The next civil war Dispatches from the American future

In this cogent if alarmist account, novelist and cultural critic Marche (The Unmade Bed) argues that the nation's "collapse will arrive sooner and more suddenly than anybody expects." Outlining potential scenarios for civil war, Marche imagines catalyst events that would exacerbate present-day social tensions. In the first, a small-town sheriff refuses a government order and becomes a hero to conspiracy theorists and anti-government activists, resulting in an uprising the president must ask the military to quell. The second, somewhat less likely scenario, involves a presidential assassination in which the assassin and the victim become heroic symbols. The third and most chilling scenario includes a hurricane that ravages New York City, followed by other climate disasters that make food insecurity a constant concern for vast swaths of the U.S. To help give shape to these hypotheticals, Marche speaks to political scientists, sociologists, white nationalists, gun show attendees, and others with insights into hot-button issues. He ultimately contends that "since the United States no longer functions as a nation," allowing part of the country to secede is among "the best-case scenarios." Though Marche includes some astute commentary from experts, his thought experiments are more sketched than fully realized. Readers will find plenty to worry about, but little to hold on to. (Jan.)

It's not a matter of if but when: A civil war is on the way, as "the United States is coming to an end." As Toronto-based novelist and culture writer Marche observes, the U.S. is riven by sectarian conflict that cannot help but end, at some point, in violence. By his projections, the inevitable civil war will be uncommonly vicious, pitting neighbor against neighbor. It's not just Donald Trump's fault, though he certainly did his best to sow hatred and division. As Marche notes, Trump was right when he said, "This country was seriously divided before I got here." The author posits a number of scenarios around which a civil war could emerge: the assassination of a president; the seizure by local authorities of a bridge condemned as unsafe by federal authorities, drawing militias from afar into armed conflict with the Army; a campaign of terror on the part of "anti-government patriots," with dirty bombs that are less lethal than they are panic-inducing, countered by a government that will suspend First and Second Amendment rights to contain the violence. In all these scenarios, the fuel is the deep chasm between two visions of America, the one multiethnic, the other White supremacist. This chasm is full of antipathy and even outright venom. "Hatred drives politics in the United States more than any other consideration," Marche writes, and in the America of today, the middle ground has disappeared. What is to be done? Marche proposes a radical solution: Allow the South to break away into a largely impoverished theocracy, grant prosperous California and Texas their own nationhood, and let the rest of the country form a flourishing, wealthy blue-state democracy. "Disunion would be the death of one country," he writes, "but it would be the birth of four others." For other possible remedies, follow this book with Barbara F. Walter's How Civil Wars Start. Lincoln wouldn't have liked Marche's proposed remedies, but in a time of torment, this is a book well worth reading. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.