It begins with police fighting an unruly gang of protestors on an unnamed American street. Armed with canisters and clubs, they do their best to stem the crowd’s rising wrath. Then a bomb explodes, killing everyone in sight.
If you haven’t seen that in person, you’ve probably seen or imagined something similar on the nightly news. What I’m describing, though, isn’t news, but the opening scenes of a movie inspired by it released earlier this year. Called “Civil War,” it depicts the disturbing vision of exactly that in the streets and hallowed halls of what ostensibly is the world’s most powerful nation.
“I personally do not believe we will descend into a formal armed civil war,” Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told the New York Times in a feature on the flick. “But it’s in the air. It doesn’t surprise me that we’re seeing a very explicit fear of where things could go.”
Added Jess Morales Rocketto of Equis Research, which studies such things: “I believe that people believe we are on the brink of civil war. When people say stuff like civil war and World War III, what they mean is volatility and instability. They are saying, ‘I feel unsafe.’”
Which isn’t surprising given recent events in America and the world. Less than three months from now, the country will hold what promises to be one of its stormiest national elections ever; at least as unruly as the last one, which ended in a capitol riot some called a “violent insurrection.” Now, as then, both sides characterize victory by the other as a “serious threat to democracy.” And already there’s been a terrifying assassination attempt on one candidate and the complete denouement of another. All of which has resulted in a recent poll suggesting that 53% of voting Americans believe the country is heading towards a new civil war.
The movie depicts a dystopian world in which that’s already happened, following a group of reckless journalists crossing America to interview the sitting President before he’s deposed. Along the way, they encounter irrational violence, wanton death and destruction, and inescapable chaos. But the scariest part is that it’s all so believable.
In fact, world events too seem to be spiraling down a chute towards global unraveling and destruction. “I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again,” Rafael M. Alunan, a member of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations, wrote in The Manila Times last week. “What we’re seeing in Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific are the early stages of another world war…”
Specifically, he argues, Ukrainians are fighting Russians for their very survival; violent protestors are battling in the streets of the UK over immigration; the ongoing war in Gaza is fast becoming a wider conflict; and, closer to home, frequent Chinese provocations against Filipinos in the South China Sea could spark an armed confrontation between major world powers.
“While there’s still time,” Alunan concludes, “we should plan and prepare for the long-term scenario…In times of grave peril like today, there are three imperatives before us: pray for divine intervention, prepare for the worst, and strive to survive…So far, I don’t see [any of those things] happening.”
Ah, but not everyone shares his pessimism.
“Sometimes,” Elizabeth Bernstein writes in a recent Wall Street Journal essay, “it seems as though we’re living in the worst of times. The truth is, we’re really not.”
As evidence, she cites an exhaustive study concluding that, while most of us think society is in grave moral decline, the actual empathy, generosity, respect and kindness human beings show each other has never been greater.
“People think the world has gone to hell in a handbasket,” proclaims psychologist Adam Mastroianni, the study’s leading author, “but as far as we can tell it’s the same as it always was.”
Perhaps a sliver of light in an otherwise darkening sky.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book, A Tooth in My Popsicle, is available on Amazon. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
