We are in what is called the Cold Civil War. The partisan divide has been growing steadily since the beginning of the decade and we can now actually see just how bad it is based on Pew Research data. Carl Bernstein said we are looking at the great battles of the cold civil war. Historical moments that will be looked back upon. But did this really begin with president Donald Trump? Will it end if the democrats win? Or will our country continue down an authoritarian path regardless of who is in power?
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Yesterday, for over nine hours, I believe, we sat through the Kavanaugh hearings.
A lot of people are insulting Brett Kavanaugh, saying that he was whiny, ill-tempered.
They're attacking his character.
Many people are saying Christine Blasey Ford is a liar.
But you do have people on the left saying Ford is a hero and she was composed, and you have people on the right saying Kavanaugh was passionate and it was sad to see, you know, the anger in him and the sadness from being smeared in this way.
My Twitter is pretty fairly balanced between left and right, and I noticed that we really are living in different realities.
I made a lot of videos talking about Civil War 2.0 and what that really means, but now we have this story from just a couple days ago.
It's from Raw Story.
Carl Bernstein tells CNN Kavanaugh and Rosenstein battles show the U.S.
is in a cold civil war.
We actually have data from, I believe it's from Pew Internet Research, that shows just how this is happening.
And it's actually really fascinating to see the split between Democrats and Republicans grow wider and wider.
It's actually kind of scary.
And then it's scary to see the sentiment from many people on social media.
I have some examples.
But let's start by reading what Mr. Bernstein has to say.
Now, this is raw story.
Raw story is considered to be far left.
Take that into consideration.
Legendary reporter Carl Bernstein told CNN's New Day Monday that the current battles over Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, accused of conspiring against the president, and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, accused by multiple women of sexual assault, show the U.S.
is in a cold civil war with the truth as a primary casualty.
Asked by co-host Allison Camerota how anyone could discern the truth about Kavanaugh accuser
Christine Bozzi Ford's allegations, quote, if it's really just truly he said she said at that point
because the FBI isn't investigating and no other witnesses are called out, Bernstein said he didn't
know. There's another quote. One thing we need to understand in the larger context of all of this,
and that is that we are in a cold civil war in this country.
These two events, both the Mueller investigation and the Kavanaugh nomination,
are almost the Gettysburg and Antietam.
I'm pronouncing that wrong.
the absolute central battles of this cold civil war. Bernstein said both the Democrats and
Republicans were exploiting the situation, making matters even worse. Instead of having two parties
committed to finding out the truth in these two important matters, he said, we are now into serious
tribalism here. But he laid out the ultimate blame on President Trump and his behavior in office.
He said, I think it is disproportionate because the President of the United States, through his own lying, has shown he has no interest in the truth, Bernstein said.
The mechanisms of government, our system, is not working right now, and as a result, we have a constitutional crisis.
What's really fascinating when you hear this claim, for one, a lot of people have talked about the Civil War.
Is it coming soon?
Are we already in it?
One of the points I made is that history is condensed.
When we look back at World War II in the history books, major moments of the war are placed next to each other in terms of relevance, but they may have actually taken, you know, may have been years apart.
So it's possible that in 50 years we look back and say that's when the Civil War started.
It was the election of Donald Trump.
It was the two years up until the election of Donald Trump with the street violence and the attacks on Trump supporters.
Or it's possible that it's here, with the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and the clear divide between the left and the right.
I really don't know.
But I do believe it's fair to say that, in my opinion, I would say this.
We are in a cold civil war.
There is violence in the streets.
People are being smeared on the left and the right.
People on the right are called Nazis and nationalists.
And the media is framing everything in very specific ways, in my opinion, not intentionally, but to generate money in this extremely polarized climate.
I want to move now on to this study from the Pew Research Center.
Political Polarization.
This is actually from October 20th, 2017.
And they say, 1994 to 2017, the interactive chart below illustrates the shift in the American public's political values over the past two decades, using a scale of 10 questions asked together on seven Pew Research Center surveys since 1994.
The share of Americans with ideology consistent values The share of Americans with ideologically consistent values has increased over this time, and these political values also have become more strongly associated with partisanship.
