Are Americans Protesting or Is America Under Attack?
Nationwide anti-ICE protests are bringing the issue of immigration into the spotlight. But what if these protests have been engineered to start a civil war?
Back in March, I made the case that we’re already in the early stages of a civil war. I argued that due to our irreconcilable differences and the degradation of the rule of law, it is becoming increasingly impossible to reconcile our differences through political institutions.
While there are many contentious issues people disagree on – abortion, vaccinations, and the status of women are a few big ones – immigration appears to be the issue where trust in institutions is degrading the most. In March, I wrote:
Take illegal immigration as an example. Sanctuary cities like Chicago are defying federal orders to deport illegal migrants taking matters into their own hands. If the federal government cannot enforce the rule of law in an area, it is no longer in charge. That creates an obvious problem. Do you send the military into Chicago to quell an ideological rebellion? If you don’t, will other cities and states follow Chicago’s lead? And if they do, can Washington still credibly govern a fragmented country?
This is exactly what is happening in Los Angeles right now. The federal government is pitted against state and local officials who are adamant that the federal government has no authority to carry out law enforcement activities in their jurisdictions.
Someone has to make a move. Trump has to enforce the rule of law and the supremacy of the federal government, or Democratic cities successfully defy him.
Either way, both options inch us closer to outright civil war. If the Trump administration uses heavy-handed tactics to enforce the rule of law – like calling in the Marines – the Left will view it as despotic and authoritarian. But if the Trump administration fails to quell the violence, the Left wins. As we’re seeing in Europe, this will result in the prohibition of political parties and the imprisonment of individuals on the basis of “harmful” speech.
While I don’t think Trump is a panacea to America’s political ails, as we’ve already seen with COVID-19 and the suppression of speech on social media, anyone who disagrees with the Left will face the ire of it. I’m much less concerned about losing freedoms under the Trump administration than I am a coalition of intersectional Leftists who can’t even agree on what the definition of a woman is.
Like other recent protests, the anti-ICE protests we’re seeing in LA have quickly escalated into violence. The arrest of an obscure labor union leader, the convenient placement of cinder blocks around protest sites, and a crowd of predominately military-aged men suggests we’re witnessing something that goes beyond a “mostly peaceful” protest.
I would know because during President Trump’s first term, I was at all of these protests. I skipped work to protest his inauguration. I attended the Women’s March the following day. I was at the March for Science where a group of protestors formed a circle around an anti-abortion street preacher guarding his right to free speech. And I was at the March for Our Lives.
No one paid me to be at any of these protests. I saw they were happening on social media and voluntarily attended each one on my own. While these protests may have been emotionally charged, they were indeed peaceful.
Things changed in 2020 with Black Lives Matter. What had previously been peaceful protests had now turned violent. Instead of protecting free speech, social media had turned into a battle ground denouncing it.
Over the last five years, trust in institutions to resolve conflict have deteriorated. While January 6 protestors sat in prison without trial, the Left went on a media blitz demanding the return of a Latin American gang member who was deported without due process.1
The deterioration of the rule of law is so bad that former President Bill Clinton recently went on The View, suggesting the courts might not hold through the midterm election:
While Clinton didn’t explicitly state it, if the court system fails so does the country. If he is correct – that the courts will not hold until the midterms – it would suggest something major is about to happen within the United States.
Rule of law is the glue that holds the country together. Without mutually agreed upon rules, enforceability goes out the window. One person’s interpretation of murder, for example, becomes another person’s interpretation of self-defense.2
You can’t protect property much less yourself in a society where rules are applied subjectively and justice is administered on an ad hoc basis. Anarchy will ensue. To understand the implications of this, watch The Purge.
But the bigger question isn’t what’s happening in LA right now. It’s how we got to this point. How did we go from a country where the local authorities cooperated with President Obama during mass deportation efforts in the 2010s to a country that is so blinded by anger, that municipal governments are willing to protect the rights of murders, drug dealers, and other criminals, all of whom are living here illegally?
As Matt Taibbi writes in Racket News of his experience covering immigration enforcement efforts a decade ago, the response we’re seeing today is unprecedented:
I spent months back in the early 2010s covering cases of undocumented immigrants deported under the 287(g) program, which dates to 1996 and deputized local and federal officials to run immigration checks on everyone taken into custody. I don’t remember judges railing against the injustice of that program, or wrapping arms around undocumented court visitors back when they were being shipped out wholesale by a more socially acceptable president like Barack Obama.
That’s what today’s essay will dive into. I think we are on the road to civil war but I don’t think it’s a war of our own making. I think it’s a war that’s been deliberately engineered to weaken not just the United States, but the entire Western-led world order. And I think we are being pushed into it without even realizing it’s happening.
This essay is going to posit a theory that may seem conspiratorial in nature. But after analyzing events that have transpired over the last five years, it seems like the protests we’re witnessing in LA are connected to a much bigger story. It’s illogical for the United States to devolve into civil war over immigration, especially when an overwhelming majority of Americans support the deportation of illegal migrants. So what’s really going on here?
I may not have all of the answers you’re looking for, but I hope the theory I present will shed new light on what may be the root cause of increasing political instability within the United States.
Divide your enemy, and conquer them. -Sun Tzu