aggressive missile assaults of Damascus, into Lebanon and Syria, all across Gaza and even inside the borders of the West Bank? Why are we surprised that Russia will not back down in Ukraine and push relentlessly westward towards Europe since they have been on this specific warpath since 2014 when they tested the resolve of the west by annexing Crimea? And as for the South China Sea, how better for China to practice its ultimate an inevitable assault on the reclamation of Taiwan than to practice on the remote islands of the Philippines like a cat playing with a mouse while it eyes the big fat rat it covets in the corner. Meanwhile, Russian influence in Niger is pushing for the ouster of U.S. forces from West Africa much like Chinese influence in Angola and other southern African areas and Iranian influence in Sudan and the Horn of Africa, making the African Continent the logical DMZ minefield of global aggression.
Do I worry about the demise of American Democracy in 2024? Yes, in an absolute and isolated sense I do worry that too many Americans seem ready to throw our liberties and our very system into disarray for the sake of an arbitrary and cavalier political and cultural distaste for their current circumstances. But what really troubles me more than anything is that the geopolitical context in which this civil strife is occurring is creating the perfect storm for a global conflagration the likes of which the world has never seen. WW III has been a cautionary talking point for eighty years, but the combination of nuclear proliferation, eight billion people, galvanized divisiveness with fundamentalism versus globalism at polar extremes and blasé attitudes about the detrimental side of authoritarianism makes this an incredibly volatile environment. If you add to it a world with teetering environmental considerations, you have a world that is a massive torch just waiting for a fatal spark.
Let me go back to the question, do I need to go see a movie about an impending civil war in the United States where the media plays a central role and yet the media is less and less the objective arbiter of the truth? Will that help me see a better path or just cause me to shrug and suggest that whatever will be will be? There are few roles I dislike more than that of a Cassandra, the Trojan goddess of prophecy who is known to accurately predict the future, but is equally known for never being believed. There is no pleasure in being right about something bad. So, I will go to see Civil War later today and I will do my best to treat it less like reality than entertainment. I will laugh about how silly it all is and say to Kim that our Canadian friends are just not seeing all the good things about America. Then I will come home and soak my head in hopes that it will all just go away.