These shifts are particularly pronounced among politically engaged Americans.
Use the controls below to see more detailed ideological consistency in the American public since 1994.
This is fascinating.
We're going to go by the general public, by party.
And what we can see here is that in 1994, the median Democrat and median Republican are spaced about far from each other.
But there is a substantial overlap.
You can see you've got, this is the red.
And this is the blue.
These are people who are Democrat.
These are people who are Republican.
And very few Democrats are consistently conservative.
And very few Republicans are consistently liberal.
There are liberal Republicans and there are conservative Democrats.
And we could see in 1994, there was a dramatic overlap between the two parties.
We can move on to 1999 and we see that everything sort of shifted a little bit to the left.
The median Republican has moved a little bit left.
Here's the center.
And the median Democrat has shifted a little bit to the left, but we still have this very strong overlap.
And that looks, that to me looks safe and fair.
You know, it feels to me like we do have divide on certain, we are divided on certain issues, but for the most part we agreed.
We can move on then to 2004 and see that Republicans actually moved a little bit to the left.
The Democrats tended to stay the same, with the largest of the center being Republican.
What's particularly interesting about this, seeing the core, the Democrats mostly didn't move in the past five years, the Republicans moved a little to the left, is this is the year of the release of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11.
This is a documentary that grossed $222 million at the box office.
It was a smash hit.
It was a budget of $6 million.
And it was 2004.
You can see that most people were kind of in the middle and overlapped with each other's values.
The median Democrat almost entirely overlaps with Republicans, meaning although we were divided in terms of certain issues, This is the center, and we are very close to each other.
The median Democrat, median Republican, mostly agreed.
But then we can move on to 2011, and see the Republicans made a big shift to the right, and now the center is starting to actually split.
This is where things start getting interesting, and just pay attention to this.
If you're listening and you can't see the graph, the Republicans have made a big move to the right, the Democrats have stayed the same.
Let's move to 2014.
We can see now that both the Democrats and Republicans have pushed further to the left and the right, and the center where Republicans and Democrats agree is shrinking.
Now, the median Democrat overwhelmingly does not agree with the median Republican.
However, The median Republican still kind of agrees, in a sense, with some Democrats, right?
So, the way I can kind of break this down is there are more median Democrats that are not in line with conservatives, but in terms of median Republicans who are in line with Democrats, there's actually a decent split.
Now we can move on to where things start getting scarier.
The lines mostly don't change.
But we can see here that in 2015, Democrats mostly did not agree with Republicans, and the same is true for Republicans.
But in 2015, according to Pew Research, we can see that it would appear there is much more ideological diversity among Republicans.
Although for the most part, they lean consistently conservative, there appear to be slightly less Republicans who are consistently conservative and slightly more Democrats who are consistently liberal.
And thus, we come to the election of Donald Trump and where that has brought us.
In 2017, we can see that according to Pew, the median Democrat has shifted dramatically to the left and the median Republican has mostly stayed the same.
The center where Democrats agree and disagree is almost entirely gone.
And there are very few Republicans who would be considered consistently liberal.
The overwhelming majority, it looks like it's probably around 80% of Democrats, have nothing to agree on with the Republicans.
And this we can see, this massive split.
If you're, again, the median Democrat has now moved to probably about, the easiest way I can describe it is, in terms of quadrants, they are on the far left 25%, where the Republicans are sort of in the 40 or 50% off the right.
Republicans are much closer to the center than the Democrats are.
I want to contrast this now with 1994 and show you just how close everyone was to each other.
1994, we almost entirely agreed on most things, but with slight differences.
And today, a dramatic shift.
And I think when we talk about the Cold Civil War, we can see it in this data, and I'd have to imagine it has only gotten worse in the past year.
Now, I want to point out some statements.
Not all, not everything, but This is from Jill Filipovich, and this is from today, just a little bit before I was filming this video.
She said, divorce your Republican husbands.
And this is a verified Twitter user with 81,000 followers.
This is not the most egregious example of someone saying, don't be involved with Republicans, but we can see that whatever this cold civil war is, has gotten to the point where people are actually unironically advocating for women to divorce their husbands if they're Republican.
