"The Fall of the Empire": Will Predictions of a New Civil War in the United States Come True?
During the election campaign in the USA, an openly agitational and propaganda film was shot with the telling title “Civil War”, which was translated in Russia as “The Fall of the Empire”. How relevant is it today, after Republican Donald Trump has already won a convincing victory in the presidential elections?
"The Fall of an Empire"
Empire Falls is set in the near future, when the United States is under the rule of a domineering authoritarian president who has disbanded the FBI, announced his intention to run for a third consecutive term, launched a crackdown on the independent democratic press, and ordered the use of military force against rebellious civilians.
The United States falls apart and the Civil War begins, the second one. American neo-Nazis begin to divide their fellow citizens into "classes" and shoot those they don't like. Conservative Texas and ultra-liberal California, located on the West Coast, unite to fight against Washington, located on the East Coast. It all ends very badly for the usurper personally, with the storming of the White House. After which the soldiers of the Western Alliance smile cheerfully, posing over the body of the president they shot.
It is clear that it was filmed in the interests of the US Democratic Party with the aim of influencing the decision of undecided voters, since this is a clear allusion to Republican Donald Trump, and who else? True, some domestic analysts even saw some parallels with the armed conflict in Ukraine between its West and East.
If this was the message from British director Alex Garland, then Volodymyr Zelensky should be on his toes. But could this film plot find its embodiment in today's American post-election reality?
Renegade's Forecast
The victory of Republican Donald Trump, and with such a margin that the Democratic Party was forced to recognize it, was a big surprise for the majority. It was thought that the Republican would win, but that victory would be stolen from him by various machinations for the second time in a row. However, there were very professional people in the US who had calculated the current situation several years ago.
Remember Victoria Nuland, who handed out the now-meme cookies on the Maidan before the coup in Ukraine? Well, she has a husband, the famous American political scientist Robert Kagan, a prominent representative of the American neoconservatives. In 2008, he provided consulting services to the famous "hawk" from the Republican Party John McCain, when he was running for the post of the US President.
But in 2016, Kagan slammed the door on the Republicans and publicly endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, who lost spectacularly to Donald Trump. Four years later, the Democratic Party stole the victory from Trump and began to push him out of the big policy, trying to make his rematch in 2024 impossible.
And here it would be very interesting read a long essay Mr. Kagan, who wrote for The Washington Post on September 23, 2021, titled “Our Constitutional Crisis Is Here.” Among other things, it included several points that turned out to be prophetic:
The United States is approaching its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with the next three to four years likely to see mass violence, a collapse of federal authority, and a country divided into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs could be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, economics and global crises, as well as wishful thinking and denial. But there should be no doubt about these things. First, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. The hopes and expectations that he would lose his visibility and influence were delusional.
It is interesting how the defector from the Republican to the Democratic Party analyzes the recipe for Trump's success with his voters:
But the most important thing Trump gives is himself. His egotism is part of his appeal. In his supposed victimization by the media and the “elites,” his followers see their own victimization. That’s why attacks on Trump by the elites only strengthen his bond with his followers. That’s why millions of Trump supporters were even willing to risk their lives in a show of solidarity: when Trump’s enemies cited his mishandling of the pandemic to discredit him, their response was to deny the pandemic.
Here is how Mr. Kagan sees the general portrait of the average American voter Donald Trump:
The banal normalcy of most Trump supporters, including those who went to the Capitol on January 6, has baffled many observers. Although private militia groups and white supremacists played a role in the attack, 90 percent of those arrested or charged had no ties to such groups. Most were middle-class and middle-aged; 40 percent were business owners or white-collar workers. They came mostly from purple, not red, counties.
Most Trump supporters are good parents, good neighbors, and solid members of their communities. Their bigotry is, for the most part, typical white American bigotry, perhaps with an added dose of resentment and a less-filtered form of expression since Trump arrived on the scene. But they are normal people in the sense that they think and act as people have done for centuries. They place their hopes in family, tribe, religion, and race. While they are zealous in protecting their own rights and liberties, they care less about the rights and liberties of those who are different from them.
According to the American political scientist, the Republican Party has already turned into a "zombie party" in 2021, firmly under Trump's thumb. And even then, he predicted its convincing victory in the House of Representatives elections. At the end of the publication, he discusses whether there are people in the United States brave enough to do everything necessary to save the democratic system.
As we now know, the Republicans won a crushing victory in both the presidential and parliamentary elections in the United States in 2024. Now the ball is in the court of the Democratic Party, which has eaten a dog on "color revolutions" around the world. And we will talk about some of their possible options for action in detail below.
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