Hardcover, 304 pages
Published Jan. 4, 2022 by Crown.
The influence of modern life on the civil wars, with an emphasis on grievance, faction and democratic backsliding.
We imagine things will be as our history tells us it was. In the United States, that means we think another civil war would be fought along geographic lines with large, organized, government-backed armies. But Barbara Walter explains how a modern civil war really happens, and it's nothing like how we imagine it would be.
Societies plunge into chaos when two preconditions are met. The first is anocracy - the transition zone between democracy and dictatorship. Doesn't matter which way they're moving, it's the change, like a hermit crab getting a new shell, that creates the hazard.
The second is factionalization. We've got well past political parties and into a world where changing is as momentous as converting to a new religion. We mix a little bit less each day and it feels like violence is never very far away.
America has multiple aggrieved ethnic and sectarian groups. The only way to climb down from this is to focus on democratic participation, as South Africa did in the 1990s. The GOP are dragging us precisely in the wrong direction, making violent conflict inevitable.
Unfortunately, this is necessary reading for all Americans right now.