One data point I didn't actually, don't have pulled up at the time right now, but it is from Pew Research as well, is that millennial women are 68% Democrat, millennial men are 50% Republican, and only 45% Democrat.
So there is a huge shift between men and women.
The reason I'm highlighting this comment is that it is just one comment of many where they say things like, you shouldn't be friends with Trump supporters.
These are people, you know, coming, this is coming from the left.
I have this article that I pulled up from Forward, And it says, no, we don't have to be friends with Trump supporters.
And this is from Talia Levin on June 12th, 2018.
I'm not necessarily interested in the entire argument she's making.
I just want to show that there is sentiment among people on the left that you should not even be friends with Trump supporters.
And let me jump back to this graph and show you this center right here.
Right here, we can see Democrats and Republicans kind of agreeing.
You know, so you have consistently liberal, consistently conservative.
It doesn't necessarily mean they're voting in the same way, but it means that they hold similar values.
And there are a decent amount of people who are Republican who hold similar values to people who are Democrat.
But the Democrats have pulled away for the most part.
And now, I would probably find myself much closer to the middle, where I do have a lot in common with many conservatives, but consider myself to be consistently liberal, and I have much less in common with the median Democrat.
And this is presenting a huge challenge for someone who has considered themselves to be on the left.
So I want to pull up this, this is the actual report which came out, I believe this came out
just before or around the time as Pew, and they said, the partisan divide on political values
grows even wider. Sharp shifts among Democrats on aid to needy, race, and immigration. For the most
part, I don't want to go through the whole thing. It talks about government aid to the needy is
being divided with Republicans being very in favor of a certain direction, Democrats in the other
Racial discrimination, the Democrats are much more in favor of identity politics and race-based policy than the right is.
On immigration, much more Democrats are in favor of immigration than Republicans.
Peace through strength, Democrats are overwhelmingly for diplomacy, whereas the right is more overwhelmingly for military strength.
And you can see they say party gaps much larger than demographic differences.
There's been a lot of talk about a cold civil war and where this could lead.
Perhaps it won't lead to violence.
I'm not entirely sure.
But I wanted to know if there was at least some sentiment, some expert who could say whether or not the US has been worse than this before.
I'm concerned that as the partisan divide grows, we could actually come to a point where there is more excessive violence, maybe insurgency, authoritarianism is on the rise.
And if that's the case, are we facing something new in the history of our country?
Or has this happened in the past?
I can't speak specifically, but I do have this story from NPR, from May 1st.
Has the partisan divide ever been this bad?
Author John Meacham says yes.
Steve Inskeep talks to John Meacham, whose new book, The Soul of America, The Battle for Our Better Angels, is an attempt to understand the present by looking back at critical times in history.
I don't know if Jon Meacham is the expert to ask whether or not it's been this bad, but this is just one article I found where the conversation has existed and certainly the idea of something worse than where it's been has existed.
I think it's fairly obvious.
The Civil War, the actual Civil War, was a much worse divide, but was it necessarily a partisan divide?
I think the answer is kind of yes, but it was more of a sovereign state issue with... Look, it's very complicated.
I'm not going to get into the bulk of the Civil War, but I guess you could call it to be a relatively partisan issue.
So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, So John Meacham says, You know, as Mark Twain is reputed to have said, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
The story of American history is that we have, in fact, moved forward.
And what we've done, and the reason I wanted to look back at these moments, is that we have been...
Is that... Is what have been the moments where presidents have either been really right and led us forcefully and proactively?
And what about the moments where they've been really wrong and how do we overcome that?
I'm not saying this man is correct.
I'm not saying his opinions are right.
I'm just saying that, as bad as it is today, it's entirely possible it's been worse, and might actually get better.
I don't know.
In my personal opinion, I feel like it's only going to get worse, and seeing this data from Pew Research Center kind of freaks me out.
Seeing the response from people calling for the imprisonment and the condemnation of Brett Kavanaugh without evidence Worries me.
Now, as of today, the American Bar Association has said that there should be an FBI investigation into Brett Kavanaugh.
And far be it from me to claim I know better than the American Bar Association.
