In recent weeks, I’ve taken notice of several books that feature a second American Civil War as a key part of their stories. American War by Omar El Akkad tells the story of a second Civil War in the late 21st century, sparked by political divisions over an American president’s attempt to forcefully deal with the effects of climate change. Another book, Afterwar by Lilith Saintcrow, details the final days of a bloody conflict on North American soil. Both these books, I believe, offer a window into a concern that is creeping more into political discourse in the United States: the sinking, unshakeable believe that our political differences may in fact be too much to overcome through mere electoral politics.
Something to take note of when it comes to these two books is the wildly different backgrounds between the two authors. Lilith Saintcrow has written a variety of books in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and romance. Omar El Akkad, meanwhile, is a journalist and novelist from Egypt who might be best known for his on-the-ground reporting of Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri. The fictional zeitgeist of the age seems to include taking modern day concerns about “Red vs. Blue” divides and seeing them as leading, inevitably, to civil war.
Stepping back for a moment, popular fiction books offer a window into understanding what people were thinking and arguing about in a given era. With the passing of Philip Roth—following on the heels of the death of Tom Wolfe—this is certainly not a novel idea. As I have written before for S-USIH, contemporary fiction is a good place to understand the concerns of a nation at a given time. In the 1990s, the techno-thriller novel—the dean of which was Tom Clancy—was a place where you could figure out who we thought America’s enemies were. In Clancy’s novels, dealing with the collapse of the Soviet Union, defeating a resurgent Japan, driving back an Iraq-Iran alliance, and dealing a crippling blow to the rise of China were all key themes in his works. Today, however, it increasingly appears the enemy is us.
The fictional trope of Americans fighting Americans also can be seen in two of the most heralded shows on streaming services today: Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Amazon Prime’s The Man in the High Castle. While The Man in the High Castle deals with the Axis powers occupying most of North America, it is important to note how much both the original Philip K. Dick novel and the streaming series deal with the issue of what it would mean to be a collaborator in such a regime. Meanwhile, The Handmaid’s Tale details the problems of living in an America ruled by a hyper-patriarchic society that offers little to no rights for women. Both series detail the price anyone would pay for “resisting” such governments—again, a timely tale in an age when half of America’s political culture now refers to itself as “the Resistance.”
Or for that matter, the idea of the federal government being nearly helpless in the face of a calamity—and having the right person be in the right place to fix the issue—is at the heart of shows such as Designated Survivor. With talk of a possible The West Wing reboot ongoing, it would be intriguing to consider how the previous iteration of that show seems so quaint when compared to modern-day stories about the inner workings of the White House. Of course, none of these shows tackle a second American Civil War but, again, they do point to the constant polarization with which we currently live.
The question of a Second American Civil War isn’t just in fiction. Foreign Policy has gone so far as to publish a poll and a follow up story about just such a scenario, treating it not as juicy fodder for a story but as a possible—albeit unlikely—future scenario. When major magazines such as Foreign Policy and The New Yorker entertain the idea, it’s not easy to brush off. But it is indicative of where we are with some quarters of our political thought-leaders—and why fiction writers have already begun to pick up this thread in their work.
One Thought on this Post
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I’m not sure we face a second civil war so much as we are looking at act two of the war that began in 1861. Our two strains of politics remain as they have been since the country’s start–mutually exclusive mindsets. One of those entities has never admitted defeat and has been happy to engage in skirmishes and guerilla operations while biding its time until it can rise again. At least that’s what it looks like to me.