Far-left representative Maxine Waters, who in 2018 called on supporters to confront and harass Trump administration officials and hence intensify our cold (un)civil war, now says the president may want a hot one.
To be precise, Waters (D-Calif.), opining on MSNBC Wednesday while being interviewed by station host Joy Reid, peddled a conspiracy theory holding that President Trump was deploying federal officers to violent Democrat-run cities nationwide as a “trial run” for using “his military” against Americans should he fail to win re-election.
As Daily Wire reports, “Waters, who has promoted partisan conspiracy theories involving Trump in the past, responded to the Department of Homeland Security’s deployment of federal agents to Portland by claiming ‘this is what you see in countries where you have dictators, in Third World countries with dictators, who have paramilitary that they can call up against the people any time they want.’”
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It was then that the leftist congresswoman posited the notion that “this is a trial run of the President of the United States who may be organizing to not accept what happens when we have the election if he’s not elected.”
“Is he going to pull out his military? Is he going to engage us?” Waters then asked rhetorically. “He has already alluded to there may be a civil war if he’s not re-elected. This is dangerous, we are trying to find out more about it” (video below. Hat tip: Daily Wire).
.@RepMaxineWaters on DHS sending agents to Portland as riots continue: “As a matter of fact, it has been suggested that this is a trial run by the president of the United States who may be organizing to not accept what happens when we have the election if he’s not elected.” pic.twitter.com/54a2DHDx7l
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) July 22, 2020
These comments are ironic coming from Waters, who has done much to foment unrest and violence with her rhetoric, calls to harassment, and divisive anti-Trump conspiracy theories. Yet she and Trump — who suggested last year that a civil war could erupt if he were unjustly removed from office — have much company in considering such a conflict nigh.
In fact, a June Rasmussen poll found that 34 percent of registered American voters and 40 percent of registered Republican voters consider a second civil war “likely” in the next five years. Given this, and that political violence is now increasingly common (e.g., BLM riots), it’s important to examine how a nation moves toward civil war — and who in our time and place may be inviting one.
It’s easy to start a fight. Begin with “fightin’ words,” with name-calling; this, if consistently done with a person who won’t be cowed, leads to pushing and shoving, and that can lead to punches thrown. Of course, in a situation with different factions — as with two gangs — this can mean a larger battle as each side lines up behind its dog in the fight.
The same can happen on a wider scale, at the level of society; just start with that name-calling. And who today does this, capriciously and loosely hurling pejoratives such as “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobe,” fascist, Nazi, and bigot?
Sure, this is done to silence opposition, and thus far it has largely worked. But make no mistake: Thems fightin’ words. Add to this the outright leftist violence — the toppling of statues, attacking of Trump supporters, the rioting and looting — and the career and personal destruction effected by “cancel culture,” and a question arises: How long can this pushing continue without their being pushback?
(We’ve already seen a bit of this, with the Proud Boys’ actions and the occasional groups of patriots in more rural areas who’ve contended with leftist miscreants.)
And once the pushing and pushback intensify enough and become widespread, it’s called civil war.
Yet there’s a deeper issue, too, a factor encapsulated in a simple truth: A person who can’t be reasoned with can only be fought.
Or, put differently: People who won’t talk things out are left to fight them out.
Consider: Imagine you occupy a large ranch in the old West, and a clan comes along and lays claim to what you believe is your land. To keep the peace and be “reasonable,” you cede some acreage, including a watering hole. You figure, “Now that they can graze and water their cattle, surely they’ll be satisfied.”
But no dice. Never accepting the territorial status quo, the clan comes back for additional land a year later and more six months after that; they’re never appeased no matter how many concessions are made. Moreover, Truth, conventions, social codes, traditions, laws, and reason mean nothing to them. They want what they want, as their only guiding principle is occultist Aleister Crowley’s formulation, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
It would be clear at this point that you have two choices: Be vanquished completely — or fight resolutely.
This allegory is absolutely analogous to our current situation with the so-called “Left” (and certain others). Today’s cultural revolutionaries have no regard for Truth, conventions, social codes, traditions, laws, or reason. Try to debate them substantively, and they shout you down, call you names, “cancel” you, or, worse still and when the situation allows it, may attack you in the street.
By being unwilling to talk things through — by being those people who cannot be reasoned out of a position because they haven’t reasoned themselves into it, to paraphrase Jonathan Swift — leftists (and certain others) are pushing our nation toward a conflagration.
Anyone who wants to avoid violence must recognize that the only way to improve society is to seek Truth and let it shape policy. Seek Truth, not argument; Truth, not money; Truth, not privilege; and, most to the point, Truth, not power.
Anyone failing in this is, knowingly or not, helping march us toward a precipice.
Photo: Rep. Maxine Waters
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