I will, however, point out that, according to NPR, the FBI said that they have done all they can, and as no federal crime has been committed, they will not be investigating.
And thus, you have these two perspectives.
On the right, the FBI investigation is a false call, because the FBI doesn't draw conclusions anyway.
It wouldn't do anything.
What's the point other than to delay the nomination vote?
The confirmation vote, I'm sorry.
But people on the left are saying the FBI could in fact corroborate timelines and present some facts that the Senate Judiciary Committee hasn't heard, thus potentially corroborating Blasey Ford's claims.
But it's really hard to know for sure.
And you've got two sides kind of existing in two different realities, with some saying Ford was the champion of respect and it was so great to see her strength, and some saying she's obviously a liar.
Some people saying Kavanaugh was snide, snarky, and rude, and others saying you can see his anger and his passion in defending himself and his family.
And thus, Well, it's an unfortunate position for me, because here's the way I feel.
Let's talk about my personal opinions on this issue.
I like Bernie Sanders.
I think he's a little bit left of me, and that's okay, because he's not... I don't know how to describe it, but he's not as extreme.
I do not like the authoritarian left.
I do not like the authoritarian right.
I really have no issues with the libertarian right, because for the most part they're not in favor of government regulation or restriction, in which case they're no real threat to the things that I want.
The threats to the things that I want tend to be authoritarian right and authoritarian left.
And as of right now, the authoritarian left is much stronger.
No, I'm not saying the literal, you know, there's like a left faction that wants to put some authority figure in power.
I'm talking about the general idea of authoritarian tendency.
And this means that people want to impose laws on others without their consent.
I'm also referring to the regressive left, which is typically defined as illiberal reactionaries.
These are people who want to return the US to some kind of status quo, and I'm not exaggerating.
When you see what went down at Occupy Wall Street, where they segregated people by race, when you see the rooms set up at these protests for Black Lives Matter and other groups that say, colored people only, and you see that many people on the left are advocating for racial segregation in various ways, that would be a return to the old status quo, and it is an illiberal reactionary position.
I do not believe most of the left, as we describe it, holds that position.
But I do believe most of the left is doing nothing about it.
And thus, the regressive left, the authoritarian left, is doing everything in their power, seemingly, to excise people like me from the party.
I will never vote for a conservative, because conservatives don't have my values.
And I don't know if I can vote for the Democrats, because now they've shifted so far to the authoritarian left.
I can't support these positions and that leaves me in a strange limbo where I sit back and watch what looks like a cold civil war with street battles with insane rhetoric and calls for people to divorce their Republican husbands and have no idea where this is going or how bad it's going to get.
But I'll tell you what.
I'm not a prepper.
I don't think the world is ending.
But I did buy some emergency food.
I'm not joking.
I think that's a reasonable thing to do, considering how crazy things have gotten.
And with people claiming that this is kind of on par with where we were after the first civil war.
Perhaps the social media, news organizations, and the desperate attempts at generating traffic to make money is going to continually push people into insane bubbles where they will never be able to rectify their beliefs with the other side.
And that's only going to lead to one thing.
It's going to lead to some kind of low-level insurgency, where we'll probably start seeing things get rather violent.
It's hard to believe there will be an actual civil war, because there's no territorial lines.
So perhaps this is why we haven't seen hardcore violence.
But we do have major cities as hubs for the left, and rural areas as hubs for the right.
And thus, perhaps this is how the conflict, the street conflicts, the actual physical violence will occur.
When conservative figures come to liberal areas to hold demonstrations, and As we've seen in the past, it's led to violence.
But I don't know.
These are just a few sources.
It's a couple anecdotal bits of evidence combined with a couple decades of Pew Internet research.
It doesn't necessarily conclude anything.
It's just something I really wanted to talk about, so let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
You can follow me on Twitter at TimCast.
And if you want to watch me rant about my personal opinions to a greater extent, Go to my second channel, youtube.com slash timcastnews, starting at 6pm, for videos about culture and politics that's much less nuanced, I guess.
Well, actually, I think everything I do always tends to be nuanced, but I tend to be much more opinionated and less focused on the data.
