Chris Merrill discusses the threat of civil war
What do you see as the solution to the inciting divisive rhetoric in post 2016 politics?
Chatter about a Civil War increases after every major setback Trump faces. The Trump mimicking candidates are loving it. The practice is divisive and the exact opposite of One Nation, indivisible. So, why do the same people that claim to be “patriots” keep doing it?
Soon after the F.B.I. searched Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida for classified documents, online researchers zeroed in on a worrying trend.
Posts on Twitter that mentioned “civil war” had soared nearly 3,000 percent in just a few hours as Mr. Trump’s supporters blasted the action as a provocation. Similar spikes followed, including on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, Parler, Gab and Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform. Mentions of the phrase more than doubled on radio programs and podcasts, as measured by Critical Mention, a media-tracking firm.
More than a century and a half after the actual Civil War, the deadliest war in U.S. history, “civil war” references have become increasingly commonplace on the right. While in many cases the term is used only loosely — shorthand for the nation’s intensifying partisan divisions — observers note that the phrase, for some, is far more than a metaphor.
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