Whether America really has the fortitude to hold together through these perilous times may not be the right question to ask. A better question, perhaps, would be whether it is the right thing to do. Another deadly shooting, likely tied to violent street clashes, occurred Saturday night, this time, in Portland, OR. Nobody should take any joy in the acknowledgment that a full-blown, second American civil war may now only be weeks or months away. To avoid such a tragedy, perhaps, those states run by – and occupied mainly by – people who resent America’s values, traditions, and political system, should be offered the opportunity to remove themselves from the union.
During an August 29 confrontation in Portland between Black Lives Matter activists and counter-demonstrators, one unidentified individual was shot. In a brief statement, the Portland Police Bureau said: “Portland Police officers heard sounds of gunfire from the area of Southeast 3rd Avenue and Southwest Alder Street. They responded and located a victim with a gunshot wound to the chest. Medical responded and determined that the victim was deceased.”
This follows the shooting in Kenosha, WI, of two protesters who pursued and attacked a young man who was carrying a rifle. One of the two died at the scene, and the other sustained a severe wound to the arm. Multiple other Americans, most of them police officers, have been killed and injured over the past few weeks during physical confrontations linked to the widespread violence and rioting instigated by left-wing extremists.
An Unwanted Election
The nation is barely more than two months away from an election nobody wants. Democrats and other leftists don’t want it because the candidate behind whom they must rally is entirely inadequate. Joe Biden, the unlikely winner of the Democratic Party’s primary contest, is a career politician steeped in the Washington political culture of back-room deals, morally-questionable compromises, and corruption. He is as establishment as establishment gets. Worse still, the man has some disturbing personal traits, such as an almost pathologically dishonest streak, obvious racist tendencies, and an inability to keep his hands to himself around women and children.
As a politician, Biden is unexciting and unappealing, though he is malleable. He is also displaying signs of cognitive decline. All things considered, the former vice president is a very long way from being someone about whom the left can get excited or in whom it can have confidence.
President Trump’s base does not want this election, either. They fear massive voter fraud and, one could speculate, view the entire endeavor as an obstacle to the president’s agenda. Such is the passion of Trump’s supporters that they cannot understand why anyone would not want to give the man another four years in office. For them, this upcoming election represents a threat to everything they see as a remarkable resurgence in America’s fortunes over the past four years.
How Bad Can Things Get?
Moreover, the prospects of a transition back to peace and normality after the election seem distant. Many people are bracing for the rage of the political left to boil over, should Trump win re-election. The unrest that is happening today may turn out to be insignificant, compared to what might happen after November 3. A lot of Trump supporters have on social media expressed their concern that should Biden win, the Democratic Party and its violent surrogates on the streets may target Trump supporters in a quest for “revenge” for the past four years.
An election that nobody wants, then. An election that could lead to a dramatic and even more deadly increase in civil unrest and violent showdowns, whatever the result. Perhaps Americans of all political stripes should simply spare themselves the pain and agree now to negotiate a parting of the ways. If that sounds like an insane idea, consider the alternative. How many more lives, businesses, and entire cities should be sacrificed before people decide to read the writing on the wall?
Then again, perhaps things really aren’t that bad: perhaps what Americans are missing – because the left and its media cohorts are concealing the fact – is that an obnoxious minority (not a racial minority, but a political one) has created all the present chaos. The nation as a whole is, in fact, far too strong to succumb to the tantrums of a rag-tag bunch of rowdy ingrates. Maybe America has gone through a lot worse. If the majority of people, Democrat and Republican, conservative and liberal, can hold onto what makes this country special – and what makes Americans special to each other – then we will all live to see a bright, new day.
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
